Yangzhou Hongqiao Commercial Street
The Commercial Insertion of the Historic District
Yangzhou Hongqiao Commercial Street is bounded by Da Hongqiao Road to the North, Slender West Lake to the West, and it is also the south entrance of Slender West Lake. The project covers an area of 4.85 hectares, with a total building area of 52728 square meters, including 25395 square meters of over-ground building area and 27333 square meters of underground building area. The whole construction consists of 10 individual buildings, which form an architectural community. Most of buildings are two-storey high and a few of them are three-storey buildings.
A commercial scenic district is usually associated to four groups of people: government, developer, local residents and visitors. They have different expectations for this commercial scenic district. The government normally wishes to use archaized style for its well-known development. However, commercial buildings with exactly archaized style have a relatively short width and small areas of windows, which do not meet the demand of modern commerce and is adverse to the developer ideas. Therefore, Shanghai Dushe employed a strategy that could satisfy the expectation of each group as much as possible: processing the construction of the first and second floors separately: First, using a traditional method to recover the roof. On the second floor, the decoration is mainly based on hardwood rose windows and wood veneers, taking the essence of the traditional style. The first floor is a stone curtain wall where we dispose large display window areas to meet the needs of modern commerce.
This way the commercial street main view, from Slender West Lake and from the main road, perfectly fits with the strict requirements of a traditional appearance for this plot. The irregular location of the trees, the complexity of the slope roof and part of the elevation of the second floor gives a complex appearance to the general view.
And when visitors enter this commercial shopping street from entrance plaza, they will find that the clear facade is the best background for a variety of business activities. The first floor perfectly receive the modern commerce; second floor and the roof carry the tradition aspects. The base of first floor and the upper body are connected together through the same material and the division of elevations, to form a distinctive and harmonious whole scene. This strategy combines various plus factors to the greatest extent, which can meet the requirements of traditional aspects and the use of modern business facilities.
Though the appearance is traditional, Dushe believes in technology for Hongqiao Commercial Street's development.
For example, normal blue brick metope uses ‘stick’ method, which is easy to get broken by time. In order to overcome this disadvantage, Dushe adopts a new method called dry-hang construction method, which is a simple dry-hang measure to separate the surface of the blue brick and the primary wall. This method prevents any break, and the cost of construction increases just a 10%. The entire architecture uses a curtain wall method to ensure the final completion. There is just a U-shaped glass building (number 8) which its facade employs some hollowed-out decorative aluminum pattern. Its modern image contrasts with the surrounding architecture, which brings out the best of each other.
