Project: Fuzhou Vanke Yantai Mountain walking block commercial packaging
Architects: Urbanus Architecture & Design
Location: Fuzhou, Fujian, China
Photographs by: Archie, ZY Studio
Yantai Mountain Commercial Streetscape Design by Urbanus Architecture & Design
“Vital cities have marvelous innate abilities for understanding, communicating, contriving, and inventing what is required to combat their difficulties.’’
—Jane Jacobs
Where does the vitality of city come from?
Since the initial planning stage, urban commercial projects are designated to generate and coordinate various functions to meet the diverse and complex needs of different users. To revitalize a city, designers shall experience real urban life to understand the complexity and diversity of urban context and carry out the renovation and construction carefully.
Magician’s creation of a light atmosphere
As a vital urban community space, streetscape design concerns all aspects of human daily life. If a road has the memory of a city, either its memories of childhood or the modern smart city reveal that street life is closely connected to urban prosperity. As the main display window of the city’s cultural connotation, it can directly reflect the civilization level and cultural connotation of the city.
The Yantai Mountain of Vanke Glamourevival is located at the tail end of the traditional central-axis-based sequence in the ancient city of Fuzhou. Surrounded by the north and south ports of the Min River. It has an incomparable geographical advantage and still retains the original ecological space where Chinese and Western cultures blend. The fully open commercial block of Yantai Mountain unfolds a chapter connecting the past and the future along the Min River.
With streetscape design experiences for years, Fun Connection retained the original block form of Yantai Mountain to carry out the community streetscape transformation targeting the facade renovation, visual updating, landscape renewal and commercial building wraps. This old building complex with long history reconstructed the streetscape of old block by improving and transforming the streetscape vibes, guiding urban renewal and restoration, enhancing the vitality of urban public spaces, and solving practical business problems.
Following the storyline, a progressive route is planned, where the natural openness and freedom of the block-style business street allows consumers to relax, decompress and enjoy leisure time.
While the charm of the themed block offers consumers the immersive experience which they desire as if traveling through time and space, feeling the blend of historic and contemporary times. Besides, the alive and active block with an ambiance of literature and art welcomes consumers of various circles, injecting new vitality and charm to business through the combination of old and new, as well as the intersection of history and the present.
What is alive and active life like?
Chinese writer Wang Zengqi once said: An alive and active life lies in the taste of food.
The most colorful and simple thing in this world is the smell of cooking, curling upwards and going through the hustle and bustle of streets. The aroma of coffee and the wandering in the streets and alleys are responses to the alive and active slow-paced life.
The increasingly hollow and aging society needs to record and transmit the distinct local cultural identity through social memory. Yantai Mountain forms a new “place of cultural memory” to construct the social field for “daily life”.
Through themed commercial scene creation and visual unity, Fun Connection creates a diverse and dynamic social space via symbols, flags, and logos to meet the daily social needs of different groups of people such as the elderly, children, tourists, etc. The introduction of main visual elements creates the visual focus and forms collective memory with local features.
The creation of progressive scenes and the narrative method that establishes order and rhythm build the visual perception that movement and stillness coexist in harmony. Sometimes it’s lively, sometimes it’s a leisurely strolling lane, and sometimes it’s a place to explore novelty. These various scenes and vibes endow businesses with different emotional experiences.
Here, the linearly extending streetscape around the main path axis becomes the core of the circulation of the entire area, spreading out a romantic imagination and emotion. Following the initial design intent of “creating a light urban atmosphere and scenes”, the overall design weakens the structural differences existing in the original street as much as possible to output comfortable and natural creative points with strong visual effects, making the whole space more coherent and natural.
Opening up the street front facades, Fun Connection creates a light street atmosphere combined with different architectural outdoor spaces and sets up photogenic spots for social media to meet the visitors’ basic behaviors of standing, sitting, talking, and drinking together. It reconstructed the staying spots responding to different scenes to unfold the connection between the block and humanistic feelings.
Streets creating a sense of familiarity in life
Returning to the commercial perspective of the project, the atmosphere creation sets a reasonable layout and commercial tone for the later commercial tenant. Unifying the boundaries of business and vision and crossing culture and times, the design avoids submitting to trend and style to keep itself independent and distinctive. At the same time, the diverse integration and proper penetration create a clear and sensible spatial order.
The project presents cozy and natural creative ideas of strong visual impact to convey “a sense of familiarity in life”, creating an aesthetic street view that continues to be vibrant in daily life, and bringing effective IP shaping and commercial value to local real estate properties and businesses.
-Project description and images provided by ZZ Media
