Abstract
Despite its headlong rush onto the modern world scene, China is a country that has long been cut off from the mainstream of cultural activity in the world. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in its visual arts and its venues for presenting this work. Starting from almost nothing, the People’s Republic has opened literally thousands of new museums in the past two decades. Among these is a large and intriguing subset consisting of industrial and commercial buildings repurposed for use as art venues. This study explores a number of these re-makings in three of China’s major cultural centers: Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. Although the repurposed spaces are often architecturally interesting and sometimes even dramatic, the overall effect is unusually derivative. Profit motives, at both the public and private levels, also play a significant role in the long-term success of the projects. As a result, this new attempt at providing and promoting a new art culture has limitations for making China a new focus of world attention in this arena. More importantly, repurposing historic and otherwise historically significant buildings for art reveals how such spaces can at the same time both enhance and confuse the issue of cultural identity within a heretofore predominantly closed society.
Keywords
Introduction and Context
Fine art works should be like sunshine from the blue sky and the breeze in spring that will inspire minds, warm hearts, cultivate taste and clean up undesirable work styles.
Architecture is about people. When design works, it does so because it serves both the individual and the society at large at any one of a number of tangible and intangible levels. It follows that fostering cultural identity is and should be one of the benchmarks in determining the success of the architecture project. Whether in this age of globalization, striving to create, let alone maintain, a unique cultural identity in the built world is even possible is an open question. If it is, museums are perhaps the most sensitive reflection of the culture of a society. When accomplished creatively, a museum’s envelope and its contents demonstrate what is the most profound and extraordinary part of the human experience not only of the wider world but also of a particular group of people. This prescriptive purpose is matched by a proscriptive one. Not only should museums generate a new awareness about cultural heritage, they should also provide foresight into how society and its culture might grow and change.
Why target industrial spaces? Artists traditionally have gravitated to large, loft-type studios and living spaces, first for the wide-open and high spaces that such venues provide for large-scale art and then for the relatively inexpensive rents such spaces normally offer the traditional starving artist. The gritty, stripped-down ambience of industrial buildings has also supported and helped foster the traditional freedom of expression to which most artists aspire—at least in the Western world. In the second half of the 20th century and especially in the West, art galleries began to follow the artists to these spaces, not only to be closer to the artists themselves but also to showcase their art in nontypical, non–museum-like settings . . . and also to benefit from lower rents.
Gradually, and now more rapidly, the museums themselves are attempting to replicate this bohemian environment for the viewing public and, in doing so, break down the walls of the moribund historic museums. The hope is to create more people-friendly and exciting exhibition spaces that will help bring art back onto the streets from where it supposedly derived. Industrial spaces match these requirements. An important subsidiary result is that re-making or repurposing industrial buildings leads to the conservation of a class of building types that only more recently has become high on the list for historic conservation. Such preservation also speaks to the growing understanding of and demand for sustainable design.
There is ample decades-long evidence of this trend from around the world. Around the globe, arts districts carved out of underutilized or abandoned industrial and warehouse districts have been transforming once-derelict neighborhoods into high-culture destination venues. Stubbs and Makaš (2011) and Stubbs and Thomson (2017) document multiple examples of this phenomenon ranging from Europe to Asia, and in the Americas, including many in the United States starting with the Ghirardelli Square (San Francisco)–Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market (Boston) complex. A collection of case studies edited by D. K. Carter, Remaking Post-Industrial Cities. Lessons From North America and Europe (2016), also identifies a series of industrial repurposings. Examples can be found across the globe in large cities, in midsized urban areas and even in some more rural communities.
The China situation, however, is clearly unique. The Xinhai Revolution of 1911 that established the Republic of China was the beginning of a slow process that not only opened the country to the world but also opened the country and the country’s artistic patrimony to its own citizens. Nevertheless, it is widely reported that China had only 25 museums when the Communist Party took control of the country of 542 million people in 1949. China’s State Administration of Cultural Heritage counts even less, noting only 21 museums. Whatever the actual number, the scarcity of museums was to be expected.
Throughout its history, art in China was reserved for and preserved by the families of the aristocracy and the imperial clan in their private residences and palaces. Xianyao and Zhewen (2010) are among others who have studied this history. This too is not unexpected: Art is normally a direct reflection of the class structure within a specific society, formerly produced by the elite for the elite or the church. The highly structured society of China only exaggerated this disconnect. The native painting (guóhuà), bronzes, lacquerware, jade carvings, enamels, intricately woven and decorated textiles, and works of calligraphy, all of which together form traditional Chinese art, have never been a significant part of the hitherto predominantly village life and culture of China’s peasant society. This reality was only exacerbated by the excesses of the Cultural Revolution and its radical condemnation of the country’s past cultural and artistic traditions.
By 2015, however, with a population of 1.37 billion and depending on whom you ask and how you define museum, the country had catapulted to over 4,500 formal venues for exhibiting cultural artifacts, including art 1 (Zhang, 2016). Four specific trends motivate this leap forward, all a result of the country’s more recent “opening-up” policies and the shift to a (modified) market economy:
First, building on the maxim “economic development is everything,” made famous by Deng Xiaoping (China’s leader, 1978-1989), the Chinese have progressively paid more attention to the subject of culture as a component of that development. In 2002, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage announced that by 2015 the country would build 1,000 museums. They built 1500. In 2006, The State Administration published its first official documents promoting the preservation and reuse of industrial heritage to help further facilitate this goal.
In 2007, then President, Hu Jintao, addressed the 17th Party Congress in Beijing. In the section on “New Requirements for Attaining the Goal of Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects,” the President said that China must “promote cultural development and notably enhance the cultural and ethical quality of the whole nation . . .” (Jintao, 2007). This was followed by a declaration of the 2009 China State Council that upgraded culture to the level of a strategic or “pillar” industry for the nation. China’s 5-year plan of 2011-2015 called culture “the spirit and soul of the nation . . . a powerful force for the country’s development” (“China: Mad About Museums,” 2013).
Second, although the vast majority of the new museums are state-funded at different levels of the governmental structure, and thus closely aligned with the state cultural bureaucracy, the guanfang (officialdom), this growth is supported very publicly by the entry of large banks, real estate developers, and construction companies into the museum-building business: minjian (popular space) enterprises ostensibly for the people and by the people (Wong, 2015).
Third, a closely related reason for the dynamic growth in museum building is the enormous number of new dollar millionaires and billionaires China has produced since it opened its economy to private entrepreneurship. Supporting a wide range of arts for both the status it confers and the possibility of linked monetary rewards, opening and operating a museum as an investor seems to be a de facto entry requirement for those who want to be full-fledged members of the new money elite (Qi, 2017).
Fourth, and perhaps most important as a cultural phenomenon, is the reemergence of nationalism as the driving political force in China. Nationalism positions art and a country’s artistic traditions as a particularly important example of the success of its society. Vickers has shown that in China, “the promotion of a state-centred patriotism has become a key instrument for the regime in its efforts to preserve its legitimacy, and museums represent a key element in this strategy [italics added]” (Vickers, 2007, p. 365). Other authors like Denton (2013), Lu (2013), and Varutti (2014) have all investigated the background and development of the use of the museum in China to further political aims.
Setting aside the difficult, if not impossible, task of filling all of the new spaces with art, finding trained staff to curate both the permanent and temporary exhibitions, managing and operating the facilities, and finding a steady audience or any audience, all of the venues require a physical shell. Building new facilities from the ground-up, of which there are also plenty of examples in China, is both time-consuming and typically more expensive than renovating existing structures. Repurposing serves both goals: preserving culture and saving money.
Even with the seemingly limitless pockets of a government that can simply order something to happen, massive arts projects have their own set of specific requirements and limitations. In addition and particularly at this stage of Chinese history, these projects can easily and subsequently be sabotaged by higher (read mercenary) considerations. Still, the Chinese industrial re-makings are a prime example under very specific and special conditions of the intricate mechanics of advancing culture that the wider world might benefit from studying. Creatively designed museums might become works of art in themselves or, as in some of the projects described below, living examples of historic industrial heritage.
In the world of architecture, there is an ongoing debate about how to conserve while at the same time allow both cities and individual buildings to live. Neither are meant to be frozen in time. Making cities into a gallery of historic structures—essentially, making them into a building museum—is equally wrong, if not practically speaking, impossible. Cities and buildings must be understood and treated as living organisms that age and change. Balancing between old and new is incredibly tricky. What exactly is a timeless way of building? Should the new look like the old? To what period in its history should the old be preserved? In China, with a history of almost entirely isolated cultural development, there is the added issue of how to introduce—and integrate—a totally new world of art and design. This is made even more complicated when the buildings in question are industrial models from the West.
The re-making of industrial buildings need not happen in a vacuum. Internationally, a series of international agreements and guidelines provide a framework for such work. Unfortunately, many of these guidelines are, at the moment, simply background noise in China. 2 Regional governments, local governments, institutions (for-profit and nonprofit alike), and private individuals are too busy simultaneously fighting for not only the most readily available buildings to showcase art but also the most visible and hippest locations and structures. These are few and far between in what most agree is the uniformly anonymous built environment that up until very recently has characterized the urban and industrial landscape of all of post-1949 China. In response to this limited inventory of usable structures, anything old—even 10 or 20 years young—is ripe for the picking and re-making in the unparalleled pursuit of almost overnight introducing the culture of art to its vast population.
The Projects
Change life! Change Society! These precepts mean nothing without the production of an appropriate space. A lesson to be learned from soviet constructivists from the 1920s and 30s, and from of their failure, is that new social relationships call for a new space, and vice versa.—(Henri Lefebvre, 1974)
From Beijing, the historical capital (and from the Chinese viewpoint, the center of the Earth); to Shanghai, the new cultural center of the country; to Hong Kong, the Western-focused outpost of the new China, the trend is unmistakable. Each city displays multiple examples of industrial and commercial conversions into both multibuilding art zones and singular buildings for art. Many of these venues attempt to demonstrate that the art of architecture itself—what I might call Architecture with a capital “A”—is part of the cultural experience. The more interesting design story, however, is that the original buildings often outshine any attempt to overlay modern and contemporary Western design. Below are the most culturally significant and well-known repurposing projects in each of China’s three major cities.
Beijing
The Beijing story is clearly influenced by its place as the capital of China. As with many other capital cities throughout the world, closer proximity to a large population of government officials and administrators means much closer oversight of all development projects, including those for the arts. Whether or not culture is seen as a valuable industry, the political impact of these developments is examined as closely as financial and other typical development issues.
Art Zones
The capital’s 798 Art Zone could be said to have jump-started it all. It is certainly the standard against which all the other art zones both in Beijing and throughout China are compared and evaluated (See Figures 1-3). Also known as the Dashanzi Art District after the area of Beijing in which it is located, 798 is the result of the repurposing of the former multibuilding “Joint Factory 718,” a 640,000-m2 joint friendship project between the Chinese and East Germans that produced electronic components for military use. Completed in 1957, the international-style, Bauhaus-inspired concrete buildings have large vaulted spaces, high walls, and large north-facing windows—exactly the environment favored by artists. Subsequently in 1968, the compound was divided into smaller, numbered units—Factory 798 being the largest—and eventually shuttered in the early 1990s.
798 Art Zone, Beijing: Original, Bauhaus-inspired industrial buildings, typical of the multiple buildings on the site.
798 Art Zone, Beijing: Building insertions, this one with a new entry canopy as a work of art.
798 Art Zone, Beijing: Interior of a fully renovated gallery, with conserved brick walls at the rear.
As early as 1995 artists discovered the almost purpose-built environment and began to open atelier, studios, and galleries. A series of very successful art shows in the early 2000s launched the revitalized Dashanzi District as a popular art destination. Today, high-end galleries and art institutes (including the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Iberia Center for Contemporary Art, and Pace Beijing) vie for attention with boutiques, restaurants, cafes, and design firms.
It is not difficult to assess the economic importance of this repurposing and redevelopment. A state-owned enterprise, the Beijing 798 Creative Industry Investment Company, was set up to run the art zone and supervise ongoing development. In a district originally dedicated to struggling artists that now features international brand-name galleries, these in turn are now sitting cheek by jowl next to newly built, multilevel industry giant outposts such as the Audi China Research and Development headquarters. Clearly, the architecture of the original structures help—or at least, do not hinder—the dramatic cultural shift sanctioned by the Chinese government. My own architectural eye found 798 interesting, if not a bit artificial in the context of the overall vast urban mess of Beijing. In terms of architectural conservation, I had some difficulty discerning what was old and what was new, what was original and what was contextual.
798’s very success led to overcrowding and rising rents, which, in turn, caused many artists and galleries to set up in the alleyways of Caochangdi (meaning “grasslands”), a previously untouched village 3 km north of the 798 Art Zone. Unlike 798’s seemingly spontaneous creation, the transformation of the Caochangdi Arts District into an artists’ colony is most accurately attributed to one person: the internationally known Chinese artist, curator, architect, and most pertinently, dissident Ai Weiwei. In 2000, Weiwei began to create and redesign various spaces, including abandoned industrial buildings, for himself and other artists and artisans to use as studios and galleries. Success followed.
Living in one of the approximately 850 urban villages that were once farmland scattered throughout Beijing as a result of the capital’s largely unplanned massive growth, Caochangdi’s leaseholders have, according to one chronicler, “legal rights to the land solely for rural development; instead they have chosen to construct residential and commercial buildings without permission” (Mina, 2012). For years, these grassroots urban redevelopers, many of whom were artists, were left alone. Unfortunately, government acquiescence did not continue. In spring 2010, the local Communist Party posted notices informing the inhabitants, “Due to the rapid development of our cities, our village belongs to a demolition area.”
At that time, a massive grassroots campaign saved the village and arts district. Starting in spring, 2018, the district was not as lucky when a string of displacements in one section of the art zone was apparently sanctioned by the local governing body, the Caochangdi Village Economic Cooperative. In July, two more galleries in Caochangdi were served eviction notices informing them that they had only 13 days to vacate the premises to make way for a government development project (Feola, 2018).
Weiwei’s original repurposed factory studio is located in the affected zone, and it is entirely possible that eviction efforts are taking place in retaliation for the artist’s outspokenness. On August 4, 2018, Weiwei announced from his exile in Germany via Instagram (in English), “Today, they started to demolish my studio ‘zuo you’ [left-right] in Beijing with no precaution.” He also posted videos of the destruction of the former car parts factory. The government justifies its actions by claiming that the “the rental contract on the studio expired last fall” (Rea, 2018), implying that Weiwei had, in fact, been given previous “warning.” This is the second of Weiwei’s studios to be demolished by authorities; the first was in Shanghai in 2011, also represented as without warning.
Internal state politics and possibly more prosaic development rights issues notwithstanding, Caochangdi seems to be a victim of its own economic success and/or notoriety. In either case, China’s actions in this art zone undermine its own goals for its culture industry and point out the fragile existence of cultural spaces that fall outside official government sanction.
Singular Buildings for Art
Beijing also boasts another first—the first nongovernmental and nonprofit art museum in China: Today Art Museum. It is located within the commercial 22 International Art Plaza, located in Beijing’s Central Business District (CBD). The Art Plaza is not a repurposing as such and thus is not a part of this study. Founded by Zhang Baoquan, chief executive of the Antaeus Group conglomerate and one of China’s new breed of super rich, the Today is dedicated to fostering the development of contemporary Chinese art. The museum is housed in the renovated boiler room of a former brewery re-made by architect, Wang Hui, and opened in 2006. The museum website’s narrative is admirable: “Reconstruction is a useful manner to preserve the old character of a city. But preserving is not the only motive. The more important motive is to create new functions and meanings by reconstruction and discovering” (Today Art Museum, n.d.) At the same time, the financially astute Baoquan has noted, “The disposable income of residents in the CBD makes the ideal location for an art zone” . . . and for his museum (Kejia, 2012). Whatever Baoquan’s reasons for creating Today, the museum’s philosophy seems in keeping with President Hu Jintao’s call for enhancing the nation’s cultural quality and ethical character . . . and for making money.
The Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, a nonprofit institution sponsored by the clearly for-profit China Minsheng Banking Corporation, is billed as the country’s largest private contemporary art space. The project, part of Beijing’s Universal “Creative Park” located near 798, opened in 2015 inside another renovated 1980s electronics factory, last occupied by Panasonic. Within the massive 35,000-m2 footprint of the factory, there is a 8,200-m2 exhibition space. The architect, Studio Pei-Zhu (Beijing), created a new, two-story entry “pavilion” of intersecting metal-sheathed geometric volumes inserted into the middle of the otherwise nondescript long rectangular structure. Inside, the geometric volumes that surround the entrance create a dramatic multistory lobby, hovering over two sets of bleacher stairs set askew to each other. This use of overscaled and/or sculptural stairs repeats in a number of the newly repurposed museums in China as an element allowing the architect to create a design statement distinct from the more humble factory origins. The Minsheng is clearly one of the more dramatic architectural spaces to open in Beijing, if not China itself. It is, however, a direct descendent of the new generation of computer design–aided angular and swirling structures best typified by Western starchitect Frank Gehry’s Bilbao Museum that opened in 1997 in Spain.
Shanghai
In Shanghai, private efforts to adapt its moldering socialist architecture received government support earlier than in Beijing, partly because the city had already begun preserving its semicolonial industrial heritage in the early 1990s (Gillette, 2017). In July 2002, Shanghai Municipal Regulations on the Protection of Outstanding Historical and Cultural Sites and Prominent Historical Buildings proposed protecting industrial buildings for the first time in China (Xu, 2012).
As late as 2004, Shanghai only had two public art museums, one of which was exclusively for Chinese antiquities. In that year, the city established a formal policy to promote “creative industry clusters” and created the Shanghai Creative Industry Center, to assist both governmental and private developers in redeveloping industrial land. Along with dropping the requirement to redevelop the land without applying for formal designation, the city also provided special funding and tax concessions. By 2017, it was reported that the total number of museums in the city was 78. Shanghai’s 5-year plan for the city to become an artistic center on par with London, Paris, and New York was apparently well under way (Pollack, 2014).
Art Zones
Shanghai’s first and largest art zone is the Moganshan Road Art District, known familiarly as M50 for its address but also as the M50 Creative Garden. Smaller, with fewer buildings and none of Beijing’s 798’s architectural pedigree, M50 has always been considered 798’s stepchild. The 41,000-m2 enclave is located in a former multibuilding textile mill near Suzhou Creek. Originally the Xinhe Spinning Mill when it opened in the 1930s, the complex was renamed the Chunming Roving Factory after the Revolution, then renamed by the Shanghai Municipal Economic Committee as the Shanghai Chunming Metropolitan Industrial Park in 2002, and finally, the Chunming Art (my emphasis) Industrial Park in 2004. Following the money: The land and buildings are also still owned by the Shanghai Textile state-owned Assets Management Company.
What it fortunately has that Beijing’s 798 no longer does is more of an ad hoc feeling. People compete with cars and trucks throughout the site; some of the buildings still sport dingy corridors with galleries shoe-horned into whatever spaces are available; there is only one prominently new (or resurfaced) building. About 120 art galleries and studios dot the site. There is truly the feeling that maybe this place is really about art (see Figures 4 and 5) A new entry pavilion, again all angles, says very little about this uniquely rough-and-ready place. It is the kind of setting where, in a country that still officially and routinely attempts to denigrate and marginalize homosexuals, the organizers of the 2015 seventh Gay Pride celebration felt safe enough to hold their very well–attended public Art and Photo Exhibition, albeit in one cramped gallery. 3
M50 Art District, Shanghai: Typical view of site showing the casual distribution of activities on the site.
M50 Art District, Shanghai: Interior view of one of the buildings used for smaller gallery spaces.
Across town, close to the Xujiahui CBD, a 1950s steel factory complex, a central open space, and the surrounding buildings were turned into the Red Town Cultural and Art Community (also known as the Hongfang Creative Industrial Zone). This large urban project was undertaken by the Communist Party of China Branch of Shanghai and the municipal government through the Board of Shanghai Urban Planning Administration and the Office of Shanghai Urban Sculpture Committee. It was realized by the Shanghai Hongfang (Group) Co., Ltd. that offers real estate development and management services. At its height, Red Town included the Shanghai Sculpture Space, the private and similarly repurposed Minsheng Art Musuem, 4 a large outdoor sculpture park, and a number of privately owned gallery spaces and related businesses (see Figures 6 and 7). I was immediately captivated by the entire project. Any number of people interacted with art on a daily basis in a variety of ways—all in imaginative surroundings and in buildings that many would have thought of as useless relics.
Red Town Cultural and Art Community: The former sculpture park in the center of the square of buildings that create the entire district, looking toward the Sculpture Space and other galleries in the background.
Red Town Cultural and Art Community: The pedestrianized service street that fronts the buildings on the site.
Unfortunately, none of it mattered. In the summer of 2017, less than 12 years after its completion and despite its success, the entire Red Town complex was closed. Property developers have apparently targeted the extremely rare swath of open space in central Shanghai for a large residential and office building project. In one fell swoop one of Shanghai’s—and China’s—major conservation/repurposing success stories was wiped out. The Shanghai city government claimed that the Sculpture Space factory building itself is protected and would reopen in the fall of 2017. As of the summer of 2018, the venue was still closed. The Minsheng moved to its second Shanghai location: the 21st Century Minsheng Art Museum (M21), another repurposing (albeit nonindustrial) that had been completed in 2014 in the renovated former French Pavilion from the 2010 World Expo in the Pudong district of the city. Red Town’s sculpture park has disappeared, and many of the private art galleries and subsidiary businesses that had been drawn to the site have left. The Chinese miracle apparently has space for its cultural reawakening only when it does not interfere with its economic gains, both public and private.
This too, however, is not the end of the story. In November, 2017 the Shanghai Daily reported that construction was underway on a new Red Town “Cultural Park,” this one to be called Red Town 166. Located further west toward the Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport, the site is now occupied by a former hotel, offices, and factory buildings. It is to be developed by the same “creative park operator” as the original Red Town, presumably the Hongfang Company. The newspaper reports that, Red Town 166 will mainly focus on arts and creative industries while incorporating art education and cultural recreation. . . . Most of the current buildings will be preserved and receive major renovations . . . [that] will be home to art exhibitions and sculptures. (Yang, 2017)
If, in fact, this development is realized, it can be viewed in one of two ways. Either the overwhelming success of the original Red Town has succeeded in creating a new cultural market that the government realizes it needs to continue addressing and encouraging, or the developer has latched onto a sure-fire way of making an enormous profit by increasing the value of a development site through use (manipulation?) of the arts. Or both. In either case, at Red Town, the Chinese authorities have clearly not understood the value of developing and maintaining a history and legacy of industrial cultural heritage through re-making, regardless of how successful the effort.
The West Bund Culture Corridor is part of a 9.4-km2 area bordering the Xuhui riverside that is being transformed by Shanghai and the Xuhui district government into a cultural hub that partially incorporates its docks and industrial heritage. The culture corridor is just one of a number of West Bund’s initiatives including projects in the arts, media, fashion, design, and innovative finance. This is a city-led cultural megaproject, pursued in combination with private-led art museum development. The overall aim is to “create a unique, world-class waterfront on a par with the Left Bank in Paris and the South Bank in London” (Tu, 2018; see also West Bund, n.d.). In terms of the physical spaces, the effort is to reinforce this image with world-class architecture and urban design. Note again the benchmark: the best of European/Western cities. The three singular building museums in the Corridor described below are the first attempts at this goal.
At the other end of the architectural spectrum, Shanghai 800 Art Zone (also known as the 800 Art Creative Garden, and the 800 Wujiaochang Art Space) takes work-a-day commercial buildings located in the city’s northeast Yangpu district and attempts to create an American-style artists’ loft space project. Formerly the Shanghai Commercial Storage and Transportation Company’s 1960s warehouse, the renovation opened in 2009. The 800’s website’s somewhat awkward English translation advertises the facility as a center to “promote the culture, art, fashion, public welfare, tourism, business integration . . in cooperation with tongji university college of humanities and so on, are creating art talent, art incubation and distribution base in Shanghai” (800 Art Creative Garden,” n.d.). Depending on which press release you read, there are, or were, 30 to 40 galleries in the six-level, two-building development. This project illustrates yet another case of initial success, raised rents, and fast-disappearing arts tenants.
Other than brightly colored geometric murals of paint, primarily on portions of the building not directly exposed to street traffic, today’s exterior appearance preserves almost completely the aesthetic of the original buildings. In contrast, the two courtyard interior spaces of the buildings have been extensively re-made by Beijing architect and designer Zhong Song who has applied new architectural skins and a blob-like auditorium building in an apparent attempt to completely transcend the warehouse vernacular. There are some interesting details, but overall, I thought that the additions appeared a bit clumsy particularly viewed against the straightforward industrial aesthetic and cultural heritage of the original buildings (see Figures 8 and 9). When I visited the art zone, a proud business owner showed me his new, Western-style, self-storage facility carved out of one floor of one of the buildings. From warehouse to warehouse with some art in between . . .
Shanghai 800 Art Zone: View of the workaday exterior of the large commercial complex.
Shanghai 800 Art Zone: The interior courtyard of one of the buildings.
Singular Buildings for Art
The most prominent example of re-making in Shanghai is the transformation of Shanghai Nanshi light bulb factory into the Power Station of Art—China’s first state-run contemporary art museum. Located on the Huangpu River, this structure has an active history: originally constructed in 1897, renovated into the Nanshi power plant in 1955, 165-meter smokestack added in 1985, abandoned in the 1990s, and repurposed into the World Expo’s “City Future Pavilion” in 2010. Two years later after the conclusion of the Expo, the building was re-made yet again as the new museum that opened just in time to host the Shanghai Biennale. Clearly inspired by London’s international breakout Tate Modern art museum—similarly transformed from an abandoned power station—the Power Station of Art is an enormous facility with 15,000 m2 of exhibition space. 5
The architects for the renovation, the Original Design Studio (Nantong), have to the largest extent possible, preserved the spatial volumes and structural details of the original structure (see Figures 10-12). I would guess that this approach to re-making creates a built space quite unlike anything most Chinese have experienced. New wide stairways leading to the upper galleries seem to fly through the space, further increasing the drama. An enormous rooftop deck with panoramic views of Shanghai across the Huangpu provides another unparalleled design experience, plus space for outdoor art. The museum is apparently having the same problems as other new art venues: a lack of art. Several TripAdvisor commentaries from 2017 through 2018 report vast unused exhibition spaces. Photos of the empty, cavernous space support these observations and match my own experiences from a bit earlier.
Power Station of Art, Shanghai: Today’s view of the historic building on its now manicured site, along with street art leading to the building.
Power Station of Art, Shanghai: Entry space with “flying” staircases.
Power Station of Art, Shanghai: One of the large exhibit halls. On view, “Piece by Piece: Renzo Piano Building Workshop,” an exhibition of the architect’s work as part of the museum’s commitment to exploring “architecture and space as an important academic research direction.”
Red Town’s Sculpture Space museum is located inside the almost intact 1956 main foundry building on the site of the original “No. 10 Steel Factory.” In the renovation completed in late 2005, the then Brearley Architects + Urbanists of Melbourne and Shanghai (now known simply as BAU) - created a public exhibition space in half of the 180 m-long building. In the other half, they inserted a contemporary two-story office block down the center of the shed-like structure providing a series of more intimate gallery spaces on the first level and creative spaces for rent to architects, designers, and others on the second. The wide and high-ceiling spaces along the remaining sides of this portion of the factory building also allow for overscale installations (see Figures 13 and 14). In the refreshingly straightforward and accurate words of the architects, Rejuvenating a dilapidated 1950s steel factory the design seeks to create a place of potential for a growing art culture. It explores new ways of viewing art, placing the observer in a variety of physical relationships with art pieces. . . . It seeks to provide freedom for all manner of art interventions by avoiding the preciousness of most cultural institutions and maintaining an industrial rawness. (BAU, n.d.)
Shanghai Sculpture Space, Shanghai: The original factory building carefully conserved and remade into a multipurpose museum and office project.
Shanghai Sculpture Space, Shanghai: Portion of interior of museum showing the insertion of design industry offices with galleries below and around the new addition.
Two major art museums anchor the West Bund Culture Corridor: the Yuz Museum Shanghai, another private contemporary art museum completed in 2014 that incorporates a historic 3,000-m2 airplane hangar from the now-closed Longhua Airport. Founded by Chinese–Indonesian agribusiness entrepreneur and art collector Budi Tek and redesigned by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, the museum promotes itself as a fusion of old and new architecture: “We have designed a flat-roofed glass hall that interacts with the clear formal characteristics of the old hangar” (Yuz Museum Shanghai, 2018). The on-the-ground reality is less convincing: The fusion is more akin to a discordant contrast—the new structure is a bit graceless and the two structures are actually very awkwardly butted together. At least the intent was admirable.
In March 2018, Tek announced he would team up with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the first of its kind collaboration between a Chinese and United States museum. Yuz’s founder will donate his entire collection to a foundation jointly run by the two museums for exhibition(s) at a yet undetermined location. This move comes at a time when Tek, who is battling life-threatening cancer, is moving to transform his private museum into a nonprofit organization. The timing is particularly urgent since it is not easy under Chinese law for private museums to succeed their founders. “The relationship between public and private museums in Asia will change, starting with me,” says Tek. “Major museums in the West began as humble private museums and became public ones relying on public support to grow their collections and programmes. Yuz will follow the same pattern” (Tsui, 2017).
In the same precinct is the Long Museum West Bund, where Shanghai-based architects of Studio Deshaus have very visibly integrated remnants of a coal-conveying platform from the 1950s and an underground parking garage from the first decade of the 21st century into the new industrial-style art venue. The Long is one of two private art galleries in Shanghai founded by “taxi-driver-turned-billionaire” and Chinese art collector Liu Yiqian and his wife, Wang Wei.
In addition to the above two museums, under construction and scheduled to open in the West Bund in 2018, is the Tank Shanghai, a re-purposing of five oil tanks into “containers for art and life.” The project, which is the first of its kind, is the brainchild of night club entrepreneur and contemporary art collector, Qiao Zhibang, and is designed by OPEN Architecture (Beijing). Tank No. 3 will serve as a pavilion for art installations; Tank No. 4 will be used as a traditional art gallery.
Jockeying with Tank Shanghai as one of the most imaginative (outlandish?) new repurposed museums in Shanghai is the 80,000 Ton Silo. The onetime largest grain silo in Asia consists of 30, eight-story, 50 m-high individual silos silos that in total are able to store 80,000 tons. Located on the Minsheng wharf across the Huangpu river in the hoped-for East Bund cultural district, the city’s top planning body says that the “development of the historic silo aims to involve arts into people’s daily life” (Shanghai Government, 2017). Studio Deshaus, led by its principal, Liu Yichun, architect for the Long Museum (see above), is re-making the silos in two phases. In the first, Yichun has attached a dramatic, glass-enclosed exterior escalator reminiscent of the Centre Pompidou in Paris to one side of the silos to provide access to a re-made top level. The second stage will focus on the middle levels where ten of the separate cylindrical storage will be broken through and converted into five stories of exhibition halls and offices. 80,000 Ton had a soft opening in fall 2017 for 3 months, serving as the main exhibition venue for the 2017 Shanghai Urban Space Art Season, the main event of the city’s second state-backed biennial festival of art and urban planning.
Power stations, airplane hangars, coal-conveying platforms, oil tanks, grain silos, and finally… the Shanghai 1933 building (also known as Old Millfun), the repurposing of the original Shanghai Municipal Abattoir.The classic art deco structure, built in 1933, features a 24-sided, central building housed within a greater square buildingthat is pierced with a unique geometric grid of circular and square openings. The multilevel, Escheresque, 32,000-m2 jigsaw puzzle is complete with ramps, 26 sky bridges, and spiral staircases rising through the building that were used to control the flow of people and cattle. The abattoir closed in the 1960s, and from the 1970s to the early 2000s, the structure was used as a cold storage facility, medicine factory, and warehouse. After an extensive 2008 renovation, the project was pitched as a creative hub including artists, galleries, and design and exhibition spaces. Ten years later, the private developers have rebranded the building, transforming it into what they call a “cultural and creative epicenter and a national industrial tourism demonstration site” (1933 Shanghai, n.d.). The 1933 now seems to serve primarily as an events venue and tourist attraction. What makes this building particularly interesting as a repurposing is its unique heritage—an almost pure example of a distinct space describing a distinct cultural history. Regardless of its failure as a targeted arts venue, 1933 is a Shanghai cultural and architectural treasure (see Figures 15 and 16).
Shanghai 1933, Shanghai: The Art Deco architectural tour de force surviving into the 21st century as something of an anomaly in terms of Chinese urban development.
Shanghai 1933, Shanghai: Interior view showing some of the difficulties of turning this complex abattoir structure into a venue for the arts. The glass front of a gallery can be seen in the background.
Hong Kong
Since its appropriation as a colony by the British in 1849, the now Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China has always been a portal and intermediary between East and West. As such, its modern history of repurposings reflects a different and perhaps more sophisticated sensibility in both development structure and architectural design than similar projects on mainland China.
Art Zones
Redesigned by Meta4 Design Forum, Ltd. (Hong Kong), the Jao Tsung-I Academy cultural center restores and revitalizes one of Hong Kong’s most historic building sites dating from the 1800s on Kowloon’s Lai Chi Kok hillside. The multibuilding site was a customs station during the latter part of the Quing Dynasty and in succeeding years became laborers’ quarters, a quarantine station, prison, infectious disease hospital, and psychiatric rehabilitation center. The repurposing project’s stated purpose is to “preserve the unique culture of Hong Kong” (Jao Tsung-I Academy, n.d.). Completed in two phases in 2012 and 2013, the Academy provides facilities for guided tours, thematic exhibitions, performances, festive events, weekend markets, seminars, workshops, and educational programs. All of these activities can and have included art elements. The facility also operates an 89-room Heritage Lodge for “cultural accommodation.” The result is culture-specific repurposing with a capital “C.”
Of note, this is also one of the first projects under the Hong Kong Government’s Revitalizing Historic Buildings Through Partnership Scheme of the Development Bureau of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government. The government funded the initial restoration in partnership with the Hong Kong Institute for Promotion of Chinese Culture, a nongovernmental organization that is directly and solely responsible for the daily operation of the Academy on a self-financed basis.
In a similar vein, but a much more elaborate renovation, is the transformation of the 1951 Police Married Quarters into the PMQ Art Hub. Here, the Hong Kong government turned over the operating rights to PMQ Management Co, Ltd., a nonprofit social enterprise set up by the privately endowed Musketeers Education and Culture Charitable Foundation Ltd., in collaboration with the Hong Kong Design Centre, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and the Hong Kong Design Institute of the Vocational Training Centre. The 2014 development labels itself as a center of “creative industries” and strives to have artisans on site creating works for sale.
Architect Billy Tam, a director at Hong Kong’s Thomas Chow Architects, added a glass cube exhibition space that now bridges and ties together the two formerly separated residential wings of the structure. Only a little sense of the original use remains. In the wings are 130 studio workshops, along with shops, restaurants, a library, exhibition space, a rooftop garden, and outdoor gathering areas (see Figures 17 and 18). Although the Hub has helped reinvigorate the once-again trendy hillside SoHo district, the overwhelming success of the center in the first years of operation has paradoxically pushed out many of the artisans. They have been replaced with boutiques and more typical retail establishments. The general consensus, among the art crowd at least, is that PMQ has become “too commercial.”
PMQ Art Hub, Hong Kong: The two wings of this former residential building connected by a new glass box art gallery structure (covered in murals advertising the then-current exhibition) and a new glass roof over the remaining space.
PMQ Art Hub, Hong Kong: Interior view showing the insertion of other architectural elements to create a pedestrian-friendly viewing and shopping environment.
The arts community is holding out hope for a more stable and sustainable arts center at the Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Arts, more popularly known until now as the Central Police Station Compound. The 16-building Centre initiated a series of phased openings in late May, 2018 after 12 years of reconstruction. Included in the re-making is the renovation of and additions to a 12,787-m2 grouping that includes the historic former buildings of the Central Police Station, the Central Magistracy, and Victoria Prison, and the addition of two new museum structures. The oldest building was constructed in 1864; other additions were added in 1905 and between 1910 and 1925. This is probably the largest remaining group of colonial-era buildings remaining in Hong Kong, and thus the project is one of the biggest examples, if not the biggest one, of adaptive reuse of a heritage site in the city. Tai Kwun (meaning “big station”) is yet another cultural destination project sponsored by the philanthropic Hong Kong Jockey Club.
The project was designed by international starchitects Herzog & de Meuron, in association with Purcell Conservation Architects. Mid-construction in May 2016, the project received a flurry of attention when a wall and part of the roof of one of the buildings being renovated collapsed. Headlines in the South China Post exclaimed,” Wall and roof collapse at historic former Central Police Station raises safety and heritage preservation fears. Ted Hui Chi-fung [Central and Western Hong Kong district councillor] says incident at site of heritage revitalization project ‘shows failure of government’s conservation policy.’ (Au-yeung & Cheung, 2016)
The article details, however, that poor-quality original bricks and the possibility of unstable foundations in this portion of the project had been previously identified as problems. Strengthening work was under way at the time of the collapse.
Rather than being a failure, the Tai Kwun is a prime example of the ability of the culture of the past to feed the present. Its creators have it right: “Tai Kwun aspires to offer the best heritage and arts experiences, and to cultivate knowledge and appreciation of contemporary art, performing arts and history in the community” (Tai Kwun, n.d.). This is a good example of how reclaiming space for the express purpose of cultural pursuits can provide a setting that is actually richer in content than newly designed and recently built trophy buildings alone.
Opened in the fall of 2018 is another distinctly industrial re-purposing: the Nan Fung Mills Project (“The Mills”). An abandoned textile mill at Tsuen Wan, which was built in the early 1960s by the Nan Fung group, has been brought back to life as a “cultural and tech” hub for the apparel industry. The 4-year renovation project sprawls across the three remaining buildings, Mills 4, 5, and 6, and occupies over 24,000 m2. The Mills’ mission is to” serve as an intersection of textile, art, society and culture. . . . We are trying to explore textiles as a vehicle of contemporary art that people relate to. We hope to reach the standard for a museum and not just be an arts space”. (Basu, 2015)
About half of the total floor space in the three buildings is reserved for retailers and food and drink outlets. Fabrica, a fashion and technology incubator, occupies Mill 5. The actual space devoted exclusively to museum uses, the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile, is small relative to the size of the development. There are three galleries: one, the D. H. Chen Heritage Centre, is reserved for old machinery and archive materials about the textile industry and Tsuen Wan’s history; the other two galleries are used for exhibitions of artwork and research related to Hong Kong’s fashion and textile industries. There is also a studio for an annual art residency program (Tsui, 2018). In charge of the architecture is Ray Zee, head of design at Nan Fung Group’s Hong Kong property division and former assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. In an attempt to “augment the past,” much of the original design has been preserved, from the external look of the building down to preserving the original peeling paint in the stairwells. Industrial chic sells . . . until, as we have seen, something better comes along.
Singular Buildings for Art
A prime example of the transformation of former industrial buildings in Hong Kong into centers for art is the re-making of the relatively recent, 1977 Shek Kip Mei Flatted Factory Building—transformed in 2008 into the Jockey Club Creative Arts Center. Originally accommodating 360 factory units, this is the first such adaptive reuse project in the former British colony. The original structure is typical of factory buildings of its period in Hong Kong, it but does not look like a typical industrial building. It is a multistory, international-style, open courtyard building that was divided into small, separately occupied units used for light manufacturing, assembly, and associated storage.
I found the redesign, also by Meta4 Design Forum Ltd., particularly interesting. Public art galleries fill the lower level and main level, including the large courtyard that has now been covered with a glass skylight; retail spaces occupy the second level, and nonresidential, subsidized artist studios (average size, 28 m2/approximately 300 square feet) completely fill the third through the eight floors. There is also a new, rooftop terrace for use by the tenants (see Figures 19 and 20). Although the building clearly has had more than just a face-lift, particularly in the public areas, there are comparatively few new visible design impositions. Without great architectural breast-beating, a redundant but unique industrial building has been masterfully transformed into a public benefit for the arts community. In doing so, the architects have conserved an important moment in Hong Kong’s architectural and cultural history, while at the same time creating an actual arts community (see Figures 19 and 20).
Jockey Club Creative Arts Center Hong Kong: From a multitenanted manufacturing building to a multitenanted artists’ building—still “industry,” but of another kind.
Jockey Club Creative Arts Center, Hong Kong: A typical corridor view showing one art workshop spreading its tentacles into what is otherwise clearly intended to be more pristine “public” space.
It is important to note the complex organizational infrastructure that created this project. The Jockey Club Creative Arts Center was initiated by the Hong Kong government in partnership with the Hong Kong Arts Development Council but was underwritten by the philanthropic Jockey Club, historic in its own right. The Jockey Club, in turn, selected the Hong Kong Baptist University to develop the project, but the project is programmed and managed by yet another entity, the Hong Kong Arts Centre. Cultural institutions do not simply happen, whether in purposed or repurposed structures. The community must be involved at many different levels of development. In fact, that is the point. In this instance, regardless of the attributes of the physical structure, it is the dedicated administration and financial subsidies that allows culture to thrive.
Comix Homebase, a museum focusing on comics as an art form, is the result of Hong Kong’s Urban Renewal Authority in association with the Hong Kong Arts Centre taking on as its first “pure preservation and revitalization project” the conversion of a cluster of 10 four-story tenement shophouse buildings built between 1916 and 1922 that front on two parallel streets in the Wan Chai district. Shophouses are a generic building type in southern China and southeast Asia that combine ground-floor commercial uses with residences above. From the 1840s to the 1950s, shophouses were the main form of housing for the vast majority of the Chinese in British Hong Kong. Starting with the influx of refugees from the Communist takeover of mainland China and culminating in the 1980s property boom, severe overcrowding and lack of land for new development led to mass demolitions of the structures in favor of much larger housing and commercial projects (Lee & Distefano, 2016). Apart from creating a unique arts venue, the conservation of these shophouses plays an important role in preserving a part of the cultural history of Hong Kong.
The new facility, whose executive architect was Aedas (Hong Kong), opened in 2013. It includes ground-floor community, retail and restaurant uses, upper-floor galleries and exhibition spaces, a comics library, and workshop areas. A good deal of the original fabric of the buildings has been conserved and/or restored wherever possible, including the brick outer walls, wooden structure and staircases, pitched tile roofs, cantilevered balconies, and delimiting tenant walls. Of all the projects reviewed, I think this one best captures a sense of time and a glimpse of people’s everyday lives from a lost past. In keeping with its different future, a modern addition has been inserted behind the preserved facade of one of the rows of shophouses. The open space between this and the other row of shophouses has become a new central public courtyard. This serves as both a circulation space throughout the day and, at night, an open-air theater where chairs are set up to watch, what else(?), animated movies projected onto giant screens integrated with the re-making (see Figures 21 and 22).
Comix Home Base, Hong Kong: Interior view of one of the original staircases integrated into the new facility.
Comix Home Base, Hong Kong: The new exterior courtyard being used as an open-air movie theater.
Conclusions
If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.
—(Confucius, 551 BCE-479 BCE, The Analects, 13)
Progressive architectural education around the world teaches that one of the first questions in an architectural project is, “What is the purpose of this building?” Purpose points to a number of issues beyond simply the program. In this instance, what would or should a Chinese museum that serves its people not only look like but also function, and what is or could be singular about its construction materials and methodologies? More importantly, what is the site-specific physical and mental space that it creates for the people who use it? How does it help inform the cultural identity of the people who use and inhabit these spaces?
It could be inferred from many of the examples described above that regardless of all of these issues, in an era of unparalleled growth China is appropriating high art culture primarily for political and financial gain. At the same time, organizing and financing the conservation of buildings by local government agencies is a complex process that can and should involve the active participation of any number of community stakeholders. Even in modern-day China, even in Hong Kong, the most generous or deep-pocket foundations or charities cannot and do not want to undertake such projects on their own. Private individuals, however rich, face other issues in developing such projects. The result, following the precepts of “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” is the implementation of strategic governmental planning to insure that art institutions become viable parts of an enhanced culture and at the same time generators of an enhanced economy.
Assuming that there is more to these re-makings than political or profit motives, how should these new museums be evaluated? With a multitude of examples of buildings rich in tradition and meaning, China would seemingly offer a readymade core of answers to this question. The idealistic and perhaps overly romantic quotation from Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping introducing this study was taken from a speech he gave at a literary symposium in 2014. The major thrust of the speech was actually to call for an end to the “strange looking buildings” being built across China (Frearson, 2014). His comments are warranted: Full-scale buildings in the shape of everyday items or with odd geometric silhouettes dot the skylines of many Chinese cities. Citing the “weird architecture” that has come as a result of China’s construction boom, Xi’s clear message was his desire to engender a greater sense of what is now being called Chineseness. To some, no less weird would be the more unlikely structures from China’s industrial heritage being re-made into new art venues.
The prevailing notion among architectural historians is that until the frontal cultural assault by the West, China has enjoyed 3,000 years of architectural harmony and unity. Whether or not this is true, the contemporary Chinese appear to eschew tradition or at least their own tradition. Nor similarly, do they seem to subscribe to the notion developed by French philosopher Henri Lefebvre that opens the second part of this study: “new social relationships call for a new space, and vice versa.” Contemporary architecture in China, including the repurposings of industrial and commercial structures are, consistently, copies of Western architectural design antecedents, however unusual. The problem is more complicated than simply design plagiarism, particularly in a culture that sees the value of a creative work differently than do the cultures do from which they copy. 6
As can be seen from the entirety of this study, most if not all of these new Chinese museums have at least some interesting, if not totally original, architectural moments. All function capably as museums as we know of them historically in the West. Very few reflect anything at all special or specific about what culturally makes China, China, as a reflection of its more recent industrial past or of its future society. Indeed, some are unabashedly copies of museums from elsewhere. At best, these edifices reflect China’s ability to adopt the new global style of design as it relates to museums. At worst, they primarily reflect China’s anxiety to become and be seen as a world player. They are not new spaces. It is also not altogether clear that these museums are yet providing much civic and/or cultural enhancement beyond serving a very small and select group of elite Chinese, foreign visitors, and thankfully, as I have seen myself, students.
In China’s rush for a modern cultural identity, if not hegemony, there are universal lessons to be learned from these industrial repurposings in terms of heritage conservation and restoration. Cities throughout the world can look to the array of types of buildings that have been re-made for art and begin to identify their own varied resources. They can also look to the built-in and/or the drama added to some of these venues by contemporary architectural additions and renovations. Specific locales can see that even one repurposing can prove to be an incentive for further renewal in the surrounding areas. This is a development phenomenon that directly feeds the bottom-line financial realities of regenerating urban landscapes around the world and is one means of keeping cities viable and alive. That this might additionally lead to the growth of cultural identity is an added bonus.
The quote from Confucius that opens this final section reflects the revival of interest in the works of the philosopher sage that grips China today. A more contemporary translation of the quote is “If the name is not properly defined, the story will not come out right.” In simple terms, the Chinese have yet to define their new architecture for themselves. They have not, in essence, given it a new name or, in this case, a new language. The building projects they have produced do not, in many respects, reflect the complex evolution of their society. As has been shown, the reasons for this situation are manifold. Until a new language is developed, the cultural spaces that are created will remain searching for meaning. This is a long-term issue that no rush of purposed or repurposed buildings is ever going to be able to address, let alone answer.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to Ms. Sandra Molyneaux (MA in English Literature, University of Maryland) for editorial review.
Author’s Note
A 1,250-word earlier version of this article was published as a sidebar essay, “Repurposing Industrial Spaces for the Contemporary Arts: Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong,” in John H. Stubbs and Robert G. Thomson’s Architectural Conservation in Asia: National Experiences and Practice (2017, pp. 94-98).
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.