BEIJING FASHION PORT

The project is located in Zhangjiawan Design Town, 35 Km east of Beijing city center. The area is a former industrial district that is planned to be transformed into a mixed-use creative design hub where the excellence of different industries and new enterprises are set to converge and thrive, creating new business and attracting visitors. Our client’s vision is to host fashion and design related industries in the new complex in order to give a home and a showcase to both well established brands and to local young creative designers.

Any creative industry, either for artistic or commercial purposes, needs a space where to create (office, workshop, atelier) and a space where to expose, exhibit or perform its creations. This duality is incorporated in our design and it represents our fundamental design strategy aiming at creating both a destination for the industry professionals and a destination for the public with an open and active 24/7 creative park that serves the community.

The project’s site houses a former textile factory and its supporting facilities that include several workers dormitories barracks and a two storeys office building. All the existing buildings aren’t currently in use and their exterior and interior conditions are poorly maintained. The overall architectural quality of the building is substandard and the existing structure occupy close to three-fourths of the plot’s area, making a successful requalification very hard to achieve.

After considering the existing status of the site and the client’s changed needs and intentions, we came to conclusion that the best and most sustainable solution for the project would be demolishing all the existing buildings to build new ones. The new design would allow a complete re-structuring of both buildings and public space that match the District’s overall vision and fulfill the clients’ requirements.

Each brand-workshop is divided into two parts: at the ground floor is the brand’s showcase, where the latest products are exposed and on sale for the public; at the second floor is the workshop, where the production techniques and design process are exhibited to inform the visitors. The innovation loop at the second floor links all the brand workshops in the complex.

The facade design and the composition of the complex break away from the typical appearance of the average office park usually characterized by standardized glass boxes. The inspiration came after looking at weaving patterns and how the slight difference in each technique would create a greater difference in the overall look of the fabric.

The complex is designed according to the sustainable principles of re-sources efficiency and energy effi-ciency. The buildings are designed according to Beijing climate and lo-cal resources, stormwater and sun exposure. Maximizing the green areas and the porous surfaces on site combined with water manage-ment technologies in the buildings avoid storm water runoff. The use of certified sustainable materials and a modular prefabricated fa-cade system help reducing the en-vironmental impact, the costs and the time of construction.

The Fashion Port Exhibition Center is designed according to zero-energy buildings principles, by which the total amount of energy used by the building on an annual basis is equal to the amount of renewable energy created on site. The heating and cooling loads are lowered by using high-efficiency heat pump, thermal insulation of the entire envelope, high-efficiency windows, natural ventilation and integration of renewable energy resources such as photovoltaic panels and storm-water underground storage and re-use.