Sun Miao
The Yangpu Riverside area is an important gathering place for the cotton textile industry and logistics industry in modern Shanghai.
In 1870, the Ministry of Industry and Industry of the Public Concession opened Yangshupu Road here, and Chinese and foreign companies set up factories along the road. There are more than ten cotton textile mills alone. Shangyufeng Spinning Mill and Dakang Spinning Mill, Deshang Ruiji Spinning Mill, Shanghai Machine Weaving Layout and Huaxin Textile Bureau set up by Westernization Group, and Yongan No. 1 Cotton Textile Mill founded by overseas Chinese in Australia.
The latter is exactly where the Yongan Zhanfang is located.
Let's go back to a century ago and look back at the profound industrial civilization in Shanghai through the Yongan warehouse.
Zhenxing Industry
Yongan's new life
Yongan is an industrial and commercial brand that affects the memory of the Chinese people for a hundred years, and it is also the epitome of modern Chinese national enterprises.
This cannot fail to mention brothers Guo Le and Guo Quan, overseas Chinese businessmen who operate fruit wholesale business in Sydney.
The Kwok brothers, who were good at import and export trade, founded Wing On Company in Hong Kong in 1907.
On September 5, 1918, Yongan Company opened Yongan Department Store at No. 635 Nanjing Road, the most prosperous part of Shanghai, with 40 commercial departments, selling all kinds of high-end products in the world at that time, and also operating travel agencies, amusement parks and hotels. cause.
Yongan has become synonymous with the fashion trend of the old Shanghai beach.
In the 1920s, China's national industry entered a period of vigorous development, among which the cotton textile industry was particularly profitable.
In addition, influenced by the call to "revitalize the industry and restore rights and interests", the Guo brothers decided to raise funds overseas and set up Yongan Textile Co., Ltd. in Shanghai (later renamed "Yongan Textile Printing and Dyeing Company").
Yong'an Textile Co., Ltd. has built five factories, which are located in Yangshupu, Wusong and Maigen Road (now Huai'an Road). It has become the only modern cotton textile enterprise invested by overseas Chinese in China, and its scale is second only to the Shenxin company of the Rong family.
Yongan Group also became the largest national commercial capital in China at that time, realizing the strategic pattern of the integration of industry, commerce and financial capital.
"Transforming from business to industry, Dussey leaks danger, making the country gradually move towards the road of prosperity and strength."
This is the original intention of the Guo brothers to revitalize the industry.
In this historical context, Yongan No. 1 Cotton Spinning Factory came into being in 1921 in Yangpu Binjiang.
The factory was designed by British firm, and introduced the most advanced workshop temperature and humidity control system in Germany, taking the first step in a century-long journey.
The Yongan storehouse, which was completed a year later, is located at the junction of Ningguo South Road and Anpu Road, west of today's Yangpu Bridge and only a few feet away from the bank of the Huangpu River. It consists of two 4-storey warehouses.
As an industrial heritage, Yongan Storehouse has witnessed the rise and fall of China's cotton textile industry and logistics industry for a century, and the rapid development of Shanghai as an international city.
Knowing it, recognizing it, and identifying with it will provide today's people with a historical mirror of "taking the past as the new".
A Century of Yong'an
Yong'an No. 1 Cotton Textile Factory was completed in 1922, covering an area of about 4 hectares, with 30,000 spindles and 700 looms, occupying a place in Yangpu Riverside, where there are many cotton spinning mills.
The Yongan warehouse in this period has both the function of storing imported department stores and cotton spinning raw materials.
Every day, the continuous flow of cargo ships into the port, batches of goods are disembarked from here and transported to Nanjing Road, supporting the prosperity of Yongan Department Store.
Until 1937, the cotton mill was occupied by the Japanese army, and the so-called "military management" was implemented. The buildings and equipment were destroyed, and the production activities were shrinking day by day.
After the liberation, the cotton spinning factory underwent resumption of production and public-private partnership, and finally merged into the Shanghai No. 29 Cotton Textile Factory.
In 1961, in order to support the country's development of the chemical industry, the west building of the warehouse was allocated to the Shanghai Chemical Factory as a raw material warehouse, while the east building was still owned by the No. 29 Shangmian Factory.
In 1966, the factory was renamed Shanghai No. 29 Cotton Textile Printing and Dyeing Factory.
In 1990, the East Building of the Warehouse became the Yangpu Warehouse of Shanghai Textile Raw Materials, and was later converted into an office building by Shanghai Textile (Group) Co., Ltd. for rent.
In 2015, the Office of the Binjiang Comprehensive Development Headquarters of the Yangpu section of the Huangpu River officially acquired and stored the Yongan Storehouse and planned to repair and reuse it.
In 2016, Yongan Storehouse was included in the list of 64 immovable cultural relics protection sites in Yangpu District, and entered the ranks of industrial heritage.
Since 2019, the Yongan warehouse has been renovated, and it is planned to be used as a museum for the 46th WorldSkills Competition to be held in Shanghai in October 2022.
After a hundred years, Yongan Zhanfang is about to usher in a new life.
Wing's Modernist Design
Regarding the Yongan warehouse, there is such a text in "Shanghai Industrial Historical Buildings": "The warehouse of Shanghai Yongan Textile Company, designed by British merchants, has a reinforced concrete beamless floor structure, and the facade composition is neat. It was completed in 1922. The interior space is octagonal. The columns and caps are very distinctive.”
This storehouse designed by British Merchant & Co., Ltd. is a warehouse building in the shape of twin towers, which is very recognizable in Yangpu Riverside.
What it presents is exactly the typical characteristics of the standard factory in Shanghai in the 1920s: simple and heavy, with a rational structure.
In the early years, Shanghai warehousing buildings, such as Husi Zhan, Jiangnan Ammunition Factory Warehouse, etc., were mostly 1-2-storey brick and wood structure bent-frame buildings, similar in form to private houses, but the layout lacked planning, and there was no modern warehousing in terms of structure or shape. Architectural features.
Until after the First World War, modernist industrial building technology was introduced into China, and a number of large modern warehouses with multi-layer reinforced concrete frame structures rose up, such as the Sihang Warehouse and Xintai Warehouse by the Suzhou River, by the Huangpu River. Binjiang Wuku and Yongan Zhanfang, etc.
The main structure of Yongan Zhanfang Twin Towers is stable, and the doors, windows and interior spaces of the building are well preserved, which is an important proof that reflects the characteristics of the logistics industry at that time.
The east and west buildings in history have similar shapes, similar heights, symmetrical planes, and completely consistent facades.
Specifically, the two buildings are 4 floors, with a total height of about 19 meters. The building plane is close to a square. The depth and bay are 8 spans, the column spacing is 6 meters, and the total side length is about 48 meters.
The construction area of each floor is about 2400 square meters, the space is homogeneous and flexible, and the adaptability is strong.
A gap of 9 meters wide is left between the east and west buildings of Yongan Zhanfang, which provides a north-south axis with a transparent line of sight for the whole building, and draws a completely symmetrical classical composition.
In order to save the traffic space, a traffic hub with intensive horizontal and vertical circulation is built in the 3rd to 5th spans from south to north, including an open concrete double-run staircase facing south. There is a freight elevator hanging outside the north, as well as the main entrance and the second-floor aisle platform connecting the east and west buildings.
Above the gap is a raised roof water tank, which is elevated on the top of the warehouse by diagonal supports.
The continuous and lengthy interface of industrial buildings is thus broken, and sunlight is sprinkled on the north square through the concrete stairs, creating a space with a sense of sculpture and pilgrimage. The sense of oppression caused by the heavy building volume.
The façade of Yong'an Storehouse demonstrates the structural rationality of modernist architecture.
Brick walls are filled in the voids between the structural columns and the walls are set back slightly, thereby exposing the projecting frame structure system.
The façade of the building is thus divided into a series of grids by beams and columns, with dividing walls and horizontal long windows in between, which is full of rhythm.
The ratio of the height of the partition wall to the height of the long window is about 1:2. The two are separated by the light-colored concrete wall between the windows to form a horizontal line, and are connected with the vertical wall between the windows.
The surface of the partition wall is brushed with gray cement to create a heavy and earthy texture at a low cost.
The size of the horizontal strip format steel high window is 5.4 meters x 1.2 meters, and the window sill is about 2.4 meters high. Each window is composed of 16 sashes of 550 mm x 500 mm. The sashes open up and down, fully considering the logistics industry's privacy of goods , Avoid the compound requirements of strong light and natural ventilation.
At the top of the building, a simple and smooth horizontal line is applied to the parapet, and it transitions to the upper end of the outer beam through the inner layer. The whole building is simple and heavy.
Walking into the Yongan warehouse, it presents a scene of industrial architecture in the style of early modernism.
The heights of the east and west floors are the same, which are 4.95 meters for the first floor, 3.65 meters for the second and third floors, and 4.05 meters for the fourth floor.
The reinforced concrete frame structure of the 1st to 3rd floors adopts the most advanced load-bearing method of the beamless floor at that time, and the column head is laterally relaxed by about 200 mm, so that a prismatic bucket-shaped column cap is supported at the top of the octagonal corrugated column. Raise the ceiling above.
Its lines are smooth and concise, and the force is balanced and rational, which is rare in Shanghai. It is also the early practice of reinforced concrete construction technology in my country. It has important historical value, technical value and aesthetic value, reflecting the architect's reasonable force and space. The ingenuity of seeking the optimal solution between high efficiency.
This is reminiscent of the reinforced concrete mushroom column structure invented by American engineers Ballinger and Perrot for industrial buildings in the early 20th century.
It is worth mentioning that the top of the 4th floor of the Yongan storehouse is made of well lattice beams, and the cross-section of the structural column shrinks from 650mm × 650mm on the first floor to 300mm × 300mm on the 4th floor, further emphasizing the rationality of the structure. design intent.
Yong'an's Industrial Heritage Value
Yong'an Storehouse is low-key but extraordinary in the numerous industrial heritages of Yangpu Riverside.
According to the Nizhny Tagil Charter and the Dublin Principles, industrial heritage contains historical, technological, artistic, social and economic values, as well as authenticity and integrity preserved in historical evolution.
In this sense, the Yongan storehouse is not an ordinary built heritage, its value is derived from the historical accumulation formed in the industrial changes over the past century.
Based on its historical value, the Yongan Storehouse, which was completed in 1922, is in its 100th year.
It not only witnessed the rise and fall of Yangpu Binjiang cotton spinning industry and logistics industry, but also reflected the changes of Yongan Company, the largest overseas Chinese business enterprise in modern China. It is a microcosm of Shanghai's industrial development.
Based on the value of science and technology, Yongan's warehouse adopts reinforced concrete frame structure and octagonal corrugated columns to support the ceiling with angular bucket-shaped columns, representing the international frontier of technology at that time.
Its beautiful shape, smooth and simple lines, and high space utilization rate indicate that Shanghai's warehouse construction technology has reached a new height.
Based on its artistic value, the concise architectural form of Yong'an Storehouse presents a kind of industrial aesthetics and structural aesthetics. The skyline decorated with exposed beams and columns, architectural proportions, high steel windows and horizontal lines perfectly reflects the great development of the national industry. period industrial aesthetics.
Based on social value, Yongan has become a common memory of Shanghai and even the people of China, and it is a name closely related to the century-old national movement.
From benefiting the people to strengthening the country, the entrepreneurial spirit carried by Yongan has inspired generations of national industrialists, and is the spiritual source of today's "Made in China" world-renowned.
Based on the economic value, the solid structural system and fluid spatial form of Yong'an Storehouse, as well as its superior location facing the Huangpu River, provide unlimited imagination space for adaptive reuse.
In the Yangpu Riverside in the post-industrial era, Yongan Warehouse will surely become a catalyst to stimulate the vitality of the city.
People's Heritage
Yong An Xinsheng
Since 2015, Yongan Zhanfang has entered the new life track.
Due to some improper use in history, the renovation of Yongan warehouses faces many challenges. For example, the east building, which was converted into an office, has been damaged. The interior structure of the building has undergone major changes.
In the west building with minor changes, some of the exterior walls have been mottled and peeled off, and the indoor floor has uneven settlement due to long-term storage of goods, a simple penthouse was added, and the roof water tank was removed.
All of these directly lead to irreversible damage to the authenticity and integrity of historic buildings.
At the same time, the renovation also faces some common problems in the reuse of warehouse buildings, such as insufficient indoor natural lighting due to too large depth of the building, too small window area to form effective air convection and visual communication, and lack of thermal insulation layer on the outer wall. The thermal performance is poor, and it does not meet the fire evacuation requirements of civil buildings.
In addition, there are safety hazards such as through cracks, deformed columns, floors and partition walls with weak bearing capacity due to disrepair.
Therefore, the freshmen of Yongan Zhanfang need refined "diagnosis", acupuncture-type "physiotherapy" and meticulous "maintenance".
According to the article "Twins of old and new - Yangpu Binjiang Yong'an warehouse site renovation project" published by the team of Professor Yuan Feng of Tongji University in the magazine "Architectural Heritage", we can get a glimpse of the architectural renovation strategy.
The renovation mainly addresses two issues, one is the degree of design intervention, and the other is the relationship between the new and the old.
In Yongan Zhanfang, the architects focused on the East Building, which has undergone major changes in history. Based on respect for the original appearance of history, the architect responded to the above problems through the "twin" strategy.
Specifically, the total construction area, building outline and building height of the East and West Buildings remain basically unchanged, providing a true and complete historical look and feel for distant observers; at the same time, through the modern design of materials and details, it provides a clear view for close observers. Identify new and old possibilities.
First, on the façade of the East Building, screen-printed glass is used to simulate the effect of cement brushing, creating a different sense of sight from far and near.
At night, the twin towers of Yongan Zhanfang are bright and dark, symbolizing the twinning of history and future.
The same design method has also been applied to the cargo passage and the penthouse on the west side of the warehouse, so as to compress and juxtapose the three stages of history represented by the original historical appearance, the traces of reconstruction, and the rebirth of screen-printed glass on the same building facade.
The second is the reinterpretation of the spatial dominance of the roof tank.
The architect rebuilt the roof water tank, which was demolished in 2011, according to historical materials, and used it as a riverside viewing hall.
Use steel structure to replace the original steel-concrete structure, and add diagonal supports to echo the existing structural form.
The existing stairs and elevators are used to form a continuous upward viewing flow line from the ground to the roof, which becomes a good place for riverside viewing.
In the design of the entrance, the new concrete giant column is particularly eye-catching.
The architects decomposed the octagonal prism form to obtain curvilinear structural symbols, and with their exaggerated scales, evoke people's memory and identity for the grand industrial narrative.
The design extends the second-floor platform to connect the two sides, reshapes the historical positioning of the interstitial space as a transportation hub, and gives it the best landscape platform identity.
In addition, improving the building efficiency is also one of the design priorities.
By setting up a semi-open corridor buffer zone, using phase-change material exterior walls, arranging photovoltaic and wind power equipment on the roof, adding a ground-source fresh air system, and using digital technology to monitor the whole process of the renovation.
These measures have created the conditions for the new blooming of Yongan Zhanfang.
The renovated Yongan storehouse will return to the city as a WorldSkills Museum.
Let us look forward to strolling along the Yangpu Riverside, leaning against the surging Huangpu River, stopping to stare at the Yongan warehouse, recalling the ups and downs of the national industry in the past century, and looking forward to the beautiful new life of the people's heritage in the next century.
(The author is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University)