Qipao Town
Qipao Town neighbors the style of Republic of China in the east, the traditional Jiangnan ancient town in the west, and overlooks the thousand-year old Chuihong Bridge in the north. Traditional cultures collides with modern demands, and histories meet realities here. The project’s sites occupies an area of 71851m2, 17140m2 for building area, and 23.9 meters in height.
Traditional Jiangnan literati gardens must be confined by literati’s ideological level, and spaces and places. Gardens on the Yangtze Delta (Jiangnan private gardens) are ideal geopolitical express and the microscopic appeal of reclusive feelings for the literati and officialdom in feudal China as a private place of the garden’s master. The literati gardens are unique in interest and temperament, enclosed in space, and for the minority in scale. The Chinese literati’s “realm of individual” embodies in the landscape of gardens such as spaces between heaven and earth, pavilions, housing, and pools.
Being faced the unprecedented development of urban construction in China, and to cope with the demand of large-scale tourist visiting and consumption, the design proceeds from the way how to diminish the large volume of a cultural tourism commercial project to fitting in the old town and traditional buildings in the east and west of Qipao Town.
Qipao Town should resolve a few problems below as an interpretation of the spirit of the Jiangnan private gardens in a modern way: Qipao Town should belong to the city, and the design as a cultural icon of the city must take the relationship between the project and the city, and the dialogue between architecture and the city into consideration; the project needs to have a big scale as a representative of urban development and a result of cultural advancement.
Architecture of approachable scale.
The project’s volume and design in details should give consideration to both original buildings in the old town and traditional buildings in the east and west of Qipao Town.
Open functional spaces.
The design breaks boundaries between inside and outside, island area and off island, above ground and underground, and functional spaces and non-functional spaces to create an open, free and walk-oriented broad museum space so that a spatial effect is introduced with changing and varied landscape, which removes a sense of estrangement and alienation to share all possibilities provided by diverse functions sufficiently.
Homologous modern style.
The design inherits the spatial features and aesthetic orientation of Jiangnan private gardens to create modern architecture for contemporary humans. By the means of modern technologies and materials, dynamic waterfronts, winding eaves, flowing awnings, and buildings with different functions in small scale merge together to form a rich environment in variations, in which people wander and linger to experience a brand new architecture with the characteristics of Jiangnan cultural temperament.
Traditional story scenario.
Rosy clouds covers the Huayan Tower in the north that seems to stand in the distance magnificently. Broken Chuihong Bridge reconnects together by technological method. Ancient people walking through the bridge narrates the prosperity and beautiful scenery at that time. Audiences who watch a show about the legend of Qipao in a theatre next close to the waterfront obsess about the plot of the performance. Hotels, at the center of the site, are across the garden and riverbanks, and the river flows in tranquility. Here iridescent clouds go up and down, a variety of flowers looking around. Women from all over the world wear Qipao and study histories about Qipao in the bulding of Chuihong Academy in the north. Functional spaces like a wonderland at the top level where people can capture the essence of the Qipao Town with Jiangnan private garden style. Shengjiashe old street is full of tourists all year around. People standing on the Taian and Hong Bridge enjoy the sight of an unfolded landscape paining rendered by the Qipao Town.
