Taiyuan Industrial Heritage Transformation

Conceived as part of the massive industrialization effort of the first Five-Year Plan of the PRC (1953), the former industrial site, with its buildings and machinery, was a prototype of similar Chinese industrial plants and a result of the Sino-Soviet friendship. Confronted with the challenge to "preserve" the 200-hectare abandoned site with over 1,000 building remnants, OMA's masterplan aims to revitalize the productivity of the site together with its physical environment, shifting the production content from industrial to cultural to reflect the city's economic and social changes. TIHT embraces a bottom-up approach in developing a cultural scene: the development starts with cultural production activities, around which a mix of programs support progressive cultural growth.

Preservation: The site contains more than 1,000 buildings ranging from the banal to the monumental. The project works around the question of how to reconcile two seemingly opposing conditions in China: the need to accommodate the vastness of new urban development while addressing the dilemma of what should be retained and why. Existing structures on the site were systematically documented and graded based on historical significance and architectural value. OMA adopts two different approaches to preservation in TIHT: in the Core Area, defined by the main production chain of the former Fertilizer Plant Complex, the site is mostly preserved. Factory buildings, alongside Soviet-imported machinery, the existing landscape, industrial infrastructure, and road layout are retained. These preserved buildings and structures are infiltrated with new volumes to fulfill specific programmatic needs. Outside the Core Area, only selected structures are kept to form an archipelago of preserved elements that organize the sequence of public spaces on TIHT.

Masterplan: In response to the context, TIHT establishes three parallel bands running from north to south. The East Band assimilates the existing activities on site, providing a campus environment with corporate headquarters, institutional program, and retail elements. It serves as an interface with the surrounding city. The Central Band is an urban texture based on mutation of the courtyard typology. It contains residential and commercial program and is marked by a linear CBD with high-rise buildings running from north to south. The West Band consists of urban villages that respond to the natural landscape of the nearby Menshan Mountain. The selectively preserved industrial heritage, outside the Core Area, organizes a network of parks and plazas of various forms and sizes: the network of former railway tracks and ducts form the structure of linear parks; the pedestrian network is pierced by former factory spaces that are transformed into venues for civic functions, galleries and exhibition spaces.

Core Area: The design of TIHT aims to fuse both total preservation of the physical environment and the radical transformation of its content, enabling a shift from heavy industrial production to cultural production. Buildings and structures along the former main production chain of the fertilizer plant will host a diffused museum of the industrial history of Taiyuan and PRC. Superimposed on the core's industrial heritage are programs organized in alternating strips, respectively dedicated to work and cultural production, as well as exhibition and performing arts - allowing the public to participate equally in cultural production and cultural consumption.