The problems worthy of being thought about and solved by Yangpu are more than just archive protection, restoration of cultural relics and so on.

Under the towering chimney of the power plant in Yangpu Riverside, small, fancy "One Step" café has become a place where flock of residents and tourists take a break after a stroll.

 

The café was formerly the water purification pool of Yangshupu Power Plant. When the terminal area of the plant was converted into a site park, an industrial-style pavilion was built on the water purification pool. Later, the Yangpu Cultural Heritage Administration, Yangpu Riverside Investment & Development Group and other sides felt that, instead of letting it stand there just as a "potted plant", it would be better to reuse it by introducing a mature coffee culture brand, to make the old industrial site a public space that will benefit more people.

 

Power Plant Site Park (the round building in the upper right corner is the café)

The café built on the water purification pool is an epitome of Yangpu' practice of preserving and utilizing the industrial heritage of Riverside - fostering new function and new value while sustaining heritage and reproducing the original look. In Yangpu Riverside, the west building on the site of Wing On Textile Storehouse was transformed into WorldSkills Museum; after renovation, the wool and linen warehouse, and Minghua Sugar Refinery have hosted more than 20 ministerial and provincial art exhibitions; sipping on a latte in the café and looking out over the Huangpu River, you can see a row of giant ash buckets on the bank transformed into an art center, which was a fly ash tank of the power…

 

In September 2020, Yangpu was selected into the first list of national cultural heritage protection and utilization demonstration zones for creation with the theme of "life belt". Recently, the National Cultural Heritage Administration (NCHA) has conducted an assessment of Yangpu's creation efforts, and held an on-site meeting on creation work in Yangpu. 11 provincial cultural heritage administrations issued the Shanghai Yangpu Joint Initiative on Protection and Inheritance of Industrial Heritage.

 

Over the past three years, Yangpu Riverside has witnessed the endless emergence of tangible outcomes of heritage protection and utilization, gaining high recognition from NCHA. Commendably, Yangpu has upheld the concept of "starting from heritage and going beyond heritage" during creating a demonstration area. Efforts should be made to promote the creative transformation and innovative development of industrial heritage, to better reproduce the original look, reshape the function and reassign value, and to add splendor to the life belt, and enrich the connotation of the development belt. This means that the work is not only related to the protection and utilization of cultural heritage, but also to the promotion of organic urban renewal and the development of a world-class urban waterfront.

 

From this dimension, the problems worthy of being thought about and solved by Yangpu are more than just archive protection, restoration of cultural relics and so on. How to maximize the historical properties of old buildings to empower new functions? How to find a balance between protection and utilization? How to attract more visitors and benefit more people? …Some of these questions have been answered, but some are yet to be answered.

 

Salvaging archives is salvaging heritage

 

Yangpu, once a cradle of China's modern industry, gave birth to China's first modern waterworks, the largest thermal power plant and the first gas plant in the Far East, and a dozen other such plants and factories in China. In the 1980s, Yangpu's total industrial output value accounted for 25 percent of Shanghai's and 5 percent of the country's, and famous brands like Forever Bicycle and Phoenix Bicycle, Shanghai Watches and Chunghwa Cigarettes made their names throughout the country.

 

The century-old historical heritage has created the world's largest riverside industrial belt in existence in Yangpu Riverside. Within a 15.5-kilometer radius of Yangpu Riverside covered by the national cultural heritage protection and utilization demonstration zone, there are 2 key historical and cultural sites under national-level protection, 4 historical and cultural sites under city-level protection, 5 historical and cultural sites under district-level protection, 43 historical and cultural points under district-level protection and 19 excellent historical buildings. Among these sites, industrial heritage is most prominent and shows the features of early construction, multiple types, wide distribution and large size, according to Hu Lin, Secretary of the Party Leadership Group of the Yangpu Culture and Tourism Administration and Director General of the Yangpu Cultural Heritage Administration.

 

The active utilization of industrial heritage starts with protection. Yangpu respects its original fabric and historical marks by conducting integrated protection of the 5.5-kilometer south part of Riverside as a continuous industrial heritage belt, and finding out the actual situation of the 260,000-square-meter industrial heritage.

 

To reproduce the splendor of all parts of industrial heritage, historical archives are indispensable. With the transformation of the urban function and the renewal of the waterfront space, most of the plants and workshops in the demonstration zone have basically shut down or relocated, and some old ones are at the risk of improper preservation and damage of historical archives, said Zhou Minghao, Executive Deputy Director of the Research Institute of Elaborate Urban Governance, Tongji University.

 

"Protection of some spots can be described as 'salvage protection'," said Zhou. "An old brewery changed hands several times and the latest owner was a supplier that was about to relocate and was not in a position to protect the archives. When asked, they said they either had to 'take over' the brewery hurriedly or they would dispose of the archives as waste paper." "There's a textile mill, whose archives room was closed for decades and now wouldn't open. There're spider webs everywhere inside the mill, there's a roof leakage, and heaps of archives are moldy."

 

The Tongji team led by Zhou and the special administrators of the Yangpu Cultural Heritage Administration Center rushed around to salvage the archives of 12 important industrial heritage sites, including Shanghai Shipyard. If archives were moldy and damaged, they would work with civil enthusiasts to develop a digital guide for archives salvage and collect archives digitally in the small space full of mold and dust. Learning that some archives were discarded in Chongming Island, they drove a hundred kilometers every day to sort out archives during working hours, and sometimes had to dig archives out of weeds where sundries were stacked.

 

The excavation and protection of historical archives is a process of surprises: the original equipment drawings of Ewo Breweries proved that China possessed the world's most advanced brewing technique back then; many of the color drawings are very beautiful and artistic; dockyard repair drawings in different periods indicate that the shipyard went through many rounds of renovation and expansion…said Zhou.

 

In the process, the team was impressed by the cooperativeness of the senior experts and workers. With a strong sense of responsibility and belonging, they often racked their brains to figure out clues to archives; any old picture or archives could arouse their memories and generate oral narrations. "I never saw some archives during my 43 years in the shipyard," Ge Jun, former Deputy Chief Economist of Shanghai Shipyard involved in the salvage of industrial heritage archives, said in excitement.

 

"It'd been so long after all, so many of the oral narrations were obscure and inaccurate. But these memories were not lost, and a picture of scene back then could arouse the memories of many old workers who at once poured out undocumented stories." Zhou exclaimed, "This made us feel we're not only salvaging old archives, but also history."

 

Balancing protection with utilization

 

Thanks to the historical archives, the historical buildings in Yangpu Riverside can be renovated as much as possible with their original features retained, and we can better balance protection with utilization.

 

For example, Yangshupu Power Plant has undergone various renovations in different periods. The team of Zhuo Gangfeng, Executive Deputy Director of the Design Institute of Historical Building Conservation under Arcplus Group PLC, read tens of thousands of construction drawings from different periods, spent more than a year compiling a "conservation plan", analyzed, recorded and identified all the industrial objects, facilities and equipment, and buildings in the plant, and assessed the principles and requirements of conserving core industrial items.

 

"The machine room of the power plant was built in 1912, so its spatial layout cannot be changed," said Zhuo who cited an example, "In some plant buildings, the classical windows on the upper floor, which are of great historical significance and aesthetic value, must be preserved in their original forms. Those on the lower floor, built at a later stage, can be repaired and reused according to the new functional requirements."

 

BIM was introduced into the deep renovation of Yangshupu Waterworks, to realize full operation simulation and accurate prediction of implementation effects. BIM can turn two-dimensional drawings into three-dimensional ones so that the design and construction teams can see the problem more intuitively, according to Xu Hui, Deputy Chief Engineer of Design Institute 2 of Shanghai Municipal Engineering Design Institute (Group) Co., Ltd. "Before construction, we can figure out where to repair, where to put new equipment, in which location we need to make holes and how big holes  are, in this way, we can reduce rework and minimize interference with the original building."

 

There will be various unexpected problems arising in the assignment of new functions to historical buildings: many historical buildings, which used to be just industrial facilities, or production spaces in old plants, have no independent certificates of ownership. Without certificates of ownerships, it is impossible to apply for business licenses, food production licenses and so on. "'One Step' Café used to be a water purification pool, so how to obtain a certificate of ownership? So the café faced the embarrassment of operating without a 'birth certificate' and could not even sell coffee from the very beginning," said Qian Liang, Deputy Party Secretary of Yangpu Riverside Investment & Development Group.

 

During the construction of a demonstration zone over the past three years, Yangpu pushed for the formulation of the Measures for Promoting the Long-effective Construction of Shanghai Yangpu Life Belt National Cultural Heritage Protection and Utilization Demonstration Zone, Strengthening the Protection, Inheritance and Active Utilization of Industrial Heritage, formed 9 supporting documents, and conducted classified management of industrial heritage in the form of temporary regulations. The planning and resources department, the construction administration department, the food and drug regulatory department and other relevant departments conducted field surveys of the space, solved the source problem of the certificate of ownership through discrimination and evaluation; and then apply for a temporary domicile number for the business space through the traffic control department, laying the foundation for future certificate and license application.

 

Under this mechanism, most of the problems of construction management of historical buildings in Yangpu Riverside have been solved properly, and "One Step" Café now can operate normally. However, Qian told the reporter that new problems would arise endlessly, as requirements may totally differ in building scale, comfort and safety when industrial production spaces turn into public living spaces.

 

The wool and linen warehouse turns into a new space for cultural display

 

"Some industrial plants have a story height of dozens of meters and it is a waste if such buildings are not renovated, but new problems will arise after renovation. Open fires are not allowed in some wooden historical buildings in accordance with the regulations on cultural heritage protection, so it is difficult to bring in catering. There are also some historical industrial plants that straddle development plots and public spaces, should they be renovated separately or be planned in a unified way?" Qian cited a number of examples. "To solve these problems, our cultural heritage protection and utilization mechanism is more like a positive list, not regulations of principle or conceptual regulations, but 'one building, one scheme' can not only solve problems in a targeted manner, but also avoid abuse of regulations and evade risks."

 

New "big plants" bring new momentum

 

During the protection and reuse of historical buildings, the "industrial belt" has changed into a "life belt", and many of the closed spaces in Yangpu Riverside have transformed into open eco-friendly public spaces, gaining great popularity among the public. However, Yangpu Riverside is currently less popular than mature urban waterfronts at home and abroad like Xuhui Riverside that focuses on modern art, the shore of the Thames where Tate Britain is located and Brooklyn, New York, though it has hosted a number of art exhibitions and big fashion shows.

 

"Some well-known brands visited Yangpu Riverside, but finally chose to wait and see out of concerns over visitor flow," said Zhang Ziwen, Chief of the Public Service Section of the Yangpu Culture and Tourism Administration. "But we are more optimistic because it is the time when there're fewest people in Yangpu Riverside now - the original population has all moved out, but the new population hasn't moved in yet."

 

The "new population" refers to the employees of numerous Internet companies and headquarters of large enterprises to move into Yangpu Riverside. Yangpu Riverside was home to big industrial plants that have thousands of or tens of thousands of employees each; now companies like Bilibili, Meituan and Douyin are known as leading Internet companies that can bring 10,000 or 20,000 employees each. These young middle and high-income earners will become the most solid and dynamic population in the further development of Yangpu Riverside.

 

Through the massive protection and utilization of industrial heritage, Yangpu Riverside has vacated a large number of distinctive headquarters carriers for the introduction of industries. Yangpu Riverside has so far brought in domestic and foreign giants like Meituan, Douyin, Bilibili, CCCG and CECEP, attracting a total investment of more than 100 billion yuan. It is expected that by 2025, it will bring in more than 30 leading online new economy enterprises and more than 3,000 innovative enterprises, with an industrial scale of more than 300 billion yuan; by 2026, 2.7 million square meters of commercial premises in the south part of Yangpu Riverside will be put into operation, and some 270,000 innovation and start-up talents will gather here.

 

Actually, industrial heritage plays a key role in attracting companies to settle in Yangpu Riverside. CCCG chose to build an office building on the former site of Shanghai Shipyard in view of the site's historical ties with shipping; there are the old plant of Shanghai Electric, the generator room of Shanghai Shipyard and other historical buildings on the development plots of companies like Meituan, Douyin and Bilibili, and the companies will introduce different functions to the historical buildings according to their respective features; Shui On Group, known for renovating and utilizing historical buildings and expanding regional features, has been involved in the renovation of Yangpu Riverside and the development of a commercial residential area characteristic of Shikumen residences (literally meaning "stone warehouse gates".

 

"These companies all valued the planning and utilization of historical buildings when acquiring the plots, and repeatedly discussed it as an important topic in the negotiation, which shows the attraction of Yangpu Riverside's industrial heritage to them," said Qian.

 

Zhou believed that Yangpu Riverside had entered the second-round urban renewal. The successive settlement of online new economy enterprises will not only bring new momentum to the development of Yangpu Riverside, but also point the direction for it to rise to fame.

 

"For the first-round renewal, we connected spaces and set up facilities; and for the second round, we aim to enhance popularity and vitality. After surveys of successful models at home and abroad, we found that this cannot be achieved by just creating a few Internet-famous attractions, but by integrating the features of the local communities, parks and neighborhoods to form their own brands," he said, "Brooklyn Navy Yard built a technology, culture and art industry base by bringing in art, music, filmmaking, fashion show and other industries. The Tate emphasizes community engagement in art, fosters children's awareness of and interest in art activities, and planned art activities all year around for children of different ages, attracting flocks of locals…All these have inspired us."

 

Based on the cultural heritage and urban fabric of the old industrial area, through integration with technological innovation and cultural creativity, Yangpu Riverside will work with universities and sci-tech enterprises, to develop business services, tourism, popular culture and other business items empowered by AI and metaverse.

 

"Douyin will remodel a café, and Bilibili may add cultural features to old industrial building spaces…These are potential 'hits'. And as the trend changes, these new economy companies at the forefront will respond in time, bringing sustainable momentum to the 'hits'," said Qian. "It is definitely worth the wait to see what parks will be produced between the 'old' and the 'new' in various dimensions such as industry, population, architecture, space and even idea."