Park Block Renovation

Location: Luqiao District, Taizhou, Zhejiang Province

Client: Luqiao District Government

Architect: Tong Ming

Project Team: Zhang Jin

Institute: The Architectural Design & Research Institute of Tongji University

Structure and Material: concrete

Cost: 21, 00,000RMB

Design Period: 2002–2005

Construction Period: 2005–2007

Site area: 18207 m2

Building area: 10500 m2

J01n01: 738 m2

J01n03: 1029 m2

J03n01: 737 m2

U01-01: 2673 m2

U01-03: 5321 m2

Park Block is located on the east of a four-kilometer long historic street. Originally, there is a city park on the south, and a busy shopping street on the north. The situation made this block a juncture area with multifold intentions.

Park block comprises five buildings. The purpose of design is to make connections among different fabrics and scales of surrounding environment, and to use the local spatial order and surface texture to give visual abundance of overlapping layers. The patterned windows, reticulating walls, wedge-shaped openings and window glasses, which are made in various materials and scales, could be produced in their own ways, but they will overlap to give two or more figurations. They are able to interpenetrate without an optical destruction of each other.

This kind of chaos, the chief characteristic of the town, is a response to the principle, which dominate the generation of the town. Each section develops respectively and logically, but they will visually integrated into a whole. It will result in a kind of continuous movement, a presentation of the quality of complexity, and evocation of the spatial atmosphere of a traditional townscape.

Meanwhile, this kind of strategy will make the construction much easier for an uncontrollable long distance project. The elegance of materials, details, joints, colors will not be important any more. Everything goes automatically, and all the results will be unexpected. In some way, it is trying to simulate the logic and method of the construction of a city.