Shougang Steel Complex
Shougang Steel Complex
Location: Beijing, China
Developers: Beijing Shougang Construction Investment Co. Limited, TISHMAN SPEYER, SHOUGANG FUND, Beijing Shouao Real Estate Co., Ltd
Designers: ECOLAND Planning and Design Corp, CCTN DESIGN
The Shougang Steel Complex was formerly a massive steel mill located in the eastern suburb of Beijing. The mill was closed in 2009, partly due to pollution concerns and has now been redeveloped as a 200,000 square meter post-industrial park and mixed-use community site.
Featuring a mixture of landscape, architecture and infrastructure, the project is dominated by iconic, weathered-steel factory facilities that have been repurposed into a variety of amenities, including a modern office park, food and beverage outlets, cultural amenities, and outdoor recreational spaces. These include a freestyle skiing venue – “Big Air Shougang” – that was an iconic ski jumping venue during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games.
Although the ultimate purpose of the site is as mixed-use venue, for current purposes the application focused only on the open-space portion, which has proven resoundingly popular among Beijing residents since opening to the public after the Olympic Games ended in early 2022.
The sheer scale of the site and its infrastructure is revelatory – as one juror commented: “It makes for a great spatial experience for people used to living in a high-density environment.”
The landscape site is dominated visually by an array of massive components left over or reclaimed from of the steel mill infrastructure, including chimneys, cooling towers, gantries, and sedimentation ponds. Many of these have been either converted into new amenities or juxtaposed artfully in the context of newly-created public spaces. For example:
- A shallow reflecting pool bridges the physical distance between a café outlet and a massive industrial structure sitting directly opposite.
- An elevated steel-framed catwalk has been turned into a striking two-level passageway for pedestrians and bicycles.
- Salvaged waste materials such as steel, concrete, and wood equipment have been pressed into service as public amenities, including seats and landforms, giving them a new lease of life and echoing the mill’s former activities.
- A site control room has been reduced from three stories to a single level and today serves as Beijing’s busiest Starbucks.
- To the south, three imposing steel towers have been retained as dramatic structural landmarks within the complex, adding vitality and atmosphere.
- Landscape architects installed rectangular concrete seats and reflection pools to the north and south sides of the former dry-dust building, extending the horizontal lines of the main building into the landscape and creating a subtle mirroring
- Sustainable and green amenities, such as seating structures made from waste concrete and recycled steel, minimise the project’s carbon footprint while also retaining the site’s industrial a
The overall goal of the site design was to preserve the history of the site’s former functions and heritage (as well as those of many other heavy-industry sites in both Beijing and China) while also creating a sustainable operating environment for its new mixed-use purpose.
As an example or urban regeneration, the site sets a replicable precedent for the conversion of China’s many redundant heavy industry sites located in what are now inner-city locations, both in terms of how site components can be reimagined as cultural amenities, and how to navigate the myriad of bureaucratic processes involved in the brownfield conversion process.