Renovation of SMOORE Headquarters Industrial Park

"Each man bears in his mind a city made only of differences"
—Italo Calvino Invisible Cities
Following the completion of SMOORE Lezhujiao Industrial Park, CM Design has recently finished the SMOORE Headquarters Industrial Park in Dongcai Industrial Zone, Baoan district, Shenzhen. Including the upcoming Liutang Industrial Park, CM Design practiced a series of "Urban Edge Garden" renovations of industrial park as the main project type in the past three years. From the context of urban village to urban factory, CM Design has developed a relationship and glossary that are more suitable for urban renewal, which were all contained in the SMOORE renovation projects with varying degrees.
The project locates in Dongcai Industrial Zone, Gushu Community, Xixiang Street, Baoan, Shenzhen, adjacent to the Baoan Avenue on the east. Factory buildings and urban villages built since 1980-90s lie on the north of the site, foothills of Bihaiwan Golf Course lie on the southwest. The site has a higher level in the west then in the east, leaving a two-meter high scarp. The new SMOORE headquarters consists of three former independent industrial parks which were close to each other, sprawling over 10,917 square meters. The total area of nine buildings is ​​28,019 square meters, including three industrial plants built in the 1990s, four dormitories, a group of equipment rooms and a row of stores facing the street.
The design needs to find out a new relationship between the buildings and take down the walls dividing the three parks. Buildings along the city road play the leading role of the new SMOORE Headquarters Industrial Park and even the entire Dongcai Industrial Zone in the urban interface. Only by solving the problem of intersecting flows of pedestrian and vehicle traffic, disorderly parking, and combining with landscape resources and public space, can we realize an interconnected, shared and efficient new park.
After 40 years of rapid urbanization, Shenzhen has entered the stock age from the incremental era. Numerous small and medium-sized production factories lied on the edge of the city have been left vacant due to the relocation of enterprises, which may prove to be an important part of urban renewal in the future. The Renovation of SMOORE Headquarters Industrial Park has become an example for the upgrade and reuse of urban edge composite space, producing a new model for the reconstruction of production and laboratory facilities. We hope that it can promote the development and provide a new typological thinking for the diversification strategies of urban renewal.