The Revival of North Sichuan Road

Project winner of the competiton about Ideas for interventions in North Sichuan Road, Shanghai.

How can a city with a rapid development of aging face the uncoordinated relationship between the growth of the elderly population and urban development? Sichuan Road, Nanjing Road and Huaihai Road, have always been the three main commercial streets of Shanghai, but due to a slow development in recent years, Sichuan Road has not been able to adapt to the new standards of commercial realities that have instead continued to proliferate and grow in Shanghai's current main commercial arteries. The main content of the course is how to revitalize the commercial road of North Sichuan Road through a design intervention on an urban scale, with a broad target age. Design Studio students are therefore responsible for providing an answer through  a project.

The course took place over a period of 87 days, from 12 September to 7 December (the date of the final presentation), with weekly reviews where groups of students (6 groups of 3/4 people) presented their status from time to time. progress of the project to the entire study. Several papers were requested for the final presentation (presentation of 15 minutes, tables in A1 format, booklet and physical model), held on December 7th from 5.30pm to 9.30pm, where the 6 groups exhibited their projects in front of the public consisting of a jury and auditors (internal and external to the university). The jury was composed of prominent figures in the Chinese political and architectural landscape, such as: TU Huijun, Professor of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning; Ben Wood, Manager of "The Studio Shanghai"; Yang Wansheng, Director of the North Sichuan Road Road Office; Jin Congli, Deputy Director of the Shanghai Hongkou District Development and Reform Commission; Luo Ylhong, Deputy Director of the Regulatory and Geotechnical Bureau of Shanghai Hongkou district; Sun Naifei, Deputy Director of Urban Design and Planning, SOM office in Shanghai, USA; Xie Jian, Deputy General Manager of Changyuan Culture Industry; Guo Qiwei, General Manager of the Shanghai Heng Yuan Group; Zhang Dangjle, Managing director of Puying assets; Zhong Tao, Partner of "The Shanghai Studio".

At the end of the expositions of the single groups, it proceeded with the voting by the individual members of the groups and by the members of the jury, through an evaluation method that took into account the most complex project, the project that saw the best cooperation between the members of the group and the project with the best design. The vote was given by Ferrero Rocher, and the best group (12 votes) was the group number 6 composed by Tang Peipei (Tongji University), Mangia Mattia (University of Pavia) and Gugliotta Federico (University of Pavia).

The project started from a profound analysis, focused on the research for the identity of the place, now vanished over time. The identification of this element is important because it determines how to provide support to existing commercial structures, without resorting to a re-adaptation of the commercial identity of North Sichuan Road, now too weak to compete with the other commercial entities in Shanghai. The main element of the area then turned out to be the cultural one, North Sichuan Road was in fact an important cultural artery, full of cinema and art places. Identified the main historical buildings, among which the private ones, public and disused, and the potential and unresolved public areas, The project was developed on the construction of a double three-dimensional path that develops along the entire main artery, connecting areas of the neighborhood containing buildings of historical importance, through the management of the areas through a diffuse museum, which takes tourists and residents to follow the different paths, guided by a continuous narration and by the discovery of places that provide new events and activities accessible from all members of the community. All this by providing an improvement of the physical environment along the project area and a recovery of disused historic buildings through the inclusion of new functions. A project that aims at low impact, exploiting existing buildings, without the construction of new ones and the arrangement of infrastructures and environments (green, facades, streets, squares) that have not been resolved.