Architects: URBAN ARCHITECTURE
Area: 1,029 m²
Year: 2023
Photography: CreatAR Images
Lead Architects: Yang Cui
Landscape Design: Urban Architecture, UT Youta Planning – Landscape Division
Lighting Design: AET Lighting Design
Core Team: Xuan Chen, Mei Xu, Peng Wang
Construction Drawing Design: Urban Architecture
North District Team: Pingdong, Xue, Xianyao Wang, Yiqiang Shen
Landscape Principal Designer: Chaojin Yu
Landscape Design Core Team: Hui Guo, Sanmei Tian, Zuosong Deng, Xian Huang, Chuanlong He, Yan Zhang, Qiang Li, Zhilin Liu, Yu Jie Wan, Peng Shi, Jiebin Zhou
Developer: Shanghai Baoshan District Gaojing People’s Government
City: Baoshan
Country: China
Shanghai’s New Horizon High Land Park & Civic Center, designed by URBAN ARCHITECTURE, is a transformative renovation project in Gaojing Town, Baoshan District, Shanghai. Completed in 2023, this project revitalizes an old railway freight station, creating a dynamic public space with a rooftop garden and innovative design elements.
High Land Park Civic Center is an old building renovation project located in Gaojing Town, Baoshan District, Shanghai, based on an abandoned railway freight station adjacent to the Beiyang Railway Branch Line, which runs through downtown Shanghai. The site is cut by crisscrossing road traffic, creating an overlooked, abandoned space in the urban fabric.
During construction, the old building was first enclosed. The natural state on the earth’s surface was abstracted into the initial enclosed skin space of the building, folding, twisting, and rigorously wrapping the old structure. The skin, composed of inside and outside interfaces, allows inner and outer spaces to convert during rotation.
The internal wrapping space formed after the enclosure serves as the solid part of the entire exhibition space. This integration of the entity and park happens in one go. The original concrete floor was broken, growing and spreading from the natural surface, with the vertical interface of the roof park slope forming the linear lighting window of the lower exhibition hall.
The path of the roof reshapes the original site’s public space. The building’s bottom penetrating path connects the fragmented urban space cut by the building, positively reshaping the open public space. Ramps to the north and south create a three-dimensional transportation system with a central focus on the rooftop garden, connecting the urban park, the building, and the street corner square through vertical transportation.
To transform as many spaces as possible into park extensions for various activities, the rooftop of the fifth facade is designed as an extension and amplification of the park interface. This approach activates underutilized urban spaces, creating a place for people to linger and relax.
The superimposed roof layers cleverly embed skylights. The roof’s surface space becomes the natural slope seating area of the roof garden theater, serving as an important light source for the internal exhibition space. Future exhibitions and events can interact with this light, forming a new spatial experience.
The living bamboo texture collides with the concrete memory of the original base. The art painting follows the traditional Shanghai facade texture treatment technique, adding emotional memory to the civic center. The two facade materials and building shapes combine to form an enclosed architectural space, speaking different architectural languages.
Project Gallery
Project Location
Address: Gaojing Town, Baoshan District, Shanghai 200439, China
Location is for general reference and may represent a city or country, not necessarily a precise address.
