Review of Contemporary Adaptive Reuse Movement for industrial sites in China

Abstract

Within a relatively brief span of time, adaptive reuse emerges as a fashionable architectural and urban renewal activity for many of those economically vibrant cities of China. The author and his team are astonished by the level of proliferation and sophistication that some of these projects exhibit, regardless of the geographical location or characteristics of society concerned (as ‘adaptive reuse’ entails cross-disciplinary interactions such as social, economic and physical challenges). One thing that is a common sight in almost all of these urban rehabilitation projects is that for the present time there is an over-indulgence on creative arts as an universal norm to rejuvenating deserted or dilapidated buildings, turning them just like that into galleries for artists, photographers; or studios for fashion, graphic designers and architects. This unquestioned attitude towards creative arts as the best recipe to rejuvenate industrial or residential buildings challenges the author’s attempt to examine the conceiving idea, market perception towards the roles of historic buildings notably industrial buildings, the interpretation of sustainability from a broad perspective – social, economics and environment. Though the study is primarily based on field study instead of literature research, it is feasible to observe that the deployment of creative arts as an economic driver presents itself as an imbalanced approach for sustainability sake. Such observation grants us a chance to recuperate the meaning of sustainability for sustainable urban development. The author refers to a number of selected case studies from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in order to unfold and discuss those sustainability strategies adopted by developers so as to generate an agenda for further research.