Xishuidong Retail District

Nanchang District, Wuxi, China

Commercial Buildings

Architects: SKEW Collaborative

Year: 2012

The design brief called for a sensitive response to the industrial heritage and conserved buildings on the former compound of flour production factories. The design scope includes a series of low-density street retail architecture that links up four landscaped public plazas, water-front promenades and two bridges. This site has all the characteristics of the famed historic Jiangnan canal systems, where canal-front architecture gave distinctive regional character to the project. This design reinterprets the materials and rhythmic quality of the existing industrial fabric in an attempt to bring about a more humanized scale in the experience of the street, while providing necessary public amenities for the development. environment. A series of street level commercial spaces challenge the traditional podium-and-tower type through the deployment of another kind of scale and form - that of a mixture of mid-century industrial roof forms and sequences, coupled with a range of new industrial materials.