Made in China, no question – Invented in China, of course:
BAU588 You-Du R+D Development, Jinqiao, Shanghai

Pudong New District, Shanghai, China

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Discipline

Architecture, Landscape Architecture

Typology

R+D lab/workshop, office, office landscape

City

Pudong New District, Shanghai, China

Date

2016-2022

Status

Completed 2022

Client

Shanghai Jinqiao Export Processing Zone Development Co., Ltd

Program

R+D lab/workshop, office,cafe, basement parking.

introduction
“Made in China” is rapidly being superseded by “Invented in China”. The vast industrial zones created in the 1990s have only partially filled with industrial buildings. Research and Development (R+D) projects are now taking up the slack. R+D is ideally located close to universities, industry and in countries of rapid change. Jinqiao, Shanghai is such a location.

the pragmatic and beyond
You Du is a speculative R+D development created by the local government, an organisation charged with developing and running this vast middle district of Pudong, Shanghai. The surrounding industrial district is made up of large sites and has a sparse road network.

Two buildings, linked by a bridge with terrace over and entrance plaza under, are designed with flexibility and robustness – in order to meet the needs and space requirements of a range of companies over the long life of the building. The space between the buildings allows for future E-W permeability should the district ever wish to introduce a more connective human-scaled circulation network.

The two buildings are articulated into a tripartite composition. The lower two floors are treated as a podium and as many of the community functions are located in this animated and active base. The upper five floors take the form of an extruded C-section, with their back to the north and their opening sides toward the south for solar gain.

Sandwiched between these two design elements is a floor defined by its colourful planar ceiling and floor and connection via the bridge – a literal and virtual sandwich. Fully glazed between the planes, the floor and soffit run the length of the two buildings, and open at the front to form the double height entry lobby and inside-out stair flights. A wide south facing public balcony off the sandwich connects the development front to back. It overlooks and connects to the landscape via a spiral stair at the canteen bridge and the seating stair to the street.

The front building is designed to best suit a large company. It has a commercial café facing the street and a double-height lobby with amphitheatre stair leading up to the canteen in the bridge. The rear building is suited to smaller companies. It has a smaller lobby on ground floor and shares the canteen. Both buildings have industrial goods-elevators, raised floors and tall floor heights (6.0m, 4.5m, and 4.2m), able to accommodate various scales of machinery and equipment.

not only but also
Surrounded by merely prosaic factories, this new R+D facility presents itself not only as a new type of program, but also as a series of new opportunities with which to engage: not only the functional, but also the symbolic, the poetic, and the articulate. Even the modernist tradition of expressive sun shading announces the importance, once again, of environmental sustainability and the buildings green star accreditation.

This project demonstrates that even within the modest means of a speculative development budget, it is possible to develop a more multi-dimensional architectural outcome that is more responsive to not only the city, but to the neighbourhood, to the street, and to the users and visitors to the building.

postscript: a more sophisticated zoning
Beyond the symbiotic relationship of R+D and Industry, the opportunity-cost of banishing all new R+D development to industrial zones is high. Long daily commutes, the exposure of dormitory dwellers to industrial pollution, the inconvenient isolation from services, retail and entertainment to name a few. Integrating R+D, and other clean industry, within the city proper, and in reach of industrial zones and universities, would be a progressive strategic pillar of urban planning for China as it emerges from a place of production to a place of innovation.

2024

Public Landscapes

Jiangyin

2023

Public

Education

Shanghai

Private Landscapes

2015

Nanjing

Playgrounds

2020

Suzhou

2000-2005

Structures & Pavillions

2019

Office

2005-2010

2021

Shenzhen

Culture

Planning

Hangzhou

Urban Design

Huai’an

Xi'an

Xinyu

2013

Retail

Hospitality

Mixed Use

Sports

Education

2018

Yixing

2017

Taizhou

Office

Culture

Retail

Melbourne

2016

2011

Residential

Infrastructure

Kyneton

Hotel

Hotel

Wuxi

Healthcare

2014

2012

Healthcare

Fuding

Shaoxing

Chongqing

Kunshan

Wuhan

Cixi

Ningbo

Meishan

Canberra

Jingzhou

Chengdu

Hospitality

1990-2000

Xiamen

Residential

Hopetoun

Caofeidian

100 Parks + One Eco Corridor:
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an excessive minimalism:
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more Piazza Navona than Levittown
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clarity and unpredictable adjacencies:
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landscape, urbanity, networks, the suitcase, and the paper-bag:
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more than a frozen moment:
BAU659 ZOOM OASIS, Linkong Perimeter Super Block

look! up in the sky!
BAU210 Shanghai Hongxuan Office Building

Made in China, no question – Invented in China, of course:
BAU588 You-Du R+D Development, Jinqiao, Shanghai

a hybrid infrastructure:
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large plains, small grains, and the in-between:
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on reflection:
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Place, typologies, programs, and public life:
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more than just a technopolis:
BAU206 Hangzhou Xiasha New City Centre

a second network embracing history, smalllness, and complexity:
BAU193 Chengdu West New District

a park for everyone and everyone in their park:
BAU189 Hongqiao Park

disorder – not randonmness but beyond order:
BAU182 Chengdu East Village

mosaics of teaching, networks of learning:
BAU149 Huai’an Tertiary Education District

walled cities within a walled city:
BAU147 Xi’an High-Tech Precinct CBD

co-existence without incompatibility:
BAU138 Jiangxi Xinyu Networks City

space-time conflict:
BAU544 Shanghai University Campus

clarity and unpredictable adjacencies:
BAU119 Jinqiao Sports & Leisure Centre

Journeys AND destination, not just destinations:
BAU569 Nanjing Youfu West Street Primary School

continuous loops and internal courts:
BAU603 Suzhou kindergarten no. 3

weaving and stitching:
BAU616 Jiangyin Greenway Loop (stage 1. Eastern Segment)

a constructed and cultured topography:
BAU269 Jindi Green Land Club

it takes a village to educate a child:
BAU602 Suzhou Sci-tech City Xizhu Kindergarten

city typologies, cultural traditions, contemporary theories, and spaceships:
BAU600 Shanghai Qingpu Newtown 30-class Primary School

artificial plateau:building more site:
BAU599 Shanghai Qingpu Newtown 24-Class Junior High school

it is the least we could do: minimalism in an environment of expressionism
BAU584 Hangzhou Tonglu Office Building

more Piazza Navona than Levittown
BAU618 Tianyou Experimental Primary School and Kindergarten, Suzhou

classrooms AND the in-between: teaching and learning beyond the classroom
BAU610 Taizhou School

other institutions for this new century:
BAU604 Qingpu District People’s Court

building the unfinished:
BAU003M The Victorian Pride Centre

minimal AND maximal:
BAU583 Exhibition Pavilion Gaochun, Nanjing

small in scale large in monumentality:
BAU027 Wyndham Mausoleum

multiple rooms of difference:
BAU253 Shanghai Qingpu Renheng Yunjie Entrance Garden

active cultural edges, passive natural centres:
BAU402 Shanghai Qingpu Qin Yuan Lake Park

intimate, cool, sheltered and lively:
BAU268 Xinqiao Commercial Street + Shop Housing

formal teaching and informal learning:
BAU540 Gaochun New District Kindergaten to Year Nine School

an exercise in robustness:
BAU333 Jiangyin Huifu Office Tower

effortless complexity: learning from water-town:
BAU222-2 Shanghai Qingpu Zhujiajiao Commercial

no longer but not only:
BAU213-3 Jindi Yunhu Market

actualizing the virtual:
BAU 213-2 Jindi Yunhu Sports and Activity Center

geometry, history, art, craft, iconography, and pragmatics: an exploration of intention, coding, narrative, and meaning
BAU021 Olinda Green + Public WC

there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in:
BAU015 Jan Juc House, Victoria, Australia

BAU009 house in the sky

surreal adjacencies:
BAU019 Marymount Residence, Guest Accommodation, Stable + Office

mini-city of culture:
BAU590 Nanjing Pukou Haiqiao Community Service Center

keeping a low profile:
BAU 214 Suzhou Qingshan Hotel Phase I

positive space, human scale, and a blue-green net:
BAU213-1 Jindi Yunhu Housing

dis-integrated guest houses :
BAU495 Pine Pillow Retreat

don’t look at me, don’t look at me:
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new buildings, old topography:
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defining the perimeter, programming the centre, inhabiting them both:
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turning outside-in:
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beyond PODS, networks, and nodes:
BAU552 Chengbei Urban Design project, Nanjing

podium and bill(ding)board:
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inner sanctuary, outer crust:
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an excessive minimalism:
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a plane of reference:
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rips in the fabric by place:
BAU461 Nanjing Tangshan Tourist Resort South District

other ideas of hospital:
BAU446 Fuding Hospital

architecture AND terrain:
BAU445 Suzhou Hi-tech District Cultural Center

crust: in-between and on the edge
BAU426 Shaoxing Jianhu Keyan Tourist Resort Planning

eco urbanism:
BAU425 Chongqing Eco Valley City

microcosm:
BAU348 Kunshan Hyper Complex

beyond the picturesque:
BAU347 Kunshan White Pagoda Park

don’t just re-use the typology, improve it!
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building a community not just housing:
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upside down program – ‘private’ circulation becoming ‘public’ circulation:
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extra-large private space as public space:
BAU199 Parktown, Housing, Fudi Forte, Wuxi

mini-me:
BAU197 Jindi Sanlin Pavilion

staggering:
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urban camouflage:
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the resort at the end of the yellow dirt road:
BAU543 Emerald Village at Soul Bay

critical regionalism and abstraction:
BAU487 Nanjing Yaxi Citta-Slow

hospital for the ill, health care for the healthy, aged care for the elderly: BAU469 Zhaoxiang Hospital

tear open the package: BAU247 Qingpu NGS Supermarket

urban sponge:
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lyrical islands in pragmatic seas:
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fractured enormity:
BAU281 Chongqing Huarun

ring roads AND peripheral parks:
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simple box OR 3 points in space – you choose:
BAU204-2 Ningbo Wanda Office

many utopias:
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a close family:
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stretching, squeezing, bending, trimming:
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BOTH networks AND objects:
BAU497 Wyndham Cove Eco Sub-urb

ethics, democracy, difference:
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warp and woof:
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sustainable technologies for clean living:
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network of learning:
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not in galleries, but a way of seeing:
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shopping sandwich:
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celebrating the collective, the intimate, the sustainable, and the local:
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21st century Ponte Vecchio:
BAU287 Shanghai 2010 World Expo Bridge

antidote: not another ghetto city:
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at last …finally …some diversity:
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recycling and beyond
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an assemblage of difference:
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streets as shelters, bars as amphitheaters, landscapes as playgrounds:
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reduce, reuse, recycle:
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binary oppositions defining a field of operation – all we wanted was a park:
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the hotel as microcosm of the city:
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…very strange:
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the beautiful and the extraordinary:
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a dynamic yet stable vehicle:
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palimpsest:
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innovation both inside and out:
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exquisite corpse
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landscape becomes urban design becomes architecture:
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repetition and difference:
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no longer drowning – waving:
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yet another point of view:
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ordinary not heroic, symbolic not monumental:
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woven threads:
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private precincts, public networks:
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creative networks:
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maximize commuication and cross fertilization:
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