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Architects: SpActrum
- Area: 1658 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:SHADØOPLAY, Shengliang Su
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Manufacturers: BeiLiDa, Jufeng
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Lead Architects: Yan Pan
Text description provided by the architects. Stellar Isle(Xing Yu), situated in the Chaichanglong (Fairy Li) urban regeneration and redevelopment area in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, China, is the largest and most distinctive new-built cultural leisure building in the area. Chaichanglong is the first organic urban renewal area in the old town of Shaoxing, located opposite to the former residence of revolutionary legend Qiu Jin, with Xianheng Hotel to the east and Pagoda Hill to the north. After five years of renovation and regeneration, it has become a comprehensive cultural, commercial, and tourist district.
During the first visit to the site, SpActrum team observed that Chaichanglong was a complex where residential and production buildings from different eras coexist in an unordered yet genuine manner. SpActrum believes that history is a continuous process, not only in terms of time but also in terms of space. Therefore, they did not rely solely on heritage markers as the basis for preservation or demolition. Instead, they considered both ordinary buildings and "heritage buildings" as integral components of the site. Material presence on the site was treated as the only reliable text, allowing the site's sense of time to manifest as a continuous and ongoing geological landscape, much like sedimentation in geological strata.
Stellar Isle is situated on the southern axis of Chaichanglong, where there was originally a four-story brick-and-concrete building that once dominated the entire site. However, structural assessments revealed that this building could not be preserved and posed significant safety risks. Therefore, the design team decided to dismantle it and construct a new building of equal height. Instead of creating a typical building, they aimed to establish a three-dimensional site that could alter the spatial structure of the entire regeneration project. The goal is to create an aerial landscape connecting different eras of the site and the city, achieving a synchronicity between the past and the present.
Stellar Isle is designed as an accessible and interconnected space with strong multi-path elements, allowing each space to be connected through various pathways. This design transforms Stellar Isle into a genuine aerial garden. The most prominent design concept of Stellar Isle is “Layered Grounds”, where different levels overlap and create a complex interplay of walking and viewing spaces. This is an architecture about the site, where the definitions of building and site permeate each other rather than negate each other. The building doesn't exist for its own sake; it becomes a specific site, an activity place with uncertainty. Here, the building dissolves, and the site rises.
Once completed, Stellar Isle stands at the southern side of the site's central axis as a significant local landmark. The northern side of the building is a simple rectangular block, with long foldable sliding doors on each floor, transforming the building into a continuous open space when the doors open. The southern side consists of walkable terraced surfaces stacking around a central void space, while the eastern side includes a series of layered, sloping walkways, designed as gentle steps. These steps fold upwards to create multiple viewing platforms at heights of 6 meters and 9.5 meters. While Stellar Isle itself only has about 1,000 square meters interior space, the terraces, walkways, and other outward-looking spaces make it the perfect vantage point to appreciate the entire site and the city. The surrounding Ming and Qing dynasty courtyards, Republican-Era dwellings, 1970s-1980s apartments, and old factory buildings unfold like a horizontal scroll, connected by these stepped walkways and forming a multi-layered, multi-dimensional panoramic picture of the site.
