Background: "No.78 Bancang Street" in Nanjing
Under Zijin Mountain, beside Xuanwu Lake, this is the Zijin Campus of Nanjing Normal University, covering an area of 110,000 square meters, with a floor area of about 80,000 square meters. The campus has a good landscape and ecological environment. "No.78 Bancang Street", where the humanities and the campus atmosphere overlap, leaving behind campus memories of many people, cultural link between the university and Nanjing city, forming an intellectual and innovative college atmosphere.
In July 2019, the Zijin Campus of Nanjing Normal University with a long history ended its mission as a university campus. The government and enterprises are also actively exploring how to transform existing land functions and integrate it with the new urban economy through renewal and regeneration.
FROM CAMPUS TO INDUSTRIAL PARK IN A “MICRO-RENOVATION” WAY
With the joint efforts of Nanjing Normal University, Xuanwu District Government, and Gemdale Properties and Investments, the renovation of the former Zijin Campus of Nanjing Normal University started in 2019. DUTS design carried out the renovation design of overall buildings and key interior spaces of the 110,000-square-meter campus. In 2022, the first and second phases of the campus renovation have been completed. This university campus with a long history of more than 60 years, through the "urban micro-renewal" method, has become an Science Park, which is the first technology park renovated from a fully-organized campus in Jiangsu province.
According to architect Zhong Ling, the founder of DUTS design, “Sometimes we might over-create new things, and if zoom out to the urban dimension, we will find that the emotional link between the original campus and Nanjing city is also very precious. So we took an organic renewal approach, finding a balance between old and new."
DUTS design made a lot of observations and analyzes of existing buildings, with multi-dimensional thinking from architectural renovation, interior scenes to new operation formats. A renovation strategy of "Organic Renewal" was chosen on the basis of existing planning logical of former campus. Designers preserved the cultural memory of the campus with the city in a "micro-reshape" way, through the perspectives of facade reorganization, traffic reorganization, and interior space reshaping. In this way the campus can organically change to a new technology park with new vitality, without being destroyed and re-constructed.