Rencontre between Yuyuan Garden and the Peony Pavilion

Yuyuan Area,the ‘Tourist attraction & Shopping paradise’ of Shanghai, is facing the challenge of regeneration. The project redesigns the commercial spaces of Yuyuan Mart and use business as the carrier of culture export. The immersive drama ‘Peony Pavilion’ and the day-and-night conversion system enhance the cultural value.

Yuyuan Area, the ‘Tourist attraction & Shopping paradise’ of Shanghai, and the foreign window of Chinese culture, is now facing the challenge of regeneration. From the research, we found that visitors gather only on the ground floor, while the resources of upper floors are wasted. Moreover, Yuyuan is closed at 9 o’clock every night, which is no good to the development of both tourism and business. First of all, we connect the site with The Bund and Yuyuan II with three-dimensional pedestrian system during the urban design to equip Yuyuan area with higher publicity. Secondly, the separated commercial spaces of different buildings are connected and redesigned to form an intact and circular commercial circulation. We try to use business to be the carrier of cultural export, and to promote consumption with implanted cultural elements. Moreover, we pick up various Guilds from the history of old Shanghai to be the carrier of traditional culture. They will play the role of micro-museums during the day, showing the tourists Chinese traditional culture. Distributed evenly into the whole site, the Guilds are also the commercial nodes to connect the business circulation of different layers. The guilds will serve as the connecting point of tourism, business and culture system, which are the three components of Yuyuan area. We also create a mode of day-and-night conversion in both space and function. Using the classic Kunqu opera ‘Peony Pavilion’ as a reference, we write an immersive drama script throughout Yuyuan area. Atriums and guilds will transform into stages for the drama in the evening. This new format of commercial activity will solve the lack of vitality at night. Also, it is a lively and comprehensive way to illustrate traditional culture and integrate the area into a whole. By packaging and exporting the culture as a whole, we hope to convey the thickness of time and culture in order to reshape Shanghai's place in contemporary Chinese culture.