Excerpt: Shanghai Red Depot by Milanesi | Paiusco is a renovation project that transcends spatial renewal to become a reweaving of urban memory. Embracing the philosophy “Respect Time, Begin from the Future,” the design applies adaptive reuse and follows three strategies—Connect, Preserve, and Rebuild—to integrate history with contemporary life, transforming the industrial relic into a resilient and vibrant urban memory community.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] Project Background: This project is located in Yangpu District, Shanghai. Yangpu Waterfront, once Shanghai’s industrial core, hosted textiles, shipbuilding, and power industries, imprinting the city’s industrial legacy. Revamped sites like Cotton Mill No. 9, No. 17, and Yangshupu Power Plant serve as key models for urban renewal.
Current Contradiction: Digital economy accelerates—Meituan tech parks rise nearby; new urban interfaces rapidly form. History and future fracture here—industrial relics trapped in time’s crevices, isolated from the urban fabric, gradually forgotten.
Project Overview: The No.9 Cotton Mill Warehouse stands on the Huangpu River waterfront Yangpu district. This early 20th-century neoclassical structure—with reinforced concrete bones and exposed red-brick skin—bears witness to Shanghai’s century-long textile industry evolution.
This renovation transcends spatial renewal; it is a reweaving of urban memory—forging new connections between past and future, historical identity and urban transformation.
Guided by the philosophy “Respect Time, Begin from the Future”, m|p adopts a restrained approach to create a vibrant, daily-integrated, urban memory community, tightly interlinking people, cultural heritage, and urban fabric.
Design Strategy: Design anchors three core strategies — Connect · Preserve · Rebuild
Connect – Continuity & Integration: To break spatial fragmentation and continue the urban fabric, the design explores and practices the concept of “connection” on multiple levels：
Landscape: East-West: Extend the riverside slow-traffic system and cycling paths; North-South: Build layered landscape sequences and public spaces serving diverse needs.
Sky Corridor: Sky corridor connects to the old tower, providing a convenient passage to 2F/3F. Contrasts ground-level slow-traffic: sky walkway for efficiency, ground for leisure. Optimizes internal flow and remedies vertical circulation flaws.
It not only extends the function of the building, but also connects the landscape. Waterfront Balcony at the rear fills the functional gap of the riverside green belt, making the overall landscape more complete.
Preserve – Restoration & Innovation: “Preservation” is central—the façade becomes its vessel: Exercise restraint; reject over-restoration; prevent “new” obscuring “old.” Based on visual path analysis, we preserved original facades in core sightlines. Strategically open voids in visual gray zones to release interior space.
Mechanical Opening System: Design honor history without copying forms. Kinetic flip panels become a highlight. They function like the building’s rhythmic breath: Open panels bring light and views, shaping transparent spatial experiences; Closed panels define independent units, adapting to flexible functions. Through this dynamic cycle, the old factory’s spatial potential is awakened, effortlessly meeting diverse contemporary demands.
Rebuild – Inner Resilience: Inner resilience is spatial flexibility and high adaptability. It embodies the essence of contemporary architectural sustainability – resilience to evolving functional demands endows buildings with enduring relevance through time.
We dissolve original boundaries, transforming enclosed blocks into permeable “urban living rooms”. Eliminating fixed walls in favor of reconfigurable furniture systems and timber dividers. This enables dynamic spatial reconfiguration to accommodate hybrid work models. The third floor consolidates core exhibition functions while utilizing the “fifth façade”—the roof. Preserving the original truss structure enables natural daylighting, avoiding structural modifications that could damage historic fabric.
Preserving, connecting, and rebuilding communities anchors this vision—where people touch history’s warmth and find present solace.
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