The renowned Shenzhen Bao'an F518 Fashion Creative Park, the bold and robust Qian'an Art Hotel, the dynamic Qiaoxiang Cultural Center... every project undertaken by the young Zhang Miao is universally admired. Zhang Miao appears delicate, yet her creative concepts are bold and avant-garde. In her early years she worked at Chen Shih-Min Architects in Hong Kong; after four years of architectural practice she went to study at the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University in the Netherlands. After returning to China she was employed by the Shenzhen Institute of Building Design, and in 2006 she founded her own studio.

Shifting Focus to Renovation

While studying abroad, Zhang Miao found that European countries such as the UK and France rarely build new projects; they mostly patch up and repair existing buildings, which can then be used for another one or two hundred years. Shenzhen, however, has spent the past 30 years frantically building houses, and Zhang Miao believes this will put pressure on Shenzhen's urban planning decades from now. In 2007, Zhang Miao began to turn her attention to renovation projects. Relying on her previous experience and creative passion, she moved her creative kingdom into old factory buildings. In recent years she has rarely taken on large commercial complex projects.

Shenzhen F518 Creative Park was the first renovation project Zhang Miao participated in, and it was precisely because of it that her design direction changed.

Afterward, Zhang Miao and her team successively took on five projects converting old industrial clusters into industrial parks. Among these completed industrial parks, F518 Creative Industrial Park, Yanmeng Hotel Cultural Industrial Park, and the Pingshan Sculpture Institute have all become sub-venues of the 8th China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industries Fair.

In Zhang Miao's view, renovation projects are not simply a matter of patching up as most people imagine. Although design fees are far lower than those for residential and other projects, the actual work involved is equivalent to twice that of a new project. In addition to the overall planning and design of the creative park, the spatial layout and current use of the original buildings must also be taken into consideration.

Dream Container

While working on the renovation design of old factory buildings, shipping containers also came into Zhang Miao's view. Her connection with container architecture began with a chance opportunity in 2010. "At the time, a client wanted to do an addition project for a commercial street block. Meanwhile, a container manufacturer also approached me, liking my designs with strong three-dimensionality and wanting to discuss with me the secondary use of containers. I felt that modular housing could meet a large portion of China's housing needs in the future, so I treated it as an experimental building and researched it, making my first attempt in the commercial street project."

The project Zhang Miao mentioned has a name full of futuristic flair——"Dream Container," located in Shenzhen F518 Fashion Creative Park. "Dream Container" is a plan centered on renovating discarded shipping containers, with the advantage of rapid modular construction, advocating energy conservation and environmental protection, and encouraging young people to start businesses. In this project, there are three groups of container renovations as pilot projects: a coffee shop, a flower shop, and an art studio. These three buildings also fully represent successful cases of bold entrepreneurship by young people.

"The construction of the three container groups was very rapid: five days of factory processing, twelve days of on-site installation, one day of quality inspection, one day of supplementary repairs, and one day of completion acceptance——twenty days in total. About ten days after completion, the operators moved in and started business, with excellent results. The coffee shop owner told me this year that it was precisely because of the containers that he started his business back then. I was quite moved when I heard that, and I hope containers can truly become a vehicle for Chinese young people's entrepreneurial dreams, just like the 'first car' for American youth," Zhang Miao said.

"Dream Container" not only carries the passion of entrepreneurial youth but also holds Zhang Miao's ideal——using old buildings and containers as carriers to reuse idle and leftover urban spaces through cultural and artistic means. "The role a well-designed individual building can play is limited, but by seriously completing an architectural design, summarizing and distilling from it, and recording and preserving the formation process to create a building with demonstrative significance, it will influence the entire living environment and urban development. My dream is to create influential architecture!" Zhang Miao said.