CITY MEMORIAL OF GUANGZHOU HAIZHU BRIDGE

The Intervention Study on Urban Public Arts

Project Name   City Memorial Museum of Haizhu Bridge

Project Type   The Intervention Study on Urban Public Arts

Project Area   -

Completion Date   2016

Research Background

For nearly a century, Haizhu Bridge has been an unforgettable memory for people in Guangzhou. The discarded century-old bridge steels, having witnessed the the rise and fall of Guangzhou in the past hundred years, represent the affections of citizens. Now the rusted steels are lying at a warehouse of a shipyard in Panyu, Guangzhou.

Where are their destinations?

On January 2015, the concept of "pearl river economic belt, innovation belt and landscape belt" was first proposed at the Sixth Plenary Session of the 10th Guangzhou Municipal Party Committee, aiming to present the co-existence of traditional and modern cultures by creating various key developing areas.

At the same time, the research team, based on the field situation of Haizhu Bridge and Haizhu Square, carried out targeted investigation and research demonstration, and proposed measures of improving historical features of Haizhu Bridge, including the environmental design analysis of the west area of Haizhu Square and the preliminary idea of setting up Haizhu Bridge Museum.

The research team, through studying and testing the design and reuse of old steel beam components of Haizhu Bridge, illustrated that those rusted components which were not used in the new Guangzhou Museum could be promoted by an innovative design for their exhibition in Haizhu Bridge as way to highlight the history and culture. The research team Enhancing the Culture and History of Haizhu Bridge was also founded based on this proposal.

With the implementation of Enhancing the Culture and History of Zhuhai Bridge, the concept of City Memorial Museum of Haizhu Bridge becomes clearer.

During this research, the research team will analyze the necessity, rationality and feasibility of the project based on the assumption of establishing an open museum at the west of Haizhu Square, and integrate it with the plan of recycling the discarded steel beams, thus upgrading the designing concept and optimization scheme.

Urban heritage protection and the heritage and rejuvenation of regional cultural are expected to be implemented through the idea of "an open memorial place".

Meanwhile, it is hoped that a city landmark museum going through time and space, breaking through the focus of existing tangible heritage, and tracing its roots to the regional cultural prototype, will be established.

This museum, not only highlighting the unique geographical landscape possessed by  traditional landscape patterns of Guangzhou City through its functions, but also showing the profound cultural foundations on its cultural spaces, derives the echo of "tangible heritage" and "intangible heritage" in the extended categories of unique historical, representative and symbolic Haizhu Bridge. With a form of public artistic construction, it can stimulate the cultural imagination and emotional resonance of urban spaces.