Real estate is transitioning back to traditional industries, while strategic emerging sectors characterized by specialization, refinement, uniqueness, and innovation are becoming the main drivers of China’s sustained and healthy economic growth. In this new phase of development, there is growing anticipation that these emerging industries will replace real estate’s dominant role in the national economy. Within this context, the industrial park economy is thriving.
△ Nanjing New Energy Industrial Park
The evolution from industrial parks to industrial communities has been shaped by the integration and balance of human, industrial, and urban relationships across different historical contexts.
The driving forces behind industrial real estate have shifted from external policies to internal factors such as technology and capital. Spatial layouts increasingly align with urban functions, evolving from transportation-focused designs to enterprise-centric industrial clusters, and eventually toward integrated urban-industrial uses. The relationship between industrial real estate and urban development has grown closer, moving from detachment to tight integration.
In China’s rapidly expanding market—marked by evolving industrial models, demographic shifts, and business turnovers—industrial park spatial planning must emphasize adaptability to change and tolerance for urban transformation. Ideally, sustainable industrial renewal is achieved through continuous software environment upgrades and content innovation within a relatively stable physical infrastructure.
At the large-scale design level, integrating industry, operations, and commerce requires innovative thinking rather than standard solutions. Once a project’s spatial framework is established, factors like location, transportation, consumer demographics, population, and operating entities become dynamic variables influencing the park’s ongoing development.
From a designer’s perspective, limited involvement calls for two priorities: first, to provide the project with initial momentum and a strong foundation; second, to create standardized spaces that are flexible and supportive of unpredictable future uses, ensuring low consumption, high efficiency, and positive support.
Moreover, innovation thrives on human interaction and diverse activities. Therefore, the design must foster environments that encourage varied behaviors. Guided by these principles, Qicheng Design focuses on three key factors:
Weak Boundaries, Strong Scenes, Sunny Atmosphere
Tencent Wuhan R&D Center: From Tencent’s headquarters in Chengdu to the Wuhan R&D Center, Qingdao Innovation Town, and the Tencent Global Headquarters in Dachan Bay, Qicheng Design has consistently earned Tencent’s trust through international competitions. Designed in 2012, the Wuhan Center is the first building in Thomson Lake Industrial Park. The design emphasized intensification, tolerance, and flexibility, allowing it to adapt well to external changes and internal adjustments, resulting in strong operational performance. It is now a prominent landmark on Wuhan’s architectural map, frequently highlighted by the media.
Weak Boundaries
Diluted Boundaries | Borderless Park | Open and Free
Qicheng Design advocates for borderless parks that foster positive social connections even in suburban areas.
Traditional industrial parks were built with strict safety and management boundaries, creating isolated islands. Today, dissolving these rigid borders—between parks and cities, and among buildings—by introducing public spaces, embedded services, and self-service facilities enables free movement and operational flexibility. This integration allows parks to evolve alongside urban development.
Chongqing Lijia Smart Park West Area (under construction): This office cluster is suspended above the mountains, preserving the natural undulating landscape which connects to the city’s green parks. A pedestrian network stretches over the complex, linking various city streets. Park facilities and environments are also accessible to nearby residents and tourists, enabling flexible evolution.
△ Qingdao Tencent Innovation and Entrepreneurship Town (Phase I) — A Borderless Industry City Mixed Community
Diluted Boundaries
Urbanizing the Park Base | Park City + Fireworks City
Qicheng Design promotes the urbanization of industrial park bases. By connecting the internal green spaces of each block to the urban fabric, a park city emerges. This transforms the park’s spaces into integral parts of the city’s public environment, blending park life, ecological landscapes, leisure, and commerce into the urban network. The park thus embodies urban living and gains the capacity for autonomous updating and evolution within the urban system.
Zhejiang Giant Stone Headquarters Building: Nestled within Phoenix Lake Park, this project showcases the surprising urban renewal taking place in the Nanjing Economic Development Zone through two small yet impactful designs.
Xingzhi Street: Renovated into a popular culinary destination and a new symbol of the park, this area has greatly enhanced the park’s liveliness and identity.
The Ting Chan Tea House, located at the park’s entrance, has become a top Japanese food brand in Nanjing, attracting visitors daily. This has generated substantial media exposure for the park and nearby businesses, fostering dynamic integration between the industrial park and the city.
Diluted Boundaries
Connection Nodes | Joining the Loop Rather Than Creating Closed Loops
Modern industrial parks are evolving toward integrating online and offline intelligence, enabling diverse business models such as R&D, incubation, entrepreneurship, innovation clusters, and headquarters operations. Beyond internal management, parks establish external connections through platform nodes that facilitate the flow of resources, capital, technology, and talent. The scale and quality of these connections define the park’s overall level. An outstanding park becomes a hub, empowering industries and enterprises within and expanding outward.
These connection nodes gradually replace traditional physical boundaries and location constraints, representing a renewal of industrial chains, service networks, and lifestyles. This transformation demands proactive adaptation to emerging scenarios.
Strong Scenes
Intensified Environments | Complexity and Diversity as Innovation Incubators
Innovation is driven internally by continuous creativity. While digitalization enhances park efficiency, true innovation depends on unpredictable interactions.
In the Internet era, social circles often create comfort zones with algorithm-driven content, which can limit individual creativity.
True innovation emerges at the edges of cognition or across boundaries, flourishing in complex, diverse, and dynamic environments akin to tropical rainforests.
Park design aims to cultivate such ‘rainforest societies,’ encouraging frequent and diverse interactions.
△ Chengdu Tencent Building: Designed in 2009, its ring-shaped floor plan facilitates efficient communication—a model now standard for Internet companies. Features like terrace gardens and playgrounds near workspaces help nurture this rainforest society.
Tongxiang Fenghuang Lake CBD Area: This design integrates a vibrant mix of exhibition, commercial, hotel, and office spaces, fostering cross-pollination among diverse groups and creating a thriving commercial ecosystem.
Intensified Scenes
Space Aesthetics | Space as a Consumer Experience
Space aesthetics now play a direct economic role, influencing user preferences. Gathering people is essential for enterprise growth, and among younger generations, office environments and spatial quality are key career considerations.
Unlike the past, when parks competed mainly on cost, efficiency, or investment incentives, today buildings and their environments can become consumer attractions or traffic hubs. Under weak boundary conditions, this opens new opportunities for park development and upgrading.
Qicheng emphasizes high-quality design that balances public accessibility with artistic expression, creating spaces that are beautiful, distinctive, and warmly welcoming.
Nanjing New Energy Industrial Park (under construction): Showcasing the dynamic tension between architectural aesthetics and industrial functionality.
Sunny Atmosphere
Invigorated Environment | Healthy, Bright, and Welcoming
The park’s character is evolving beyond symbolism and stylization toward a more sincere, sunny, and inviting architectural environment—reflecting the preferences of newer generations.
Qicheng Design champions features such as collegiate-style public spaces, distributed sports fields, small coffee shops, yard-level underground parking, and canteens with scenic views. These elements bring natural light, fresh air, and greenery into every corner. The building scale favors community intimacy, with warm, vibrant colors and concise, authentic architectural details that maintain a balance of simplicity and warmth.
Nanjing Longgang Science and Technology Park: Bright colors and transparent grilles mark a leap forward in industrial park design.
Xiaoshan Science and Technology City Park (under construction): Softening the industrial atmosphere with gentle color palettes and a collegiate-style environment.
Tencent Technology Island XY Apartment (Plan): Qicheng Design fosters a positive, sunny public environment through abundant grey spaces, mild textures, greenery, visual landscape design, interconnected sightlines, and open, engaging activity areas.
Invigorated Atmosphere
Positive Moderation | Ecological Technology and Art
Green, low-carbon design is a societal consensus, with active moderation being essential for sustainability.
Qicheng’s approach goes beyond implementing energy-saving technologies; it seamlessly integrates these solutions with spatial structures and materials, creating effortless and natural presentations.
Over the past decade, Qicheng has collaborated with top-tier partners—including curtain wall consultants, lighting experts, ecological technologists, and green building designers—to deliver outstanding projects.
For example, at the Nanjing New Energy Industrial Park, varying light transmittance in photovoltaic and glass curtain walls creates unique design textures. Photovoltaic trees that rotate with the sun act as street furniture and energy stations, providing interactive green experiences.
The photovoltaic curtain wall and shaded leisure grey spaces at Nanjing New Energy Industrial Park (under construction) enhance visual appeal, ventilation, and urban ecology within the courtyard.
Tencent Wuhan R&D Center: Lush greenery, water features, and prominent colonnades create a pleasant microclimate.
△ Tencent Technology Island XY Apartment: Featuring XY branching corridors that optimize sea views, ventilation, and natural lighting, this design extends from coastal to community parks with vertical greening and rooftop gardens. Passive energy-saving design is realized in an engaging environment, where visible greenery is a vital community indicator.
Planning and design mark only the beginning of an industrial park’s journey. As highlighted throughout this article, designers play a crucial role within limited intervention periods. Their work provides projects with a strong foundation and flexibility, enabling future operations and upgrades to flourish.
All images above are courtesy of Qicheng Design.
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