Sanlitun Soho

Update: (May 27, 9.30am) Soho China have just announced that they've acquired a new large-scale commercial development project in Beijing for RMB 5.5 billion. Formerly known as the Kaiheng Center (Kaiheng Dasha), the property is on the southwest corner of the Chaoyangmen intersection (south of the boat-like CNOOC building and across from the Ministry Foreign Affairs building), and surprise surprise, will be renamed Chaoyangmen SOHO.

As the walls surrounding the Village at Sanlitun project come down to reveal an ultra modern, but as yet unopened, complex, urbane editor Alex Pasternack gives us his impression of the official launch of Soho China's new Sanlitun project.

At the tail end of Beijing's Olympic transformation, amidst government building restrictions and market jitters, it is getting a bit harder to spot those amazing, surreal moments of destruction in the city proper, when the old goes quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) in the face of the new.

But a vivid moment was offered up earlier this month courtesy of Soho China, which launched its new Sanlitun project with a big, brash grand opening. Hundreds of people pressed into their showroom to get a glimpse of classy, high-end apartments, gulp wine, and watch a pop cover band play beneath a screen showing a documentary set in Cultural Revolution-era China. The most exciting and surreal moment was when wiry models in suits serenaded the glassy architectural model with a flashlight dance (see video below).

Soho China, led by Zhang Xin and Pan Shiyi ("power couple" is not a phrase I want to repeat, but fine) has already remade a good deal of the east side of Beijing in its image, turning its upscale developments into urban landmarks (Jianwai Soho, Soho New Town (Xiandai Cheng), Soho Shangdu etc), and helping to coin a term now used across China for its favorite flavor of mixed-use development. In 2006, the Beijing Land Bureau said Soho China accounted for 36 percent of all major sales in the central business district. Last October, it turned its success into the largest IPO from China's private sector on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, making Pan and Zhang the 8th richest family in China. When I spoke to her at the launch, Zhang told us that Soho saw recent government lending restrictions as offering a prime opportunity to buy more property in Beijing. "Due to the credit crunch, there will be much more merger and acquisition opportunities this year," she said. But Soho Sanlitun would be the company's highest grossing project yet.

As the project's architect Kengo Kuma said, for architects "Beijing in 2008 is one of the most exciting times in history." He mentioned Tokyo's Roppongi district, and Hong Kong. "Beijing's like New York in the 1920s." The party at the Soho showroom earlier this month was a celebration of all of this. It was also an announcement that the Sanlitun neighborhood would never be quite the same again.

Of course, the legendary bar area's transformation has been afoot for a decade, as swaths of old apartment buildings and grungy bars have been demolished to make way for the neon and shine of faux-classy establishments, unabashedly sketchy establishments, and a large shopping mall. Though die-hard fans of the old bar street might have been able to accept the arrival of the wrecking balls and cranes, it was the loss of the area's most famous landmark – a giant, inexplicable beer mug situated on the southeast corner of Sanlitun and Gongti Beilu — that may have hurt the most.

Soho Sanlitun, a collection of curvy, sleek towers linked by footpaths and canals, will sit on the southwest corner of that intersection, where low-rise apartment buildings and some of Sanltiun South Street's legendary bars once thrived. Like the nearly-finished Village, the enormous two-part development across the street by Hong Kong developer Swire, Sanlitun Soho has been designed by Kengo Kuma, the respected Japanese architect known for his interest in light, airy forms. Kuma's involvement in both projects enables him, he says, to ensure more connectivity than is typical for Beijing. "Usually the character of Beijing design is that each block is too big, and the blocks are divided by the street. But in this case the street is not so wide, and people can cross easily" – there's a bridge – "and the two developments can combine together."

Instead of wrecking the current neighborhood, Kuma says he plans to retain most of the bar street's atmosphere. "In my experience, new developments are opposed to the existing human space. As you know, we often destroy the existing atmosphere. But in this development, I can preserve about 80 percent of the atmosphere."

Zhang, who Kuma likens to an architectural collaborator, emphasizes that Soho is dedicated to preserving a neighborhood feel in each of its projects. "We always say let's create neighborhoods rather than islands. We always advocate high-density urban developments. Whenever we see someone sell a project as an oasis of green, we think, that's not for a city."

But as the dancers in golden bodysuits pranced around the silky, curvy building model, and an emcee talked exuberantly about "the soul of Sanlitun," something seemed irrevocably lost. The architecture was beautiful, but it didn't look right for the neighborhood I knew. Instead of serving as branding tools, as it always does, the architecture seemed to transform under the glitz. The buildings that would transform the neighborhood were already being transformed by this surrealist, extravagant spectacle.

But that's Beijing. Something was always getting lost. My friend leaned in to me as we watched the dancers, each of whom was moving a flashlight over the model. "It's like they're looking for something." she shouted above the din. "The real Sanlitun?"

Links and Sources
urbane: Drinking Up: The New Shape of Sanlitun
that's Beijing: City Scene: Farewell then, Mug
that's Beijing: Excursion: Designer Commune
urbane: Whole New Possibilities
Wikipedia: Soho China
Soho China: Sanlitun Soho
Soho China: About Zhang Xin and Pan Shiyi
The Village at Sanlitun
Youtube: Soho Sanlitun
EastSouthWestNorth: Michelangelo Antonioni’s Chung Kuo documentary
Guardian: Brave new Beijing
IHT: Soho China revives IPO plan
The Independent: The human cost of the Games: Standing up to the Beijing bulldozers