Suzhou First Silk Factory Reconstruction And Upgrading Project Started

Recently, the renovation and upgrading project of Suzhou No. 1 Silk Factory, which bears the memory of Suzhou's century old silk industry, officially started. This silk industrial heritage, which was built in 1926, will take "activating industrial heritage and leading the trend culture" as the core concept, open the innovative dialogue between traditional silk culture and modern digital technology, and is expected to appear in a new look in 2026.

As a living witness to the development of China's modern silk industry, the transformation project of Suzhou No. 1 Silk Factory plans to retain the main body of five historical buildings, use the old bricks for secondary creation, build a cultural square around 28 ancient trees, through the combination of red brick base and washed stone materials, repair the industrial context, and implant a new functional space. After transformation, the Silk Factory Park will form a "one axis multi core" spatial layout, and build six functional blocks, including cultural display, fashion commerce, art performance, and industrial innovation.

In terms of architectural activation, Suzhou No. 1 Silk Factory will set up an industrial heritage exhibition hall and a silk culture new media exhibition hall, retain the old machines of the silk reeling workshop, and create an immersive industrial heritage tour line; In the field of digital empowerment, it will build a "digital special exhibition area of silk culture", use AR/VR technology to reproduce the historical scene of silk, introduce the digital art industry chain, focus on cutting-edge fields such as wearable devices, digital people, short videos, and build a cultural and technological ecological closed-loop. In terms of business innovation, it will introduce international fashion brands, link multiple indoor and outdoor spaces, plan art exhibitions, immersive dramas, gather designer studios, share office space, and attract a number of "culture+technology" leading enterprises such as BOE Yiyun to settle in. In addition, the Silk Factory Park will be equipped with art talent apartments and community shared space simultaneously to build an innovative ecology of deep integration of "industry, city and culture".

The implementation of this project marks that Suzhou has explored a new paradigm of industrial heritage activation. As a demonstration project of cultural and technological integration in the Yangtze River Delta, it is expected to drive more than 100 cultural and technological enterprises to gather, forming an annual consumption flow of 500000 person times. Through the compound mode of "digital art+community commerce", the project will create an open innovation platform for young entrepreneurs, and will build a globally oriented display window of industrial heritage activation with the help of the international influence of silk culture.

"This is not only the renewal of architectural space, but also the creative transformation of urban cultural genes, Inject new momentum into the construction of Suzhou. (Luo Wen, a reporter of Jiangsu Daily Media)

(Source: Suzhou Daily)