Combat machinery factory renovation and renewal

The former Fighting Machinery Factory sits at the foot of Red Mountain in northern Nanjing, beside Nanjing Railway Station. Built in the 1950s, its production gradually moved away as the city expanded and industry shifted, leaving the site idle. Around 2006 it was renovated as a creative industry park but failed to revive; later walls, tile facing, and plaster hid its industrial memory, and dense Red Mountain vegetation gradually enveloped the abandoned buildings, making the site an urban-forest edge forgotten by the city. In late 2020 the owner commissioned Misi to renew the factory into a mixed-use office park. The first task was to awaken memory and restore vitality, preserving existing trees while revealing historical traces and reconnecting to the city. The design extracts the most important feature of the old factory, red-brick fair-faced walls, and reshapes the campus with a seemingly serious yet relaxed approach: a red architecture at the foot of Red Mountain that carries specific red memory. Materials and their shared characteristics unify the park and reawaken memory: red brick, red fair-faced concrete, red terrazzo, and red tile facing represent construction methods of different eras and strengthen the red identity. After establishing this common character, the design emphasizes each building's individuality and its relationship with nature, using landscape walls and rhythmic spatial change. Low walls combined with existing vegetation separate public and individual space, smoothing grade changes and filling gaps between buildings while giving each its own freedom within a complete site. Complete, heavy walls guide visitors, and gradually opened interiors reveal a window toward the mountain or nature. The building becomes a connector through which variations of space and material dialogue with city, heritage, and nature at different levels, producing an experience that links city, history, and nature.