Blooming Forest

Dancing Silos is an industrial-heritage public-space activation for the Huxi Industrial Park in Wujiang, near Shanghai, at the project's entrance plaza. The park's entrance is flanked by two old concrete silos, originally storage bins for the silk factory that once occupied the site. The industrial space was being converted into a creative industrial park, and the client commissioned 100architects to turn the two silos into the new brand image for the creative district. The design takes the existing industrial elements as the main protagonists, creating an intervention that is both elegant and disruptive. Real flowers are the first visual ingredient; three species in three colors bloom differently in spring, summer, and autumn, giving the silos a changing identity through the year. Small openings in the concrete above the storage bins form the ideal pot for each hanging flower. The second ingredient is vertical steel louver curtains that wrap the exterior, aiming to produce the illusion that the cylinders are moving, rotating, and dancing by means of a repetitive geometric pattern on the louvers that simulates multiple movements at once. The dancing illusion is further enhanced at night with proper lighting, producing a video-mapping effect that makes the concrete cylinders appear to rotate as a whole. The result is a truly iconic entrance for the creative industrial park.