United Units Architects Transforms Factory into Dalian Thirty Seven Xiang Cultural Landmark

How Award Winning Design Transforms Industrial Heritage into Vibrant Cultural Landmarks that Attract Diverse Businesses and Foster Community Connection

What becomes of a cuboid factory building when its industrial purpose fades into history? The question sits at the heart of urban transformation, and for cities worldwide, the answer carries profound economic and cultural implications. In Dalian, China, a 4,000 square meter site halfway up a mountainside overlooking the harbor has become a compelling case study in architectural reinvention. The building once presented what its designers candidly described as a typical uninspiring example of industrial architecture. Today, the transformed structure houses a radio museum, creative offices, a bookshop, a tea room, fashion retail, art education spaces, and a restaurant, all unified under a new architectural identity that draws from the city's relationship with mountains and seas.

United Units Architects, a RIBA chartered practice with expertise spanning urban, architectural, and interior design, approached the Dalian project with a question that brand managers and property developers increasingly ask: how can existing structures become destinations rather than demolition candidates? The answer the design team developed between December 2020 and September 2022 earned Dalian 37 Xiang a Golden A' Design Award in the Architecture, Building and Structure Design category in 2023. The Golden A' Design Award recognition acknowledges creations that reflect extraordinary excellence and may significantly impact their context through desirable characteristics.

The transformation of Dalian 37 Xiang offers lessons for enterprises considering how architectural intervention creates business value, community connection, and lasting brand identity. What follows explores how thoughtful design converts industrial heritage into economic engines that serve multiple stakeholders simultaneously.

The Business Logic of Industrial Heritage Transformation

When enterprises evaluate real estate assets, abandoned factories often present a calculation problem. Demolition carries costs. New construction demands capital and time. The surrounding neighborhood may lack the infrastructure to support entirely new development paradigms. Yet abandoned industrial structures possess qualities that new construction cannot easily replicate: structural integrity, spatial generosity, and something more intangible (a connection to place and memory).

Dalian 37 Xiang sits in the core area of the old city, backed by Martyrs Mountain and facing Dalian Bay to the north, adjacent to government buildings. Scattered around the site is an equally decades-old neighborhood where the factory had become part of the collective memory of local residents. The mountainside positioning creates what urban planners call embedded value, meaning the accumulated significance that structures acquire simply by existing within communities over time.

For brands and enterprises, embedded value translates into differentiation. A converted factory carries authenticity that purpose-built commercial spaces struggle to achieve. The patina of industrial history, when thoughtfully preserved and enhanced, creates atmospheric qualities that attract tenants, visitors, and media attention. The original 6m x 9m structural grid at Dalian 37 Xiang provided the bones upon which a new identity could be built, offering floor-to-ceiling heights and column spacing that contemporary construction economics rarely permit.

The Dalian 37 Xiang project demonstrates how architectural investment in existing assets can yield returns across multiple dimensions: tenant diversity, visitor traffic, media coverage, community goodwill, and the intangible brand equity that comes from being associated with intelligent urban regeneration rather than demolition and displacement.

Design Language That Speaks to Place

The emergence of the architectural image comes from the exploration of Dalian's city spirit. The statement from the design team reveals something essential about how effective commercial architecture operates. Buildings communicate. Buildings tell stories about their owners, their purpose, and their relationship to their surroundings. When that communication is thoughtful and place-specific, the resulting architecture creates recognition and emotional connection that generic development cannot achieve.

United Units Architects abstracted their design language from the form of waves and sails, establishing a spiritual connection between the building and people by endowing the structure with new visual imagination. The geographical features of Dalian, including mountains, hills, peninsulas, and oceans, provided the conceptual framework. The building now echoes the spirit of the city while establishing a contrast between old and new through what the designers describe as delicate and light interventions.

For enterprises commissioning architectural work, the place-specific approach offers a methodology worth understanding. Generic design produces generic results. Place-specific design creates differentiation. When a building's visual identity draws from local geography, culture, or history, the structure becomes unmistakably of its location. Visitors recognize authenticity, even when visitors cannot articulate exactly why the space feels distinctive.

The waves and sails motif at Dalian 37 Xiang serves multiple functions. The motif creates visual interest that draws attention from the harbor below. The design provides a narrative that media can easily communicate. The maritime references connect the building to Dalian's coastal identity in ways that resonate with local residents. And the distinctive imagery establishes a memorable image that tenants can leverage in their own marketing, positioning themselves within a recognized landmark rather than an anonymous commercial space.

The Facade Grid System and Technical Innovation

Architecture that communicates effectively must also perform practically. The transformation of Dalian 37 Xiang required reconciling romantic design aspirations with the prosaic realities of building codes, material specifications, and budget constraints. The solution the design team developed demonstrates how systematic thinking enables creative freedom.

The first step of the renovation strategy established a new facade grid. The horizontal lines of the grid formed according to the building levels of the floors, roof, and parapet. The vertical lines spaced 1.2 meters apart, a dimension that conforms to specifications of conventional building materials while forming a multiple relationship with the building's structural grid. The systematic foundation enabled the design team to create a new facade system superimposed on the old structural order.

Why does the technical detail of the facade grid matter for enterprises considering architectural projects? Systematic approaches reduce costs while expanding creative possibilities. The 1.2-meter module meant standard material dimensions could be used without custom fabrication. The alignment with existing structural elements meant the facade intervention could be relatively light, avoiding expensive structural modifications. Yet within the rational framework, the design team achieved the flowing, dynamic forms that give the building its distinctive character.

The result transformed 5,300 square meters of gross floor area into a regional landmark without requiring the demolition and reconstruction that might have seemed necessary to achieve dramatic visual change. For brand managers evaluating construction budgets, the Dalian 37 Xiang approach suggests that intelligent design systems can achieve memorable results within practical constraints. The creativity is in the framework as much as in the final forms.

Mixed Business Ecosystems and Synergistic Value

Mixed business types are an important prerequisite for ensuring the vitality of the park. The observation from the design documentation addresses a fundamental challenge in commercial development: how do you create destinations rather than mere addresses? The answer involves understanding that diverse businesses within a single location can create synergies that benefit all participants.

Dalian 37 Xiang comprises rental offices, a radio museum, a coffee shop, a bookshop, communal space, a tea shop, a fashion shop, art education facilities, and a restaurant. Each business type suits a specific target customer group. Through rational allocation and sharing of resources, different business types guide customers to each other, creating what the designers call a synergistic effect.

Consider the visitor journey that business diversity enables. Someone visiting the radio museum might discover the bookshop. A tenant working in the creative offices might host clients at the restaurant. Parents waiting while children attend art education classes might browse the fashion shop. Each business benefits from traffic generated by others, reducing the marketing burden any single tenant must bear.

For enterprises developing or investing in commercial properties, the ecosystem approach offers lessons about tenant curation. The goal extends beyond maximizing rent per square meter. Strategic tenant mix creates destination appeal that justifies premium positioning. The fusion space theme at Dalian 37 Xiang positions the entire development as an experience rather than a collection of independent businesses.

The mixed-use approach also builds resilience. When economic conditions affect one sector, other tenants maintain foot traffic. The diversity spreads opportunity across market segments while creating a coherent identity that none of the individual businesses could achieve alone.

Community Connection as Strategic Asset

The new architectural image should resonate emotionally with the surrounding residents while also becoming a regional landmark facing the future, activating the old community in the way of acupuncture. The design philosophy reveals sophisticated thinking about how architecture operates within social contexts.

The acupuncture metaphor deserves attention. In urban planning, acupuncture refers to targeted interventions that catalyze broader transformation. Rather than demolishing and rebuilding entire neighborhoods, acupuncture projects introduce new energy at strategic points, allowing positive change to radiate outward. Dalian 37 Xiang, positioned within an established residential area, operates exactly according to the acupuncture principle.

Local residents who grew up seeing the factory as part of their neighborhood now encounter a transformed landmark that honors neighborhood history while offering new amenities. The roof garden, the communal spaces, and the publicly accessible areas create value for the surrounding community beyond the economic transactions occurring within the building. Community benefit generates goodwill that translates into word-of-mouth promotion, local political support, and the intangible social license that smooths operations over time.

For brands and enterprises, community connection represents an increasingly valuable strategic asset. Development projects that ignore surrounding neighborhoods face resistance. Projects that engage communities thoughtfully earn advocates. The emotional resonance the designers sought at Dalian 37 Xiang required understanding what the factory meant to local residents and ensuring the transformation added to rather than erased collective meaning.

The building now faces the future while standing on foundations of collective memory. Temporal bridging that honors the past while enabling the future creates stability that purely forward-looking projects struggle to achieve.

Recognition and International Visibility

When design excellence receives formal acknowledgment from established institutions, recognition creates amplification effects that extend far beyond the certificate or trophy. The Golden A' Design Award recognition that Dalian 37 Xiang received in 2023 positions the project within an international context, making the development discoverable to audiences who might never have encountered the project through local channels alone.

International visibility serves multiple stakeholders. For United Units Architects, the recognition validates their approach and provides credible third-party endorsement of their capabilities. For current tenants, operating within an award-winning building adds prestige to their own positioning. For prospective tenants, the recognition reduces perceived uncertainty about the development's quality and staying power. For the city of Dalian, having an internationally recognized architectural landmark contributes to cultural tourism and city branding efforts.

The mechanics of recognition also matter. Award programs with substantial jury processes, international reach, and comprehensive promotion frameworks create documentation that persists over time. Press releases, yearbook features, exhibition inclusions, and digital showcases help projects remain visible long after initial completion. For enterprises investing in architectural quality, extended visibility represents ongoing return on the design investment.

Design professionals and brand managers seeking inspiration for heritage transformation projects can explore the award-winning dalian 37 xiang design to examine how the design team balanced preservation with innovation, how the facade system creates visual interest while respecting practical constraints, and how the mixed-use program generates synergistic value across diverse business types.

Implications for Urban Regeneration Strategy

Dalian 37 Xiang demonstrates principles that extend beyond the project's specific context. Cities worldwide contain industrial buildings whose original purposes have faded. Industrial structures present opportunities for enterprises with vision and patience. The question is how to approach transformation in ways that generate value while contributing positively to urban fabric.

The Dalian 37 Xiang project suggests several strategic considerations:

• Site selection matters enormously. The Dalian location offered views of the harbor, proximity to government buildings, and an established residential neighborhood. Contextual factors amplified the design's impact in ways that would have been impossible on a less distinguished site.
• Design concepts rooted in local identity outperform generic approaches. The waves and sails motif works specifically because the motif connects to Dalian's geography and maritime culture. Transplanting the same forms to a different city would produce attractive architecture but would miss the resonance that makes the design meaningful to local audiences.
• Technical systems that reconcile creativity with practicality enable better outcomes than either pure artistic expression or pure cost optimization. The facade grid at Dalian 37 Xiang demonstrates how systematic thinking creates frameworks within which creative solutions become economically viable.
• Tenant mix strategies require curation, not just leasing. The synergistic value at Dalian 37 Xiang emerges from thoughtful combination of complementary businesses, not from maximizing rent from whoever applies first.
• Community engagement transforms potential opposition into support. Developments that honor collective memory while offering new amenities build constituencies that sustain projects through inevitable challenges.

The strategic principles apply across scales and contexts. Whether the project involves a single factory building or an entire industrial district, the fundamental approach remains consistent: understand the existing asset's value, connect to local identity, create systematic frameworks for creative intervention, curate diverse uses, and engage surrounding communities.

Looking Forward

The transformation of Dalian 37 Xiang from abandoned factory to cultural landmark represents more than an architectural achievement. The project demonstrates a philosophy about how built environments can evolve, how industrial heritage can find new purpose, and how thoughtful design creates value that compounds over time.

For enterprises evaluating similar opportunities, the Dalian 37 Xiang project offers encouragement. Industrial buildings that seem unpromising can become destinations. Technical constraints can be transformed into design frameworks. Community memory can be honored while enabling new possibilities. Recognition from established institutions can amplify local investments into international visibility.

The fusion space theme at the heart of Dalian 37 Xiang suggests something broader about contemporary commercial development. Boundaries between uses blur. Visitors seek experiences that combine work, culture, commerce, and community. Buildings that accommodate complexity thrive, while single-purpose structures struggle.

What abandoned buildings exist in your city that carry similar potential? What design concepts might connect new uses to local identity? How might technical systems enable creative transformation within practical constraints? The answers to these questions could define the next generation of urban landmarks.