On June 8th of 2015, which is the opening day of the Chinese Pavilion of Milan Expo, the Heritage Program “Long Plan” initiated by Vanke Corporation, was officially launched in Milan, Italy. Shi Wang, the Chairman of the Board of Vanke, Feng Ding, Senior Vice President of Vanke, Hui Wang, one of the founding partners of URBANUS, and Mingang Wang, the representative of Chengnan Village, Ruicheng, Shanxi Province all attended the launch ceremony.
The “Long Plan” is an initiative collectively supported by Vanke Corporation, Shanxi Culture Relics Bureau, Ruicheng Government, Taiyuan Vanke, URBANUS, Architectural Design and Research Institute and Department of Culture Heritage Conservation of Tsinghua University, and Shanxi Youth Newspaper. It also marked as the first crowd-funding program for public interest that targeted at heritage conservation. The “Long Plan” aimed at reusing the heritage of Vanke Pavilion of the 2015 Milan Expo by selling more than 4000 pieces of ceramic plates of the exterior wall to the public to generate funding, which will be utilized to the environmental facelift programs of the Five-Dragons-Temple located in Ruicheng, Shanxi Province.
URBANUS is taking the lead in the environmental facelift program of the Five-Dragons-Temple. Central to the design is the principle of giving prominence to the architecture itself. Without having to intrude the existing visual features or changing the natural rural environment, the design managed to extend the time to appreciate the Five-Dragons-Temple by creating delicately-designed space layers rather than simple courtyard. By embedding more exhibition materials in the space, the design proposal also achieved to better communicate the cultural significance of the Five-Dragons-Temple.
