Beijing 798 789 District

Introduction of 798 Art District

In the northeast corner of Beijing, there is an art district named after a factory built in the 1950s, which is 798 Art District. It is located in the Dashanzi area of Jiuxianqiao Street, Chaoyang District, Beijing, so it is also known as the Dashanzi Art District (DAD-Dashanzi Art District for short), which was originally the site of the former state-owned 798 Factory and other old factories of the electronics industry. The area extends from Jiuxianqiao Road in the west to the Jingbao Railway in the east, from Jiuxianqiao North Road in the north to Jiangtai Road in the south, covering an area of more than 600,000 square meters.

The area currently called 798 Art District is the area of six factories, 706, 707, 718, 751, 797 and 798, belonging to the former Ministry of Electronics Industry. From the late 50s to 1964, this area used to be called "718 Joint Factory", known as "State-owned Beijing North China Radio Equipment Joint Factory". In 1964, these six factories began to operate independently, from the joint factory a change into six factories, until 2001. 2001, in addition to the 751 factory, five factories and Huarong Asset Company (Holdings) and 751 factory jointly formed the seven stars Huadian Group, unified management of this area.

Beginning in 2001, artists from around and outside of Beijing began to gather at the 798 Factory, and with the unique vision of artists, they discovered the unique advantages of this place for practicing art. They made full use of the original style of the factory (German Bauhaus architecture), slightly renovated and modified it, and transformed it into a characteristic art exhibition and creation space. Nowadays, 798 has attracted a lot of attention from domestic and foreign media and the public, and has become a new landmark of urban culture in Beijing.

798 Art District represents the 798 cultural concept

After the artists and cultural institutions moved in, they rented and transformed the vacant factory buildings on a large scale, and gradually developed them into galleries, art centers, artists' studios, design firms, restaurants and bars, and other spaces, forming a "SOHO art colony" and "LOFT art colony" with international colors. It has formed a "SOHO-style art colony" and "LOFT lifestyle" with an international color, which has attracted considerable attention. Through the organic combination of contemporary art, architectural space, cultural industry, historical lineage and urban living environment, 798 has evolved into a cultural concept, which has a strong attraction to all kinds of professionals and the general public, and has had a considerable impact on the concept of urban culture and living space.

The architectural style of the factory area, mainly 798 Factory, is simple and plain, emphasizing functionality. The huge cast-in-place structures and bright skylights are rarely seen in other buildings. They were built in the early 50's with the aid of the Soviet Union and the design and construction of East Germany, and have experienced countless storms and vicissitudes over the decades. Along with the reform and opening up as well as the transformation of Beijing's urban cultural orientation and people's lifestyles, and the wave of globalization, 798 Factory and other such enterprises are also facing the task of redefinition and redevelopment. With Beijing's urbanization process and the expansion of the city's area, the Dashanzi area, which used to be a suburb of the city, has become a part of the city, and the original industries have been relocated out of the city, and new industries with non-pollution, low energy consumption and high-tech content, which are more suitable for the city's positioning and development trend, will inevitably rise on the same site. The arrival of a large number of artists and cultural figures is a reflection of this historical trend.

This group of tenants includes cultural industries such as design, publishing, exhibition, performance and artists' studios, as well as service industries such as boutique home furnishings, fashion, bars and restaurants. Under the premise of preserving the original historical and cultural legacy, they have redefined, designed and remodeled the original industrial factory buildings, bringing a creative understanding of architecture and lifestyle. These vacant factory buildings themselves become new architectural works after their transformation, and start a vivid dialog with the old buildings in the factory area between the historical lineage and the development paradigm, and between practicality and aesthetics.

The way of life of these tenants is itself a product of economic reform, and they demonstrate a new relationship between their personal ideas and the socio-economic structure - between utopia and reality, between memory and the future. 798 is a vehicle for the youth culture of the new era, which has matured and become mature. The culture formed here will be the internationalization of local resources and the socialization of personal ideals. The new 798 means the existence of pioneer consciousness and traditional mood***, experimental color and social responsibility, win-win situation between spiritual pursuit and economic planning, and interaction between the elite and the public. This phenomenon in 798 involves a wide range of aspects such as urban development, production and consumption patterns.

History of 798 Art Zone

The Formation of 718 Joint Factory

Talking about the history of Beijing 798 Art Zone, we must start from the industrialization of New China. The place where Beijing 798 Art Zone is located is the "Beijing North China Radio Joint Factory", which was constructed during the period of "the First Five-Year Plan" of New China.

The 798 Art Zone in Beijing is located in the place where the new Chinese "First Five-Year Plan" was constructed, the "Beijing North China Radio Equipment Factory", that is, the 718 Joint Factory, which was approved by Premier Zhou Enlai personally, and directed by Minister Wang Zheng to prepare for the construction of the former Soviet Union and the GDR to assist in the establishment of the Factory.

In 1952, the joint factory was built in Jiuxianqiao, a suburb of Beijing with no industrial base, and civil construction began in 1954. In October 1957, state leaders attended the opening ceremony and announced the start of production. Its speed was rare in the early period of the founding of the country, and it united the hard work of the old generation of leaders and builders. In the area of Jiuxianqiao, with the 718 joint plant at the same time as the construction of the 774 plant, 738 plant, the completion of these three factories, not only changed the face of the Jiuxianqiao area, but also in the history of China's electronics industry to form the beginning of the development of a large number, the pioneering role of the development of China's electronics industry will always be recorded in the annals of the history of the 718 joint plant after the completion of the economic construction of the country, especially for the construction of the electronics industry, national defense construction, the development of the communications industry, In April 1964, the Ministry of Four Machines abolished the establishment of 718 Joint Factory and set up 706, 707, 718, 797, 798 and 751 factories directly under the Ministry.

The architectural design of 718 Joint Factory

718 Joint Factory was one of the 156 key projects during the First Five-Year Plan period, and it was one of the reconstruction projects supported by the socialist camp to China. Due to the leading position of the electronics industry in this camp, East Germany was given the important task of building the Joint Factory. At that time, East Germany's Vice Chancellor, Ersner, personally took charge of the project and utilized the technology, experts and equipment production lines of all of East Germany to complete the project. Because there was no factory of the same size in East Germany, Ersner organized the authoritative experts from 44 institutes and factories in East Germany to set up a back-up group for the project of the 718 Joint Factory, and finally set up the strength of the electronics industry of the whole of East Germany, including the technology, experts, and equipment production lines to complete this grand project with utopian ideals.Li Rui, the first director of the 718 Joint Factory, said in his reminiscence article: "I have seen more than 20 factories in Germany, of which no single one was of this size. As far as I know, factories of this size are also rare in the Soviet Union and in countries of the other camps of socialism."

An architectural agency in Dessau was responsible for the design of the sprawling building for the Union Works, which was in the same city as the Bauhaus School of that year, and the two were ****ing in tune on the spiritual level of architecture.Gropius founded the Bauhaus School in Weimar, Germany, in 1919. Under the influence of abstract art, a new style of arts and crafts and architectural style was born, which is mainly characterized by: focus on meeting the practical requirements; play the technical performance and aesthetic performance of new materials and new structures; simple modeling, flexible and diverse composition. Based on this, the new modernist architectural style was formed, advocating to adapt to the needs of modern large-scale industrial production and life, characterized by architectural function, technology and economic efficiency, later known as the Bauhaus school.

The Union Works, with its typical Bauhaus style, is an example of the perfect combination of practicality and simplicity, and the Germans pursued high standards in building quality. For example, the seismic strength was designed to be above grade 8, while the standards of China and the Soviet Union at that time were only grade 6 to 7; for example, in order to ensure the solidity, the building bricks of No. 500 were used; and also, the windows of the factory building were facing north, while those of the general buildings at that time were facing south, and the design could make full use of the sky light and the reflected light, which kept the light uniform and stable, and from the point of view of the visual feeling, the constant light could produce an ineffable sense of beauty.

[Idle factory buildings and the formation of the art district〗

In December 2000, the former 700, 706, 707, 718, 797, 798 factories and other six units were integrated and reorganized into the Beijing Seven Stars Huadian Technology Group Co. Seven Star Group is the earliest batch of high-tech enterprises recognized by Beijing and Electronic City Park. Due to the reintegration of the assets of the former six factories, a part of the property was left idle. In order to make full use of this part of the property, Seven Star Group leased out these plants one after another.

In February 2002, Robert, an American, rented the 120-square-meter Hui people's canteen here and transformed it into a front store and back company. Robert is a Chinese art website, and some of the people he often interacts with have also taken a liking to the spaciousness and low rent here, and have rented some of the factory buildings as studios or exhibition space. The "snowball" of the "798" artists' group rolled up in this way. As part of the plant belongs to the typical modernist Bauhaus style, the entire factory area is well planned, unique architectural style, attracting many artists to work and settle down, and slowly formed today's 798 Art District.

The existing organizations in 798 Art District

At present, nearly 200 organizations involved in culture and art have entered this area. According to the incomplete statistics in March 2005, among the 103 organizations entering the 798 Art Zone, there are two main categories: creation, exhibition and communication, and design, of which 59 (57.3% of all the organizations) belong to art creation, exhibition and communication, and 29 (28% of all the organizations) belong to the design category (including space design, advertisement design, home furniture design, and clothing and image design). (over 28% of all organizations). In addition, there are a number of smaller categories related to artistic creation, such as communication and distribution and bookstores and restaurants and bars.

At least 300 artists live directly in the 798 Art Zone or use the 798 Art Zone as their main space for art creation, and there are also some artists from abroad, who come from France, the United States, Belgium, the Netherlands, Australia, South Korea, Singapore and so on. Into the 798 Art Zone are both big-name artists such as Liu Sora (writer, musician), Hong Feng (publisher, publisher), Li Zongsheng (musician), Li Xiangqun (sculptor), and so on, there are also unheard of no-name artists.

Artists and their companies rent areas in the 798 Art Zone, ranging from several thousand square meters to tens of square meters. Among them, the largest rented area is the world-renowned, one of the world's largest art collection and exhibition company Ullens Art Belgium (rented area of 4,500 square meters) and the United States of America Southern California School of Architecture (rented area of more than 4,000 square meters), followed by Li Xia rented gallery engaged in the exhibition of space (2,000 square meters), Hong Fong, Yang Xiaoping co-rented for the publication of I LOOK SEVENTEEN, LE and other magazines (1,610 square meters), Shi Jinsong Gallery (1,350 square meters), Tense Space (1,000 square meters) rented by Xu Yong, and the art studio rented by Li Mowei (1,000 square meters). Recently, the world-renowned Guggenheim Artworks has proposed to rent 5,000 to 10,000 meters in the 798 Art District, but there is no longer such a large area available for rent in the 798 Art District.

So far, in the original 718 joint factory area, about 100,000 square meters have been rented out to various Chinese and foreign art and cultural institutions, accounting for about more than 50 percent of the entire factory.

The Art Effect of 798 Art Zone

The "pile up" effect and celebrity effect of artists, coupled with the fact that since 2004 there have been two sessions of the Dashanzi International Art Festival (DIAF), which has been held in Beijing. -Dashanzi International Art Festival (DIAF) has been held for two times since 2004, the influence of 798 Art Zone is getting bigger and bigger. The first edition of the festival (one month from April to May 2004) attracted 80,000 visitors, of which about 60% were Chinese and 40% foreign, including representatives of contemporary art from major foreign cities such as Paris, etc. More than 120 Chinese and foreign media reported on the festival, the artists active in the area and their works. A number of domestic and foreign cultural institutions and foundations sponsored the festival. The second festival (April 30 to May 22, 2005), in 23 days, *** conducted 109 performances, exhibitions, seminars and other art activities, attracting more than 80,000,000 viewers, with the largest number of visitors reaching nearly 10,000 on a single day. 798 Art Zone conducted the "Biennale" from September 22 to October 7, 2005, which was also very fruitful. "The Biennale was held in 798 Art Zone from September 22 to October 7, 2005, which also achieved fruitful results and attracted more than 60,000 viewers. The above activities, so that the 798 Art Zone's reputation is growing, art turnover is also increasing day by day.

Since 2004, the Prime Minister of Sweden, the Prime Minister of Switzerland, the Chancellor of Germany (Gerhard Schr?der), the Chancellor of Austria, the President of the European Union (Barroso), the Princess of Belgium, Mrs. Annan, Mrs. Chirac, the President of France, and so on, have visited 798 Art Zone. Schroeder exclaimed during his visit to the 798 Art District: "The Bauhaus buildings of decades ago are rarely found in Germany, and today they actually exist in Beijing, which is really rare!" The Crown Princess of Belgium, on the other hand, spent tens of thousands of dollars on the artwork. Foreign leaders or their wives who came to the 798 Art Zone all agreed that the 798 Art Zone is very good, and did not think that China still has such a good place to express active ideas, reflecting the results of China's reform and opening up.

In 2003, 798 Art District was named one of the 22 most culturally iconic urban art centers in the world by Time magazine. In the same year, Beijing was selected for the first time as one of Newsweek's top 12 world cities of the year because the 798 Art District turned a derelict factory into a fashionable community.

In 2004, Beijing was listed as one of the world's top 20 growing cities in the U.S. by Fortune Magazine's annual selection, and the reason for the selection remained 798.

In the past two to three years, the 798 Art District has come to visit and tour the city, observe, learn, exchange and buy artworks are more and more people. According to a sample survey, in 2004, there were about 450,000 people, and in 2005, there were more than 500,000 people visiting this district. The ratio of foreign visitors to domestic visitors is about 4:6.