Commercial Space Design In Historic District Rehabiliation

Today the protection and renewal of historic environment is widely focused. Since the 1930s some western countries began the conservation of Historic District, a mature system of policy has been formed to guide their practices. In China, more and more urban renewal projects have appeared in the twenty years but are in chaos to some extent. So how can we keep calm before the temptation of exploitation and make full of the excellent experiences of the western architects to develop the fit means for current historic building and environment reconstructions in China are being called into questions.The renewal of historic building and its environment embodies the progress of city and comes down to many aspects of sociology, philosophy and the human's culture while it always stay in the dilemma of "protection" and "development". Considering the circumstance, this paper chooses the commercial reuse of the historic buildings as necessary and appropriate pattern to promote the revitalization of old districts. Involving with urban sociology and psychology, corresponding governing principals and applicable reconstruction methods are brought forward.First, we take the historic district into urban ecosystem to analyze its advantages and shortcomings on macroscopical level, to introduce active factors activating the commercial atmosphere; then, deepen the discussion into building-unit and details. Referring to a lot of convictive examples, we probe into the design elements, the methods of new space recreation and the continuity of historic information thoroughly. In the end, systematically analyze the "Xin Tian Di" project in Shanghai, China, we reiterate the major idea of this paper: only when the historic buildings and their environments have displayed corresponding "faces" the time endows them, they are animated.