Mix Architecture Converts 1933 Hankou Lifen into 8,109 m² Commercial Block

Mix Architecture has completed the Yanqing Li Commercial Renovation, an 8,109-square-meter conversion of a 1933 residential complex in Hankou's historic district that the client positions as a pilot project for the regeneration of the wider Sanyang district.

The complex sits at the intersection of Shengli Street and Eryao Xiaolu. It consists of seven buildings blending Eastern and Western styles, arranged around four intertwined alleyways — a layout the architects preserved rather than erased. Zhong Yansheng, who originally built the traditional lifen in 1933, gave the development its name.

Photographs by Yilong Zhao and Arch-Exist document the completed conversion.

What happened to the site before the renovation?

The complex suffered wartime damage and later absorbed the effects of population shifts, according to the architects' project description. Like many lifen in Hankou — the low-rise, lane-based housing typology that defined the city's early twentieth-century growth — Yanqing Li deteriorated as residents moved out and uses changed over the decades.

The building stock survived, but its condition and function no longer matched the surrounding district's needs. Urban regeneration is now the mechanism bringing it back into active use.

What does the renovation change?

The client's brief called for transforming Yanqing Li into an open commercial block while preserving its historic character. That dual requirement — commercial openness and heritage retention — defines the project's core design problem.

The seven-building cluster and its four intertwined alleyways form the structure of the new block. The renovation converts the former residential fabric into commercial space across 8,109 square meters, completed in 2025.

The project carries weight beyond its own footprint. As a designated pilot for the Sanyang district renewal, Yanqing Li will function as a test case for how similar historic complexes in Hankou can be converted — whether the lifen typology, with its dense lane network and mixed Eastern and Western architectural language, can absorb commercial programs without losing the character that makes it worth preserving.

The architects describe the site as blending Eastern and Western styles, a legacy of Hankou's history as a treaty port where the lifen typology itself emerged from that collision of building cultures.

Why does a pilot project matter here?

Sanyang district renewal decisions made on the back of Yanqing Li's performance — foot traffic, tenant uptake, heritage outcomes — will inform how the surrounding historic fabric is treated next. The 2025 completion gives the district its first full-scale data point on lifen-to-commercial-block conversion.

With the renovation finished, attention shifts to whether the open-block model can sustain the historic lanes' character under commercial pressure, and whether Sanyang's remaining lifen stock follows the same path.