FREITAG Store Shanghai is located in Xian-Suo district, north of Jing’an Temple in the heart of Shanghai, an area that has recently seen a rise in small cafes and commercial facilities, despite being residential.

Found on a small alley connecting Yan Pinglu and Jiaozhou Lu, it is designed to be visible from both streets.

FREITAG is a bag brand born in 1993 in an industrial area of Zurich, Switzerland. The founders, the Freitag brothers, took inspiration from colorful trucks when they designed the first Freitag bag (now a very well-known story), which consisted entirely of recycled materials, used truck tarpaulins, discarded bicycle tubes, and car seat belts.
As FREITAG reuses discarded materials not only for its bags but also in its store design, with this project, we wanted to weave the brand story with the site and surrounding environment to create a concept with the saving of resources at its core.

Therefore, we decided to recycle as much of the existing architecture on the proposed site (a state-run textile factory built in the 1970s-1980s) while strengthening the structural parts to transition it into a longer-lasting building. Minimization of CO2 emissions was a key requirement. The entire building process was geared to this end, and the footprint of the conversion analyzed in detail.

Elements retrieved from the existing building were retained or reused wherever possible. And when there was no way to avoid the use of new materials, they were sourced within a radius of around 100 kilometers. The old walls were demolished with the utmost care to facilitate the reuse of as many intact bricks as possible. Rubble from the demolition of ceilings and walls was collected to make so-called “rebirth bricks” on site that could be used for the new floors, and the hoarding panels that had enveloped the entire building during reconstruction work and protected passers-by and the neighborhood from debris and dust was cut and repurposed on-site into a characteristic facade. The steel structural frame refinedly touches the ground, effectively widening the alley and providing space for external activities and circulation.

Construct the façade with deck plate re-used from the hoarding. It was determined in the planning stage of construction, when we knew a fully enclosed hoarding made with metal was necessary to provide undisturbed construction environment for this project. We saw the material similarity between the hoarding and our designed deck plate façade, so we decided to use the deck plate as the hoarding material. In later stages of construction, the deck plate was removed from hoarding, trimmed to size and reinstalled as permanent façade material. Eventually, about 65% of the façade was directly adapted from the hoarding and through which we avoided using single-use metal panels for the hoarding to a degree.

The new facade’s slightly larger window sections give an insight into the building’s history.

After the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, it was the first time when building debris was used to mass-produce bricks as post-catastrophic rebuilding material, and thus it was named rebirth brick. Inspired by the act, we are site-producing cement-based bricks by adding architectural waste into the brick mold. As a result, we produce the brick material with a handcrafted look that also consumes some waste from demolition in the process. Rebirth brick would be used mainly as 1F floor paving material. From the paving, debris of red brick, white ceramic or black terrazzo are still visible. We find it particularly meaningful to craft unique-looking material that contains part of the old building and serves as the basis/ground of the new.

The second and third floors are accessed from the outside via an exterior staircase painted in “Traffic Yellow,” one of the brand’s image colors.

この外階段だけでなく、カーゴリフト、ハシゴなど、垂直方向の移動に関連する要素には「Traffic Yellow」を採用することで、主にモノトーン（今回は彼らがよく使用する「Industry Grey」もインテリアエレメンツに多く採用した）となっている建築、インテリア要素に視認性と、ワクワク感をもたらしている。

The use of “Traffic Yellow” for this staircase as well as for elements related to vertical movements, such as cargo lifts and ladders, brings visibility and a sense of excitement to the architecture and interior, which is mainly monotone (painted in “Light Grey” often used by Freitag).

A repair station was planned on the first floor to ensure that FREITAG’s products have an even longer service life, all in the spirit of the circular economy.

As a part of the community, FREITAG has tried to create a genuinely rewarding space. A landscaped roof terrace, for example, is open to the public, and people in the neighborhood help to inject it with life. FREITAG Store Shanghai is a hybrid concept occupying the space between neighborhood and retail. We hope the store, which will open on March 25th, will become a long-lasting place within the community and a hub for the brand’s growth.

https://media.freitag.ch/ja/media/stores/shanghai

Project approach reduces emissions by 144 t CO2 eq　（See the link above for details.）

Throughout the entire conversion of the new Shanghai FREITAG Store, the focus was on minimizing CO2 emissions.
Thanks to the use of various measures, they were reduced by around 144 t CO2 eq (approx. 45%).
This figure includes the production, construction and end-of-life stages and corresponds to the amount of CO2 absorbed jointly by 11,500 beech trees in a year.
The same amount of CO2 is also emitted during the production of 205,000 kWh of electricity (East China Power Grid) or the use of 48.2 tonnes of gasoline.