Yangtian Electric Substation 220-kV
- Client
- Guangzhou Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Bureau, Guangzhou Power Supply Bureau of Guangdong
- Services
- Architecture
- Sector
- Culture + Civic
- Location
- Guangzhou, China
An electrical substation reframed as public architecture
The 220-kV Yangtian Substation is a 14,600m² electrical infrastructure project in the Huangpu District of Guangzhou, the historic gateway to South China. The scheme forms one of 15 substations being delivered through a city-wide programme to reshape essential utility infrastructure as integrated public architecture. Benoy’s Phoenix Rebirth proposal was selected to lead the Yangtian site, working for the Guangzhou Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Bureau and the Guangzhou Power Supply Bureau.
14,600m²
A design drawn from local legend and Lingnan architecture
The concept is rooted in Huangpu’s founding legend, that a phoenix once flew to a village on the Pearl River to bathe, and the village grew into the district now called Huangpu. The new substation takes the phoenix as its organising image, with cladding boards composed to read as feathers and depth, shadow and form across the elevations giving the building a subtle three-dimensional play in changing light. The wider material language draws on traditional Lingnan architecture, the regional vernacular still visible in the ancient villages of Huangpu.
Old bricks made into new walls
The project reuses broken bricks salvaged from old houses in the local villages, processed into aggregate for the concrete structure to give the building a terracotta-like surface and a sense of historical texture. Varied treatments are explored: painted retaining walls at the edges, broken-brick aggregate concrete in the non-load-bearing walls, and exposed concrete on the substation walls themselves. The scheme reframes a typically utilitarian piece of city infrastructure as a contribution to its surrounding neighbourhood and was a finalist at the World Architecture Festival 2022 in the Future Projects: Infrastructure category.
