UCD’s Design Plaza Goes into Operation

On the morning of Oct. 18, the ceremony for putting UCD’s design plaza in use saw a grand opening. Pei Hongwei, vice Party secretary and general manager of Beijing Urban Construction Group Co., Ltd. (BUCG) and board chairperson of Beijing Urban Construction Design & Development Group Co., Ltd. (UCD), UCD’s general manager Wang Hanjun, and Pan Shoulin, Party secretary of Beijing Urban Construction Yatai Group Co., Ltd., attended the ceremony. Nearly one hundred persons, including UCD’s leaders, leaders of functional departments and various units, and employee representatives of units settled in the plaza, participated in the ceremony.

Pei Hongwei, BUCG’s general manager and UCD’s board chairperson, Wang Hanjun, UCD’s general manager, Lu Ming, board chairperson of Xinjie (representative of settled enterprises), Zhang Na, representative of employees of settled units and designer of the bridge branch of Beijing Municipal Engineering Research Institute and Huang Jing, chief designer of the decoration project of the design plaza, came on the stage to cut the ribbon for UCD’s design plaza.
The design plaza is another new office building purchased by UCD in Beijing, which will facilitate the pioneering of the new future at a new starting point. Located at Zhangyicun Road, Fengtai District and with its main body consisting of 15 floors, the design plaza occupies a total floorage of more than 11000 square meters and has 120 parking spaces. The plaza was totally designed and decorated on UCD’s own. The design has integrated De Stijl, three-dimensional constructivism and the Chinese Buddhist mood to foster an art space imbued with urban atmosphere. The architectural function has extended and inherited the humanism of the head office located at No.5, Beidajie Street, being concise rather than simple, which has improved the utilization rate of the office space to the fullest extent and has demonstrated the cozy and healthy office concept.

Exterior facade of the plaza

Office space of employees

Hall for academic report

Meeting room

Currently, UCD’s 6 units, including the municipal institute, the planning institute, the engineering economic design institute, Xinjie company, Shunjie company and the tenth unit of the rail transit institute, have been stationed in the plaza, and the plaza can hold more than 800 employees to work.

In his address, Wang Hanjun briefly reviewed in retrospect the history of UCD’s development. Through sixty-five years’ development, UCD has turned from one that was only involved in subway design to one that is expanding and developing on a whole industry chain, from one that conducted business only in Beijing to one that operates its business countrywide, and from one that was a pure design unit to one that ranks among listed companies in Hong Kong. UCD has improved its comprehensive strength, competitive power, innovation abilities and anti-risk capabilities across the board and has realized its leapfrog development. The design plaza purchased and polished by UCD has been a forceful embodiment of UCD’s comprehensive strength, an important move for optimizing its asset allocation, as well as an original aspiration for bringing benefit to its employees with the achievements scored in its development.
Wang Hanjun said that the design plaza has undertaken UCD’s unremitting pursuit of making greater efforts and creating new glories on the new journey and laid UCD’s ardent expectations on its high-quality development. The plaza is not just a new office space for the settled units but is all the more a stage for expanding development space and making dreams come true. He hoped that the settled units will cherish the hard-won achievements and will double their efforts to create new achievements and build the plaza into a “plaza of talents, wealth and happiness” with concerted effort to strive for the better future of UCD.

In his address, Pei Hongwei said that UCD was born for subway construction and has prospered from city design. As the designer and constructor of the first subway line of New China, UCD has not only drawn the maps of urban rail transit one after another at home and abroad and made outstanding contributions to China’s urban rail transit cause, but has realized the course of developing itself from a professional subway designer into a large comprehensive survey and design leading company integrating multiple sections and the whole industry chain and has all the more realized the leap from a Chinese urban rail transit pioneer to a leader of the industry, with the quality, speed, scale and efficiency of its development becoming the focus of attention.

Pei Hongwei pointed out that with design as its name the design plaza bears the development mission of “Designing the City and Building the Future” and that UCD should take it as its new starting point to further agglomerate industry chains, link up innovation chains and enhance value chains to participate in market competition more deeply and on a higher level. He said that UCD should base itself on the new development period and set foot on the brand-new track of the fourth industrial revolution represented by 5G, big data and artificial intelligence and that UCD should firmly command the new momentum of rail transit development in China in the new era, accelerate the improvement of its development levels and continually forge itself into a benchmarking paradigm. He hoped that in the brand-new office building UCD can further motivate its inspiration and make its dream come true full of passion. He expected that more masters and talents will set out on their journeys from the plaza and believed that the design plaza will become famous far and wide from UCD designers’ inheritance and unswerving efforts.

Dinning hall

Coffee house

Telephone booths

Fitness center