An innovation center and Beijing Future Design Park were inaugurated on Thursday in Beijing's Zhangjiawan Design Town, as part of the city's efforts to create a highland for cultural creativity and design services in its sub center.
Now the innovation center is home to 106 companies in the fields of innovative design and urban technology industries. In 2020, a total of 73 companies were registered in the center. The first batch of 10 companies in the center mainly focus on 5G R&D, AI, big data, the internet of things, and innovative design.
The innovation center was jointly built by Zhongguancun Management Committee and Beijing's sub-center, which is the first urban technology and innovation design characteristic industrial park located in the Zhangjiawan Design Town. Located in the northwest of the design town, the innovation center covers an area of 150,000 square meters, with a planned floor space of about 240,000 square meters. The project involves a total of 26 building plants and supporting office buildings. By the end of November, the tax revenue of companies registered in the center had totaled about 28 million yuan (US$4.29 million).
Not far away from the innovation center, Beijing Future Design Park is becoming an energetic fashion design block in the Zhangjiawan Design Town. The park now has already attracted seven institutions to settle in, including the incubation center for career and entrepreneurship of the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
The design park used to be an old industrial area of a traditional knitwear manufacturer, Topnew. As Beijing phased out non-capital functions, Topnew has had its unused factory buildings replanned and repurposed as the company moved its main business segment out. According to the design plan of the Zhangjiawan Design Town, the phase I Beijing Future Design Park will cover a renovated construction area of about 13,000 square meters.
In addition, the Tongzhou district government released preferential policies to attract leading design and cultural and creative companies around the world to settle in the Zhangjiawan Design Town. Companies that are on the list of World Architecture 100, Top 150 Global Design Firms, or Top 60 Chinese Design Firms, will be given a one-off settlement subsidy of 300,000 yuan to settle in the design town. The new policies also provide support for the introduction of foreign talents in high-tech fields and facilitate their work in Tongzhou's design town through a green channel.
