The Overseas Chinese Town (OCT) will be home to a modern art center to open Friday dubbed the OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT).

The center, which was designed from renovated factory buildings in the eastern part of the OCT, has a total of 3,000 square meters, which includes exhibition halls, collection rooms, artist's workshops, offices, bars, coffee houses, bookshops, restaurants and souvenir shops.

"The center marks the beginning of construction of a new urban cultural center by the OCT Group aiming to provide more creation and exhibition space for avant-garde artists, photographers, designers and architects from home and abroad," said Le Zhengwei, vice curator of He Xiangning Art Gallery.

Under the control of the He Xiangning Art Gallery, the OCAT will become China's first modern art center administered by a national modern art museum. It is also the second national modern art museum besides the National Art Gallery of China.

"The newly established OCAT will invite a total of 19 artists, art critics and curators from home and abroad to make up an art guiding committee, which will provide supervision and guidance for various art exhibitions He Xiangning Art Gallery will hold in the future," Le said.

In fact, the opening of the OCAT will not only boost the development of Chinese contemporary art, but also provide a new approach for community development and cultural construction in the city.

Located in the eastern industrial zone of the Konka Group in the OCT, the OCAT used to be a block of factory buildings, which were built at the beginning of the 1980s and remained in operation until the late 1990s.

At the end of 2003, the OCT Group announced its plan of transforming the abandoned area into a new modern art center.

"In OCT, where land resources are scarce, this block of abandoned industrial buildings can certainly be torn down for real-estate development or other commercial uses," said Ren Kelei, curator of He Xiangning Art Museum.

"However, we decided to transform this abandoned area into a district much like New York's Soho, while trying our best to preserve the original appearance of those industrial building," Ren said.

The main exhibition hall of OCAT will become a place for avant-garde artists to display their works to the public.

According to Ai An, chief of exhibition design department of OCAT, a large exhibition of design works by designers in the Pearl River Delta region will be staged in OCAT this April.

The artist's workshops, which are renovated from five factory buildings, will provide visiting artists with modern facilities to encourage their living and artistic creativity.

"As a well-designed art community, the OCAT will be different from its counterparts in other cities such as the 789 art factory in Beijing or the Suzhouhe art warehouses in Shanghai, which were naturally formed by artists' moving into the previous old warehouses or factory buildings in styles of different eras," said Ai, a designer who moved from Beijing to Shenzhen in 2003.

Along with the opening ceremony of OCAT on Friday, there will also be an exhibition of art works collected by the He Xiangning Art Gallery.

Editor: Catherine