Shanghai Zhangyuan Building Complex Relocation

Project Overview :

Zhangyuan, located in Shanghai, is the largest and most well-preserved Shikumen architectural complex with over 140 years of history.
This urban renewal project involves heritage conservation, underground space development, and the temporary relocation and restoration of above-ground historic buildings.
The works cover three Shikumen buildings with a total weight of approximately 7,500 tons and a floor area of around 4,000 square meters.

Engineering Challenges

  • The building complex is extremely massive (approximately 7,500 tons), creating significant challenges in structural load control, balance, and安全 risk during the entire relocation process.

  • Due to the constrained space and complex conditions beneath the buildings, a lightweight and highly integrated hydraulic system is required for the relocation operations.

  • The foundation conditions may be uneven, and the building base must withstand multiple forces during movement—including hydraulic pushing force, structural inertia, and friction. Therefore, the hydraulic system must continuously adjust loading in real time to compensate for uneven ground and structural deformation.

  • The relocation requires precise synchronous control of hundreds of hydraulic actuators (robotic “legs”) to ensure smooth movement, uniform force distribution, and high positional accuracy of the entire structure.

Our Solution

To safely relocate the 7,500-ton Shikumen building complex, YIPU provided a fully integrated hydraulic walking system consisting of 432 compact step-type moving robots. Each robot is equipped with a vertical hydraulic jack for lifting and a horizontal hydraulic actuator for pushing and shifting. Two robots form one “leg,” and under intelligent centralized control, these legs work alternately—lifting, moving, and lowering—allowing the entire building to “walk” forward smoothly.

Our hydraulic system delivers:

  • Vertical high-capacity lifting to securely support the historic structure

  • Horizontal propulsion control to achieve precise step-by-step displacement

  • Synchronized motion performance, maintaining uniform loading across the entire building

  • Real-time pressure and displacement adjustment, compensating for foundation unevenness and minimizing ground preparation requirements

With this solution, the building was able to move at a controlled rate of up to 10 meters per day, ensuring high stability and low structural risk throughout the process.

Once the underground works were completed, the same hydraulic walking system enabled the structure to return accurately to its original location—or be repositioned onto a newly constructed foundation—successfully achieving heritage preservation and modern infrastructure development simultaneously.