Beijing-based design firm XISUI has transformed a piece of China's transportation history into an innovative children's playground, demonstrating how discarded infrastructure can gain new life through creative design. The project, located in Sanjiaodi Park within the city's Changping District, repurposes the shell of a BK640 bus—China's first domestically manufactured vehicle—into an interactive public space for young residents. The installation occupies the former site of a playground from the 1980s and is immediately visible from the street, where the familiar silhouette of a bus appears at child scale rather than for traffic. Positioned between mature trees and the pedestrian edge, the structure embeds itself into the neighborhood fabric while preserving a piece of cultural memory.
The BK640 bus holds significant historical value as it entered service in 1957 and became a common presence on Beijing's streets for several decades. Rather than creating a literal replica, XISUI Design abstracted the vehicle's proportions and profile to create a playscape that evokes memory through form. Panels, openings, and surfaces reference the original bus while functioning as climbing walls, slides, and interactive elements. This approach allows children to engage with a piece of history without the constraints of a museum piece, instead experiencing it as a living part of their daily play environment. The design draws directly from collective memory while serving contemporary community needs.
Sanjiaodi Park itself serves as a threshold where historic routes intersect with modern urban fabric, making it an ideal location for this hybrid project. XISUI Design activated the park as part of a broader renovation that organizes circulation, water features, and open ground into a sequence of public zones tied to local geography and history. Within this framework, the design firm was commissioned to create the children's area, and the bus-themed installation occupies a footprint that is both visible and compact. The placement aligns with existing sidewalks and maintains continuity between the park and surrounding street life, ensuring the playground feels integrated rather than isolated.
The Old Beijing Bus divides into two distinct activity zones separated by a pathway that marks the front and rear sections. The front section caters to younger children through lower heights and closer spacing, incorporating climbing frames, small slides, balance elements, and tactile walls integrated into the envelope. Fixed seating modeled on bus benches lines the perimeter, providing spaces for supervision and rest. The rear section accommodates broader age ranges through taller ladders, ropes, paired slides, swings, and ground-based games. Equipment distribution encourages movement across the full length of the structure rather than concentration at a single point, promoting active play and exploration.
Interactive elements like voice tubes, steering wheels, and flip panels are embedded flush with steel surfaces or timber inserts, sitting within reach without interrupting circulation. This keeps the interior legible even during peak use and prevents dangerous bottlenecks. The main structural system uses galvanized steel, selected for durability in a heavily used public setting. Surfaces are finished with fluorocarbon paint, providing weather resistance while maintaining a consistent color field. Areas of contact and seating incorporate carbonized bamboo wood, which introduces a warmer tactile surface against the steel frame and withstands outdoor exposure without applied coatings that would require frequent renewal.
The color palette deliberately draws from the red and white tones of the historic BK640, applied across panels and railings so the red registers against surrounding greenery and the everyday backdrop of shops, bicycles, and passing buses. This chromatic connection reinforces the project's historical references while creating a vibrant visual anchor in the park. By transforming a discarded vehicle into a community asset, XISUI Design demonstrates how infrastructure reuse can preserve cultural heritage while addressing contemporary urban needs. The project offers a model for other cities seeking to balance development with memory, showing that historic artifacts need not be preserved in amber but can evolve to serve new generations.
