Rather than temporarily running the "main venue" of the 5th Shenzhen Urbanism and Architecture Bi-City Biennale in 2013, I proposed to curate a lasting transformation into an actual “Special Culture Zone” poised to become an important place for cultural production in Shenzhen for the years to come. The actual regeneration from a place of mass production to a place for ideas, renamed as Value Factory, broke down into three parts: 1. a physical transformation to expose and amplify the unique qualities of an industrial  building and site and hence a showcase of the power of design to rescue value; 2. the temporary inhabitation by a range of global cultural institutions, to study, expand, leverage and show their work in China; 3. the organization of a wide range of public activities, to bring the factory alive on a daily basis, including the running of a design school for the duration of the Biennale. The plan was executed by a small team, including Liu Lei, Jorn Konijn and Vivian Zuidhof.