Located in the heart of city next to the Chénghuángmiào (or City God Temple) and Bund waterfront area, Yuyuan Station is an essential transportation hub for passengers traversing Shanghai’s 2,400-square-mile area. It is especially important for delivering tourists to nearby cultural landmarks. While the busy metro station was once simply a place to wait, XING’s renovations have transformed it into an immersive, entertaining experience.

With the help of a specialized design software, the architects cut, bent, and spliced together thousands of aluminum sheets in wave patterns. They were then suspended in cascading swells, adapting their shapes to fit perfectly between support columns. The resulting undulations are reminiscent of both the waves of the neighboring City God Temple and the ripples of the Huangpu River, which flows above the metro station.

Because Yuyuan is the deepest-underground station on the line, bringing ample light to the space was crucial. The waved ceiling panels were fitted with customized LED lighting that courses through a program of colors, pulsating like the symbolic heartbeat of the city the station has come to represent. The lights ebb and flow from one bright hue to the next, moving in sync with the rhythms of passenger traffic.

The LEDs can be programmed to perform specific color and pattern sequences for special occasions and holidays. Chinese Red throbs overhead for National Day and the Spring Festival, while pinks and other floral colors flash on Valentine’s Day.

XING Design has been creating innovative designs in the realms of architecture, interiors, landscape, and urban planning since it was founded in 2016. The name has a double meaning, being both the moniker of its founder, Xing Xiong, as well as a common abbreviation for “crossing.” The studio’s work has frequently been at the intersection of different disciplines, finding inventive solutions all across the creative spectrum.

Xiong brought extensive training and experience with him to XING Design. After obtaining a bachelors and master’s degree in architecture from Tsinghua Univsersity in Beijing, he went on to earn another master’s degree in architecture from Harvard. Before founding his own firm, he worked for notable companies like Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, BIG in Copenhagen, and UNStudio in Amsterdam.

XING Design has completed numerous noteworthy urban architecture projects, but they are also well-known for their art installations. The Yuyuan metro station beautifully embodies the firm’s name with a design at the crossroads of art and functionality. It went on to be a jury winner in the 2022 Architizer A+ Awards category of Transport Interiors.

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Founded in 2018, Bosie is a Gen Z-oriented brand aimed at “constantly exploring fashion that is suitable for both men and women. Through retro childlike fun and unique products, we can break the shackles and boundaries and show the innocence, seriousness, freedom, and romance of adults.” The Huaihai Road store is their 27th retail location and the fifth to be designed by Leaping Creative, but it’s certainly the most noteworthy of them all.

“The retail trend in China nowadays is day by day focusing on offering an exciting and fresh shopping experience. By working closely with the brand founder, we approached the design by defining the actual customer expectations for a shopping destination,” adds Zen Zheng, the Design Director of Leaping Creative.

And what is it that Gen Z wants? Novel experiences that take you on a journey. Bosie isn’t just a clothing store — it’s also a supermarket, ice cream café, pet supply store, and multimedia museum. The clothing isn’t categorized by gender or even type of garment. The displays are a lot more fluid than that, following particular moods and themes. As shoppers wind their way through the new flagship location, they’ll find a Jetsons-like setting designed to make them feel like they’re traveling through space and time.

The design embraces a slightly retro-futuristic vision of space travel. Reflective stainless steel sheets and lots of glass frame minimalist clothing displays and oversized decor, including an installation resembling a rocket engine. At the entrance, two semicircular glass elevator shafts have been modified into floor-to-ceiling LCD screens playing Bosie lifestyle content to draw passersby inside. A set of spiral stairs shaped like a UFO lead to the escalators. Conveyor belts, capsule-shaped fitting rooms labeled “no gender border,” and porthole windows add to the effect.

Even the restrooms, water dispenser, and vending machines look like they came from a 1970s sci-fi movie. Upstairs, the Bosie brand mascot, a goose, is reinvented as a 17-foot-long fiberglass machine. There’s a pet hotel so shoppers can drop off or interact with dogs and cats, and a photo booth labeled “Time Machine.”

The mannequins don astronaut helmets, and accessories are displayed in a high-tech laboratory-style environment. All of these elements come together to produce exactly the kind of space young people flock to for TikTok content, drawing even more attention to Bosie, which is quickly becoming a cult favorite. It’s a great example of what we can expect to see from retail design over the next decade as more brands embrace the idea of shopping as an interactive experience.

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Shanghai based-firm 100 Architects were charged by the local government with “activat[ing] this pedestrian junction” in a brand new commercial and residential area of the port city. For maximum head-turning value, they decided to turn the entire park into a metaphorical volcanic eruption filled with bright, attention-grabbing reds, oranges, and yellows.

The 14,000-square-foot park uses small stairways to signal the beginnings of a figurative outpouring from the Earth’s crust. Tiered, overlapping shade structures throughout symbolize the infectious lava of fun venting upwards and spilling back down through a slide and over the wide steps.

The magma continues its inviting flow around a picnic table and stools. A ramp from an adjacent building is painted brilliant orange, pouring the excitement down towards a large playground. Visitors can follow fire-colored paths around the park and tackle climbing shapes, small hills, and a giant tic-tac-toe table along the way. A swing pergola, seesaws, more slides, punching bags, and tunnel tubes all beckon to passersby. LED rope lights trim the shade and play structures, and spotlights on the trees provide an enticing ambiance at night.

For less agile pedestrians, 100 Architects also included several seating and resting areas with sun-blocking canopies. A mahjong table and adult sized-swings complete the experience.

“The flow of magma creates an intense and vivid circuit of events and spaces arising by its side,” the designers explain. “Altogether the proposal creates an incandescent public space that acts as an urban attractor and entertainment hotspot.”

According to the company website, “100 Architects was born with the mission of improving our cities and the experience of citizens in the public realm.” They are known for their colorful and playful temporary street installations throughout China, and for their quirky landscape architecture in places like Hong Kong, Mexico City, and Santiago. Energetic colors and an abundance of geometric shapes are hallmarks of their designs. The Magma Flow project fits nicely into the firm’s overall niche, so-called “neighborhood interventions.”

The company adds “the main objective of this typology is to trigger a massive public interest to the place through a strong visual impact, usually of a permanent nature, encouraging the rise of high public affluence and establishing an urban landmark that can cultivate important human dynamics and boost commercial activity.”

Ningbo is the second most populous city in Zhejiang Province, China, and 100 Architects hopes that the Magma Flow project will be “of such magnitude and notoriety” that it’ll “impact not only the immediate surrounding urban environment, but rather the urban dynamics of a whole neighborhood, becoming an urban landmark and a local attractor of social interactions in a given neighborhood.”

While a real-life volcano might be more likely to inspire fear than fun, it’s hard not to get swept up in Magma Flow’s colorful currents.

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GRNDCNTRL is envisioned as a “Shanghai nightlife cultural center” that inspires people to see and be seen, putting on sartorial displays that rival Manhattan’s Studio 54 in its heyday. While the underground aesthetic emphasizes a sense of being hidden and secretive, with DJs tucked into dark corner booths, GRNDCNTRL arranges multiple levels of booths around a large open area. Wenqiang was inspired by the way ancient Greeks built theaters on hillsides so audiences can sit on stone chairs overlooking circular performance areas. From the moment guests walk in, they’re drawn into what feels like an entirely different reality. The visuals are a little surreal, with bright white lines of light cutting across a dark multi-level space.

“Art does not examine known reality, but seeks the truth of ideals,” says Wenqiang. “The entrance reveals an avant-garde, experimental, and immersive ambience, evoking vivid imaginations and taking people to a surreal world full of mysterious light and shadows.The wall decorations adopt a balanced composition, featuring the style of stage setting. A sequence of symmetrical, curved lighting installations draw on the deep, long lane form of local antique Shikumen buildings, with lines and rhythms guiding experiential circulations and extending inward.”

Leather, steel, brass, and jade accents contrast the field of black, which is itself multiplied by mirrors on almost every wall. “In order to balance the non-reflective and reflective black materials, all the stitching and structural closure became the biggest problem,” Wenqiang notes. The strips of LED lighting define the space and blur its edges at the same time, making it unclear which spaces are real and which are mere reflections. A bar lined with beautifully patterned jade and a central column clad in black mirrored stainless steel become visual anchors in the larger performance area, with its nearly 30-foot ceilings. A band of LED screens behind the lifted DJ booth can be raised and lowered to add additional ambiance.

This big hall “features the hip-hop music style with a strong sense of artistry and technology,” while the smaller hall is inspired by house and techno music with immersive lighting and shadows to create “a film-like retro atmosphere.” Lounges with mirrored ceilings visually echo the ever-changing and shifting lighting patterns so guests almost feel like they’re in a video game. The restrooms are a little more grounded, meant to provide a “backstage” respite from the lights and music.

Whether the design inspires clubbers to recreate the exclusive exhibitionist atmosphere of Studio 54 remains to be seen, but it will certainly take them on a journey.

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Designed by Beijing-based DAGA Architects, the Metal Hands Coffee house was intended to be an “immersive space café journey.”

The firm describes the background in detail to give patrons the full picture. “Interstellar passengers have traveled the vastness of space and the infinity of time in search of a new home for humanity to escape from a devastated Earth. Finally, awakened from hibernation by an alarm. Climbing out of the fallen space capsule, the world was uncannily familiar, with Earth-like plants and oxygen to breathe. Everything was so beautiful, but there was a vague sense of something different.”

“Cutting through the trees, instead of the familiar wood fibers, is a smooth, mirror-like metallic substance. The trees float in the air, eerie cross-sections reflecting this wonderful but strange world. Eventually, the frustrating reality is discovered: there are no humans here, and no nature either, this is not real-world, everything is unreal.”

The main focal point of the 970-square-foot shop is the giant metal space capsule with its flipped-up hatch. Customers can climb inside with their steaming cups and study the peeling aluminum wall panels and the vines and flora that have started to grown in-between all the ship’s cracks, taking over its mechanical attachments.

A large, metallic column supports the pod on the inside, while the exterior is adorned with electrical ports that look just right for R2D2 or BB8 to come along and tap. The capsule’s hatch has been converted into an overhead light, delivering a comfortable wash of illumination over the nearby folding chairs and crate-like coffee tables.

Another soft glow is added to the room by the split log situated along one section of the floor-to-ceiling windows. Half of the log is suspended from above with rods and includes a bank of LED lighting to brighten its lower half, which is floating above the ground at bar height. Its mirrored surface reflects the beams above, and low-backed barstools make it a perfect sipping spot. The dissected tree trunk also frames a view of the modern high-rise skyline just outside.

Orbs of organic material mimic the shape of the abandoned capsule and hang from the ceiling at random lengths, creating a mini solar system of greenery to soften the sterility of the space motif.

The DAGA Architect group was founded in Beijing in 2015 and has since designed, renovated, or constructed over 90 projects in 25 cities worldwide. A quote from Albert Einstein tops their website’s About Us page, reading “creativity is intelligence having fun.” The firm seems to have integrated that idea into their work on the Metal Hands Coffee job as well.

“It is a journey through time, where all one has to do is sip coffee, empty oneself, and enjoy a moment of peace in the universe,” the company says of its latest build. “The design incorporates exploration and consideration of time, taking people away from the worries of life and voyaging in their thoughts.”

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The curved walkways orbit you around circular buildings and a planet-like dome rising from the horizon. As you follow the path, you are pulled into the gravity of the massive 420,000-square-foot building that is the latest addition to the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum association. Designed by Ennead Architects, the astronomy structure is said to be the largest of its kind on Earth.

“In making this building, we wanted to create a place where the institutional mission is fully enmeshed with an architecture that itself is teaching and finds form in some of the fundamental principles that shape our universe,” said Ennead partner Thomas J. Wong in an interview with Dezeen. “The big idea of the Shanghai Astronomy Museum was to infuse a visceral experience of the subject matter into the design, and to deliver that before you even enter the building, and at the end of your visit, there is this culminating moment directly with the sky, which is framed and supported by the architecture.”

Wong explained that his company focused on three main elements for this extra-terrestrial project. First, visitors pass through the Oculus, a skylight surrounded by gold plating that allows brilliant sunlight to move in its trajectory throughout the day across the courtyard and over the reflecting pool.

“We are within a universe that is continuously in motion, something as essential as it is easy to overlook,” says Wong. “The notion of orbital motion and its relationship to time became a primary source of architectural inspiration.”

The second crucial design element was the planetarium sphere, which appears to be suspended in air at the far end of the building across from the main exhibition halls.

“Embedded in the roof plane of the lower museum wing, as if rising out of the Earth-bound horizon, the sphere gradually emerges into view as one rounds the building from the outside, the drama unfolding as though one were approaching a planet from one of its moons,” Wong explains.

Finally, the inverted dome completes the visitors’ journey through space, giving them an unobstructed view of the heavens.

“The approach and entry sequence were carefully crafted choreography, where one senses the force of compression while traveling underneath the entry cantilever, only to emerge in a light-filled swirling space that brings your gaze upward,” Wong explains.

The New York-based Ennead Architects won the bid for this project because of this focused plan to envelope patrons in a cosmic atmosphere.

“To the extent possible, we wanted this building to echo the essence of the universe and there are no straight lines or right angles in space,” Wong continues. “Whatever their age or education level, people can observe and hopefully understand more about some very basic underpinnings of astronomy through a series of direct, physical experiences. Space can seem so abstract — we wanted to provide something that was tangible and exciting.”

This stunning museum, including views from its 78-foot-tall solar telescope, is now open year-round to the public each Tuesday through Saturday.

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Australian firm Koichi Takada Architects uses biomimicry as the guiding principle in all its designs, including its new Solar Trees Marketplace in the Minhang district southwest of Shanghai, China. The complex takes one of Chinese culture’s most revered and ancient public spaces and modernizes it without compromising the characteristics that make it special. The firm wanted to retain the feeling of discovery and connection to the country’s historic open-air markets with a design that was friendly to both humans and the environment, taking cues from Mother Nature’s own creations.

The result is nothing short of stunning. Currently in the late stages of construction, the three-story mixed-use development features 32 architectural “trees” rising from the ground to form an artificial canopy above hundreds of modular market stalls. Visitors will wind through indoor and outdoor spaces, the timber “branches” above providing shade, shelter from the rain, and a surface for solar panels to power the facility.

50 living camphor trees planted outside signal the beginning of a green corridor that will run down the length of the new Shanghai Tian An Caobao Road Area Residential Masterplan. Ultimately, pedestrians will enjoy a boulevard lined with 3,000 trees and shrubs indigenous to Shanghai, with the color coding of different plantings identifying various neighborhoods and guiding residents home.

“The inclusion of modular market stalls will bring a sense of authenticity to the contemporary development, referencing their history as social and cultural gathering spaces and allowing a new generation to gather at its heart,” says the firm. “Reflecting the Chinese tradition of making guests feel at home — bīn zhì rú guī — the marketplace will generate a powerful sense of community and integrate the private and public domains.”

For the shape of the facility, the Koichi Takada team turned to Shanghai’s nearby forests. The marketplace is a symbolic visual bridge between nature and the city, softening the edges and contributing to a healthier, more livable urban environment in what has long been one of the world’s most polluted cities. It’s due to be completed by the end of 2021.

“We want to humanize buildings in the district, to be more engaging to the public and contribute to the regeneration of communities and their neighborhoods,” says principal architect Koichi Takada. “We want architecture to celebrate cultural identity, along with encouraging pedestrian activities and a more walkable and livable city.

Last year, Koichi Takada Architects showed off a similar approach with Sunflower House, a series of single-family dwellings designed specifically for Italy’s sunny Tuscan climate. Those homes utilize a rotating design and solar roof to maximize sun exposure for energy production and minimize heat gain inside.

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Set in Shanghai’s Baoshan Wisdom Bay Science and Technology Park, the Book Cabin was designed by Professor Xu Weiguo of Tsinghua University’s School of Architecture and built by printing machines his team developed themselves. The cabin adds space for reading, book sharing, book shows, and academic discussions to the city’s Arts Bridge Space, a bookstore and venue offered by the Guanxi Normal University Press Group and ACC Art Books and Images Publishing.

From outside, the cabin almost looks like an enormous piece of dented pottery, or perhaps a paper wasp nest. Each thin layer of printed concrete is visible on its exterior surface for a textural ridged effect, and a wall that curves out to welcome you inside has an interestingly rippled surface of its own. Designed using MAYA software, the cabin can accommodate up to 15 people at a time.

No rigid framework or formwork went into the Book Cabin’s construction. Two sets of robotic arms simply laid out the fiber concrete material (specially developed by the team) one layer at a time until it completed the top of the domed roof. Each robot requires two people to operate, but just 4 to 5 people are needed to oversee the entire construction process, unlike the larger crews required for conventional building. The hollow walls are filled with thermal insulation mortar, and the ceiling is punctured by an operable skylight, so you can enjoy fresh air and read by the light of the sun.

“The design and construction of the Book Cabin show that 3D printing, as a way of intelligent construction, not only saves materials and manpower, but also has high construction efficiency and high construction speed, and can achieve irregular shape construction and ensure high quality of the construction,” says the team.

Professor Xu Weiguo previously designed and developed the world’s largest concrete 3D printed pedestrian bridge, which is also located in Shanghai’s Wisdom Bay Industrial Park. Measuring over 86 feet long and 12 feet wide, the bridge has a fluid shape inspired by the ancient Anti Bridge in Zhaoxian, China.

The professor’s team integrated innovative technologies like printing path generation, digital design, and advancements in 3D printing like a robot arm with a printing tool that won’t get clogged during long concrete printing sessions. It took 450 hours to complete and cost one-third less than a conventional bridge of similar size.

Weiugo explains that “the design of the pedestrian bridge adopts three-dimensional solid modeling. The bridge handrails are shaped like flowing ribbons on the arch, forming a light and elegant posture lying on the pond of Shanghai Wisdom Bay. The pavements of the bridge are generated from the form of brain corals, and white pebbles are filled in the voids of the pattern.”

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The posh hotel, owned by InterContinental Hotel Group, extends 88 meters, or nearly 300 feet, into the quarry. All but the top two of the 18 stories press against the sides of the quarry, diving into a campus of natural elements combined with extreme architecture. A striking glass waterfall-style elevator starts at the surface and cascades down the side of the rock face. Of course, you could always just skip the elevator and land in the middle of the resort grounds via the centralized helipad.

The two lowest levels are underwater, so to speak, with a unique aquarium surrounding the restaurants and accommodations on both. Even better, each of the six underwater suites on these floors also have their own aquarium. In all, the hotel contains 337 standard to luxury rooms alongside everything else a premier resort might offer, from pampering to full-on adventure.

Dubbed “Shanghai Wonderland,” those who can afford to stay at the resort and spa will experience a unique location while enjoying posh amenities like expansive pools with lounging areas and a lake large enough for kayaking. Visitors can observe waterfalls from their room, leisurely walk the grounds, or head out for some rock climbing and bungee jumping within the compound walls. Private theater box balconies also allow guests to view a nightly water and light show. In truth, there’s no need to leave the resort with all it has to offer, but travelers to Shanghai can easily launch over to nearby attractions such as the Chenshan Botanical Garden and Guangfulin site, along with a bustling city full of activity.

Unlike most mega hotels, Shanghai Wonderland was built using a low-impact design that takes advantage of unused natural space. Exterior balconies house ample greenery, and the roof has also been covered with plants to better blend into the landscape above. The shade from the surrounding cliff walls helps to regulate the temperature and improve heating and cooling efficiency. The structure, designed by JADE+QA Architects, is also partially powered using renewable technologies like solar panels and geothermal systems.

Building 18 stories down is no easy engineering or construction feat. In fact, for more than a decade, over 5,000 architects, designers, planners, engineers, and construction workers contributed to the completion of this project. One of the largest challenges was figuring out how to pump concrete into the bottom of the quarry, a process that required significant revamping of typical protocols. An extensive use of technology and innovation were required to make this hotel, which cost a whopping $300 million to complete.

“It was a challenge,” says Martin Jochman, chief architect of the hotel. “This quarry was really a scar on the surface of the earth. It was overgrown and dangerous.” He adds that: “we took some big risks because it was totally unknown. The hotel comes out of nature.”

JADE+QA Architects, the award-winning UK firm credited with the project, specializes in architecture, urban planning, and product design, with a focus on “respecting nature through sensitive design.”

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The Chinese architects created a museum within Fengyuzhu’s headquarters that contains all of the miniature architectural models within a structure that itself acts as a mega-model of a future city. The museum’s hallways and rooms mimic the roads, sidewalks, and buildings of an urban environment.

But there’s one big change here from any city we’re used to. Instead of building out, Wutopia imagines building up. White cantilevered platforms stagger the smaller-scale models into airy vertical layers connected by thin steel columns that also act as translucent walls within the museum.

Li Hai, Fengyuzhu’s founder, asked Wutopia Lab to take inspiration from an architectural model museum in Tokyo called Archi-Depot. The firm’s principal architect Yu Ting explains: “When I looked through the photos of Archi-Depot, an idea popped into my head: since the museum focuses on models of various built or unbuilt projects, if we look at these vastly different projects from a macro perspective, and ignore the difference in region and time period, they can form a world together.”

“Therefore, I decided to make the entire museum into a mega model of [a] future city. The collected models become different components of the future city’s fabric, with each of them divergently predicting a different future. Such an architectural model museum is truly meaningful at an architectural level, and I defined it as ‘Models in Model.’”

Ting adds that “the dense models on Archi-Depot’s shelves remind me of A.B Walker’s comic quoted by Rem Koolhaas in Delirious New York, which was firstly published in a magazine in March 1909. Koolhaas thought it represented a utopian imagination of skyscrapers. In 2011, my PhD thesis cited this part of text and image in Koolhaas’s book. I think that the imagination of skyscrapers from Europe to North America in the early 20th century formed the prototype of a vertical city. This inspired me to make the museum as a model of a future vertical city.”

In order to maintain visual focus on each of the individual physical models, the architects kept the “city” of the museum abstract. A total of 5,653 round steel pipes became the basis of the design, which Wutopia Lab calls “Last Redoubt” in honor of the 1912 science fiction novel The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson.

The rest of the “city” spaces in the museum are also named for fictional sci-fi sources, like “Thunder Dome” from Mad Max, “Tijuana” from Cowboy Bebop, and “Pod Bay” from 2001: A Space Odyssey. A special exhibition hall with perforated walls, floors, and ceilings is even named “Tyrell” to pay tribute to Blade Runner. The mood of each space subtly shifts accordingly.

Can you guess from the photos which one is which?

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The new year will bring the completion of a pretty dazzling array of architectural projects, some of which have been in the making for a decade or more. Major firms will be cutting the ribbons on career-defining structures, and some of them are record-breakers, too.

These five exciting examples include a new super-tall tower for Chicago, the posthumous completion of a striking hotel designed by Zaha Hadid herself, an Olympic stadium, and two examples of buzzworthy concepts looking to prove themselves in the real world.

Opus by Zaha Hadid Architects, Dubai

The first and only hotel in Dubai to be designed inside and out by famed architect Zaha Hadid herself, the “Opus” is a cube-shaped volume with a “carved” central void, bringing some of Hadid’s signature curvature to the project. Located within the city’s Burj Khalifa district, the building will contain a “ME by Melia” hotel as well as 12 restaurants, a rooftop bar, and 56,000 square feet of office space. Each side of the cube is conceived as its own separate tower, connected by narrow bridges at the top and bottom.

“The Opus will be aligned with Omniyat’s vision of treating each project as if it were a unique work of art,” says Mahdi Amjad, Executive Chairman and CEO of Omniyat. “The design conveys the remarkably inventive quality of ZHA’s work; expressing a sculptural sensibility that reinvents the balance between solid and void, opaque and transparent, interior and exterior.”

There’s no word yet on exactly when the hotel will open to its first guests, but construction is nearly complete as of early 2020.

Nanjing Zendai Himalayas Center by MAD, China

When architects first began proposing futuristic-looking developments resembling mountains years ago, they seemed like fantasy concepts that would never actually be built. MAD Architects is proving that theory wrong with its Nanjing Zendai Himalayas Center, which is quickly nearing completion in China. The mixed-use development occupies over 560,000 square meters of building area and will host residential, hotel, office, and commercial facilities, and it’s all characterized by mountain-like towers around the edge with glass screens that “flow” like waterfalls.

The firm explains that “these features provide interior spaces with energizing light and wind to form a subtle, calming ambiance. The project mimics the site’s surrounding mountains and meandering rivers that are essential parts of Chinese aesthetic philosophy. Towers along the edge of the site act as a mountainous backdrop, while water features such as ponds, waterfalls, brooks, and pools connect buildings and landscapes to integrate all of the center’s elements. This integration goes beyond form, with the water features functioning as reservoirs to collect and recycle rainwater for irrigation.”

Vista Tower by Studio Gang, Chicago

It’s not every day that a city gets a new landmark that dramatically alters its skyline. In Chicago, the tale of the failed Spire super-tower has become legendary after what was supposed to be the tallest building in North America never made it past the construction of its giant foundation hole. That hole has now sat empty for well over a decade. The new Vista Tower by Studio Gang may not fill the literal hole in the ground, and at 1,186 feet, it won’t be anywhere near as tall, but once completed, it will be the city’s third-tallest skyscraper.

“Residential and hotel amenities combine at the upper levels, creating a vibrant social center,” say the architects. “At ground level, the building creates an essential pedestrian connection between the Chicago Riverwalk and the nearby community park’s outdoor recreational facilities.”

1,000 Trees by Heatherwick Studio, Shanghai

A lot of concept architecture over the last decade has featured full-scale trees adorning the facades of buildings. While it certainly looks cool, there have been a lot of good questions raised about the weight of the soil, the impact of the tree roots as they grow, and lots of other potential problems. As Heatherwick Studio completes its 1,000 Trees development in Shanghai, we’ll finally get to see how it all works out. Heatherwick’s design differs from others in a few crucial ways, like the use of concrete structural columns to support the trees. The mixed-use project also resembles an artificial mountain from afar, adding some interesting topographical dimension to an otherwise flat city.

National Stadium by Kengo Kuma, Tokyo

Japanese architect Kengo Kuma’s National Stadium was technically completed in November 2019, but this summer, we’ll get to see it in use for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics. Kuma is a master of wooden architecture, and the new stadium is one of his largest and most complex projects to date, made with over 70,000 cubic feet of larch and cedar wood sourced from all of Japan’s 47 prefectures. The stadium was originally set to be designed by Zaha Hadid, but her firm’s predictably curvy design was deemed too expensive.

Which one of these projects are you most excited to see finished?

The post 5 Buildings We Can’t Wait to See Completed in 2020 first appeared on Dornob.

The defense is often that there’s no money for an elevator and no room for a ramp. And in crowded urban spaces, building a ramp with the gentle grade required to make it usable can, indeed, take up quite a bit of space — but that certainly doesn’t mean it’s impossible. A recent project called “Song House” by AZL Architects demonstrates a smart approach to exactly that problem.

In China, many rural villages have high populations of elderly people living in places that aren’t well-equipped to meet their needs as they age. Meanwhile, younger generations flock to bigger cities to find work and raise their families. AZL explains that the past 40 years of rapid urbanization in China have caused a “hollowing-out” of millions of old, culturally significant villages. But these rural places still have something to offer all generations of families.

The architects state: “The natural humanistic values of rural settlements need to be reactivated through new production cycles and lifestyles. Shanghai, having the highest GDP in China and being a world-famous metropolis, is also facing difficulties and conflicts between its urban and suburban [populations]. Those living in the city are constantly under the pressure of high living costs, [while] the declining of rural communities and human settlements in suburbs is happening at the same time.”

The answer might lie in redeveloping these suburban and rural communities in a way that makes them appealing and accessible to people of all ages, says AZL. Their client for “Song House,” retired electrician Lao Song, needed to take in his elderly mother, but his apartment in Shanghai just wasn’t designed for it. He and his wife dreamed of moving back to their hometown of Nanson Village to demolish their dilapidated family home and build something new “suitable for both the elderly and the young.”

“In order to help relieve the living pressure of their daughter and son-in-law, Lao Song and his wife thought about inviting the parents of their son-in-law, who are in bad health conditions, to return to the Fengxian countryside together with them and take care of each other in their old ages. For this to happen, the families almost spent all of their savings as normal working-class [people]. This house also embodies the beautiful imagination and anticipation of a relaxed rural life for these families of eight.”

The architects’ solution was a multi-story concrete home arranged around an atrium —an update to the traditional Chinese courtyard house that’s fallen out of favor in recent decades. An external ramp visibly wraps around the outside of the house, reaching each of the three stories so the oldest generation of both families can get around while maintaining a sense of privacy and independence for everyone.

The atrium offers “a center of space and daily activities,” and off of it five bedrooms are splayed, each facing a different direction. Wheelchair accessible restrooms are located next to some of the bedrooms, though all parts of the house have their own small sitting areas. The interiors are designed to promote intergenerational contact and assistance while offering the refuge of private spaces when they’re desired.

This home may be located in a rural area, where there tends to be more space for such constructions, but it’s a beautiful example of thinking outside the box to be more inclusive of anyone who might want to enter. More than that, it turns an accessibility feature into an integral part of the design, and it looks fantastic to boot.

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It took an entire year to gut the five levels of the original 1930s brick and wood villa and complete the design for Hellas House. The construction took another five years. Chatzigiannis even laughed as he noted: “I spent the better part of my youth on it.”

Hellas is what Greeks call their homeland, which is why it was formerly known as the Hellenic Republic in English. Kontomichalos’ challenged Chatzigiannis to renovate the 5,380-square-foot villa so it would “scream Greek” without any brash or tasteless touches that often plague such projects. Chatzigiannis explains: “There is a stereotypical ‘Grecian’ style for this kind of project, one that can’t seem to escape the blue-and-white thing or laurel-wreath crowns or chitons. It can go over the top very easily.” He gladly welcomed his client’s refreshing challenge.

Kontomichalos wanted his main business ventures centered in Hellas House, including an import company dedicated to bringing the finest honey, wine, and olive oil from his homeland into Shanghai, a travel agency dedicated to unique and personalized adventures, and a store offering locals the best of imported Greek produce. His vision also included a space dedicated to showcasing social and corporate events, as well as other floors and rooms that would bring the best of Greece to the other few hundred Greek natives who call Shanghai home. Simply stated, Kontomichalos wanted Hellas House to represent, “the best Greece has to offer: history, culture, natural products, hospitality, and healthy lifestyle.”

The culmination of Chatzigiannis’ five-year project delivered exactly what Kontomichalos wanted. The travel agency, produce store, and import company were the easiest factions to create. The basement of Hellas House became a wine cellar for Greek wines. An open-air kitchen now occupies the ground floor, flanked by a gallery of artifact replicas representing the various eras of Greek culture. The adjacent lounge gives way to a garden, pool, and dining veranda, while a multi-purpose exhibition space occupies the mezzanine. Formal dining is offered on the second floor, which also includes a luxurious living room and terrace. An attic retreat is slipped in beneath the pitched roof and displays ceiling beams salvaged from the original structure.

To ensure Grecian authenticity all throughout Hellas House, Chatzigiannis chose to work with resources and color schemes from ancient times to complete the project. Bronze, marble, and wood are abundant in almost every room, as are basic hues of black, white, and gold. He also imported massive slabs of raw marble to Xiamen from the Aegean islands of Naxos and Thassos to construct the floors, walls, and columns.

Every era of ancient Greek history is represented throughout Hellas House. For example, the entrance hall represents the Bronze Age, with a life-size plaster cast replica of a female circa 2800–2300 BCE. Chatzigiannis complements the statue’s minimalist style with equally restrained custom elements: a graphic metal console in matte black, a simple geometric brass stair rail with a matte-gold finish, and a subtle white-on-white plaid-pattern floor of polished marble.

In addition, the chaises, stools, and chairs found throughout Hellas House are replicas of T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, a renowned 20th-century designer celebrated for incorporating ancient Greek furniture standards into modern creations. Chatzigiannis painstakingly found the small number of elderly Athenian craftsmen who still create Robsjohn-Gibbings’ signature curved-wood furniture to ensure he could bring it into the home.

The journey to completing Hellas House was long and tedious, but both Chatzigiannis and Kontomichalos happily agree that it was a big success.

Photos courtesy of InteriorDesign.com

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Taking place at TANK Shanghai, an enormous complex the size of 11 American football fields that transforms the former storage tanks for the Longhua Airport into galleries, restaurants, and shops, “Universe of Water Particles in the Tank” is an immersive exhibition by digital art collective teamLab. With the help of ever-changing projected visuals, the team has turned several of these tanks into individual worlds to be explored, each reacting in different ways to the movements of visitors.

The show consists of six works in total, each of which is given a poetic title. The first, for which the show is named, features an enormous waterfall cascading down its tanks interior, flowing out to influence the works around it and representing the transformative power of water.

“Water is represented by a continuum of numerous water particles,” explain the designers. “The interaction between the particles is calculated, and then lines are drawn in relation to the behavior of the water particles. The lines are ‘flattened’ using what teamLab considers to be ultra subjective space. When people stand on our touch the waterfall, they obstruct the flow of water like a rock, and the flow of water changes. The flow of water continues to transform due to the interaction of people. Previous visual states can never be replicated, and will never reoccur.”

The water from this exhibit causes the flowers of the next one, entitled “Flowers and People, Cannot be Controlled but Live Together,” to scatter. This work surrounds visitors with accelerated cycles of birth, growth, reproduction, and death. The more people within the tank stay still, the more flowers are “born.” When people touch them and walk around the space, the flowers scatter. It’s all rendered in real time by a computer program.

“Black Waves: Lost, Immersed, and Reborn” is an installation made of a single continuous wave projected onto various surfaces within the gallery. The creators hope that visitors will feel the boundary between themselves and the waves disappearing upon entering this tank, transcending the limitations of the modern world that tends to make us humans feel as if we (and the things we create) are separate from nature.

The final three works are “Continuous Life and Death at the Now of Eternity II,” which blooms in line with the rhythms of the sun outside despite being located in total darkness, “Impermanent Life, at the Confluence of Spacetime New Space and Time is Born,” which creates a circle of cherry blossoms, and “Enso — Cold Light,” a depiction of the Zen practice of drawing a circle with a single brush stroke.

Together, all of these works celebrate the spirit of TANK Shanghai, which first opened in March 2019. It’s a cool way to reclaim a former industrial space for cultural events that benefit the community at large, and it’s just the latest amazing creation from the prolific group of artists, designers, engineers, and computer scientists that make up the Tokyo-based teamLab.

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Designed by Daylab Studio, “Heyshop” is a Shanghai store that brings elements of online shopping to the physical retail experience. Not only does the design offer an appealingly futuristic experience with its pod-like fitting rooms contained within a glossy pastel space, but it also gives an unprecedented level of flexibility to retailers. Instead of selling products from a limited number of brands, the shop creates a sort of pop-up experience with a constantly rotating inventory. Data analysis is used to determine which items should be displayed and makes it extremely easy for the staff to give constant recommendations to keep the experience fresh and exciting.

Crucially, Heyshop identified one of the biggest draws of offline shopping to be socializing with friends. Its interiors provide plenty of space for groups of friends to try things on, show them off to each other, and hang out. The seven fitting rooms are oriented around the center of the space, with retail displays on either side of them. While most stores refresh inventory every once in a while but maintain fairly consistent offerings, Heyshop changes it up so often, it’s like going to a different shop every time.

“Unlike traditional retail, flexibility is the most crucial feature in Heyshop,” explain the folks over at Daylab Studio. “The products displayed are not coming from different brands only. They are also coming from different categories. Based on the big data analysis, no product could guarantee itself be kept in the store all the time. Not only the brands, [but even] the category could be replaced in a different season. Today, Heyshop may sell cosmetics, while tomorrow, it may sell 3C products. Hence, it is the mission for this new type of OMO [online meets offline] retail to continuously change the display type and recommend new products to the public.”

“Moreover, in order to emphasize the concept of OMO, the online shopping elements were extracted and placed in the physical store, reminding and encouraging the customers to make online orders [while they are] offline shopping. That makes the online merger with offline a closed loop.”

The point, Daylab explains, isn’t to sell as much merchandise as possible, hoping each customer will load up with items and then be on their way. It’s to anticipate exactly what consumers are going to be looking for next, allow them to try it on in person, and then make it easy to purchase, whether they do it in-store or online a few days later. This allows the store to keep a lot less merchandise in stock, placing more emphasis on the shopping process and taking it off fulfillment.

As more retailers start to experiment with digitally augmenting the physical shopping experience, it’ll be interesting to see where the next steps take us. Before long, we might be getting full-body scans, trying on garments with virtual reality headsets, ordering what we like directly in the fitting rooms, and checking out with a single tap on our smartphone screens — but it’s nice to know that good old-fashioned retail design isn’t necessarily going anywhere any time soon.

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The Idea Behind Sinan Books

Sinan Books: Shanghai Sanctum is the latest restoration in the Sinan Mansions development project, which previously saw a number of Luwan district colonial structures from the 1920s and 30s transformed into brand new exhibition halls, museums, and restaurants. Instead of just assigning different types of books to different levels of the store, the Wutopia Lab team chose to visualize the building as a model of the human mind, with each individual part making a significant contribution to the whole.

The first level, which is actually an underground floor, represents the subconscious, showcasing a compilation of history and philosophy books on shelves organized as a playful maze. The entryway on the next floor makes up the heart of the store, where people can interact at a low-key café and read in a setting modeled off of a traditional Sinan living room. The third floor boasts art exhibits and room for literary events and serene music recitals. In short, this space is focused on the eyes and ears. At the top of the venue is the brain, a level reserved for intense learning and heavy contemplation of all life’s questions, answers, and mysteries. Cozy rooms for singles or couples to read together are nestled throughout every floor.

The architects say of the project: “Sinan Books is seen as a person with a system of acquiring knowledge while discovering oneself and the surrounding, considering one’s mind, thoughts, perception, and subconscious. The entrance features a red arcade, indicating Sinan Books’ attitude of openness. Different hues of green [offset] the exhibition spaces while the gold of the reading room is a hidden surprise.” They add that the black and white design on the top floor was chosen to “encourage one to face oneself.”

Finishing Touches

Wutopia Lab may have given their representation of the human psyche an insane amount of attention to detail, but that doesn’t mean they neglected the bookstore’s exterior. The south patio on the ground floor has been transformed into an alluring porch covered in multicolored flowers and lush planters, effectively creating a living veneer for the bookstore within. The architects also revealed that the top-floor terrace was covered with white marble to produce a feeling of buoyancy above the heavy layers of knowledge below. Above all else, they hope the store acts “like a lighthouse, guiding people’s learning and thinking.”

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