THE DESIGN REPUBLIC COMMUNE SHANGAI DESIGN BY NERI & HU
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THE DESIGN REPUBLIC COMMUNE SHANGAI DESIGN BY NERI & HU
The Design Republic Commune, located in the center of Shanghai,
envisions itself as a design hub, a gathering space for designers and design
patrons alike to admire, ponder, exchange, learn, and consume. It houses the
new flagship store for Design Republic, a modern furniture retailer, alongside
a mixture of design-focused retail concepts, including books, fashion,
lighting, accessories and flowers. The Commune will also have a design gallery,
an event space, a café, a restaurant by Michelin-Starred Chef Jason Atherton,
and a one-bedroom Design Republic apartment.
Situated within the historic relic of the Police Headquarters built
by the British in the 1910s, the project takes a surgical approach to
renovation. First, gently removing the decaying wood and plaster, then
carefully restoring the still vibrant red brickwork, while grafting on skin,
joints, and organs onto parts that needed reconstruction. And finally with the
attachment of a brand new appendage which, like a prosthetic, enables the
existing building to perform new functions, the nearly abandoned building
begins its life again.
Replacing the rather dilapidated row-shops on the street front,
Neri&Hu introduced a modern glassy insertion onto the brick façade. To
accentuate the historic nature of the main building, the street level periphery
is enveloped by transparent glazing to reveal the existing brickwork and rough
concrete structures. Breathing new life into a traditional colonial building
plan, Neri&Hu strategically removed certain floor plates, walls, as well as
ceiling panels, to allow a renewed experience of the existing building, one
that is fitting for the new functions to which the building now needs to
respond.
Various small and precise incisions have been made in the interior
architecture to reveal the building’s history and integrity while creating
experiential intersections for a coherent experience when moving through the
building. Contrasting with the exterior which has mostly been left intact due
to historic preservation guidelines, the interior has been completely
transformed. The starkly modern white rooms are juxtaposed with untouched
remnants of brick walls, and in some cases, exposed wood laths underneath
crumbling plaster walls. The clear intentionality behind the detailing of
connections between the old and the new creates a visually and spatially
tectonic balance in relation to the building as a whole.
You may visit to
see Neri & Hu Design Office's project of The Water House Boutique Hotel at South Bund from my blog archive to click below link.
LYNDON NERI & ROSSANA HU
PHILOSOPHY
‘’ We don’t ask to be eternal beings.
We only ask that things do not lose all their meaning. ‘’
Antoine De Saint Exupery
Founded in 2004 by Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu, Neri & Hu Design
and Research Office is a multi-disciplinary architectural design practice based
in Shanghai, China with additional office in London, UK. Neri & Hu Works
internationally providing architecture, interior, master planning, graphic, and
product design services. Currently working on projects in many countries. The
diversity of the team reinforces a core vision for the practice ; to respond to
a global worldview incorparating overlapping design disciplines for a new
paradigm in architecture.
Neri & Hu’ s location is purposeful. With Shanghai considered a
new global frontier. Neri & Hu in the center of this contemporary chaos.
The city’s cultural, urban, and historic contexts function as a point of
departure for the architectural explorations involved in every project. Because
new sets of contemporary problems relating to buildings now extend beyond
traditional architecture, the practice challenges traditional boundaries of
architecture to include other complementary disciplines.
Neri & Hu believes strongly in research as a design tool as
each project bears its unique set of contextual issues. A critical probing info
the specificities of program, site function and history is essential to the
creation of rigorous design work. Based on research, Neri & Hu desires to
anchor its work on the dynamic interaction of experience, detail, material,
form, and light rather than conforming to a formulaic style. The ultimate
significance behind each project comes from how the built forms create meaning
through their physical representations.
Neri & Hu has been feature dwidely by the press around the world, including Architectural
Review, Wallpaper, Architectural Record, Frame, Mark, Abitare, Area, Diseno
Interior, Interior Design, I:D:, Travel+Leisure, Maru, Perspective Magazine,
Elle decor, Italia, Elle Decor China, China, Red Dot Year Book, Dezeen.com,
Archdaily.com, and countless more print and online media, as well aas TV
programs. Neri & HU and their design have been recognized by a number of
prestigious international design awards. UK Wallpaper announced the Founding
Partners Lyndon Neri and Rossano Hu as 2014 Designer of the year. They were
inducted into US Interior Design Hall of Fame in 2013. They were selected as
one of the I.D. Magazine I.D. Forty and one of the 40 under 40 prominent
designers shaping Hong Kong and Greater China respectively. Neri & Hu’s
design has been awarded by Inside Festival, AR House Awards, AR Awards for
Emerging Architecture, World Architecture Festival, D & AD Awards, Design
Vanguard, Interior Design Magazine Best of Year Awards and Gold Key Awards,
Chicago Athanaeum Good Design awards, ID Magazine Annual Design Review, Red Dot
Awards, Contract World Awards, The Great Indoors Awards, Design for Asia
Awards, Perspective Awards, Taiwan Interior Design Awards, etc.
You may read Lyndon Neri & Rossana Hu’s entire biographies to
click below links.
http://enthepractice.neriandhu.com/content/rossana-hu
