Your Guide to Creative China
Project Shanghai: 800Show
Published September 11, 2009
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Tonight, the long-derelict factories at 800 Changde Lu are reopening as 800Show, a creative centre designed to top all creative centres in Shanghai. Sure, there are hundreds of these renovated mills and workshops, many of them a 70 kuai cab ride from anything you give a damn about. Well, this one’s different.
800Show is located in central Jing’an, it’s visible from the street, it’s designed to be a 24-hour hub for work and play. Old villas and 8-storey factory buildings on site are now planned to hold 10 to 15 restaurants and bars with rooftop terraces. In the middle of it all, facing the street, is a massive 120-metre production hall renovated to serve as an exhibition center for trade shows, fashion shows, and an official Expo 2010 venue rented by the Dutch Consulate.
Logon architecture won an international competition to renovate the government-owned, 20,000 sqm site, about 1.5 years ago. By that time, there were already 300, official, creative parks. And about 900 unofficial creative parks in Shanghai, according to Frank Kruger, Creative Director of logon architecture. So for Kruger and his team at logon, the big question was, if they build one more creative centre "who cares?" They’d have to make it different somehow. They needed an edge.
“The critical point was that the entrance from the street was really narrow and the site was totally hidden, you couldn’t see it from the outside. Our first move actually was to say, we have to create a landmark – a place, an image that people can remember. People need to talk about this place,” Kruger insists. He and his team decided: “We need to demolish some buildings, we need to create some public space, so when people pass by they can see the space, see the main building and remember this landmark.”
So The People’s Electrical Machine Plant’s main production hall was ripped open and glassed in, opening a public space in front, and revealing the soaring wooden beams inside. “This kind of hall doesn’t exist in Shanghai,” Kruger notes. “We did some market research of comparable event spaces and realized that there’s nothing like this, no place like this in Shanghai, so we saw the potential.”
The first steps were to clean up all the rubbish lying around inside the main hall, remove its roof, add insulation, and build a second floor with VIP rooms and preparation rooms attached to the exhibition hall. Despite having been empty for between 5 and 10 years, the buildings were in good condition, because factories “are built to be much more robust than villas”, Kruger noticed. He and his team “quite carefully re-established the previous character” because fashionable facades just don’t last. If you go with today’s style, “in 10 years you look at it again and say 'shit.' You want to renovate it again in 10 years. We’re quite sure in 10 or 20 years you’ll look at these buildings and say it’s interesting.”
There isn’t one, overall aesthetic, because 800Show encompasses 15 buildings, each constructed at a different time, from the 1920's up to the 80's or 90's. That's a 70-year span. “The interesting thing is the mix of different styles,” Kruger says. “When you go through, you are able to discover some art deco elements. And, we have this French villa, you have a terrazzo floor, with original tiles, original tiles. And wooden roof structures you hardly find in Shanghai anymore – we have two buildings with this structure. You find all different kinds of materials from concrete and brick to wooden floors and ceilings.”
Until September 30th, you will also find a lot of art at 800Show: animations, film, photography, and installations from some of China’s top artists. We dropped by and got a sneak preview while artists were setting up. Hu Jieming was connecting up a bunch of computers inside these salvaged hunks of a rusty, old ship. His videos will be projected through the portholes. Check it out.
Rebirth art exhibition runs September 12th to September 30th. VIP opening September 11th. 800 Changde Lu, just south of Changping Lu.
800Show is located in central Jing’an, it’s visible from the street, it’s designed to be a 24-hour hub for work and play. Old villas and 8-storey factory buildings on site are now planned to hold 10 to 15 restaurants and bars with rooftop terraces. In the middle of it all, facing the street, is a massive 120-metre production hall renovated to serve as an exhibition center for trade shows, fashion shows, and an official Expo 2010 venue rented by the Dutch Consulate.
Logon architecture won an international competition to renovate the government-owned, 20,000 sqm site, about 1.5 years ago. By that time, there were already 300, official, creative parks. And about 900 unofficial creative parks in Shanghai, according to Frank Kruger, Creative Director of logon architecture. So for Kruger and his team at logon, the big question was, if they build one more creative centre "who cares?" They’d have to make it different somehow. They needed an edge.
“The critical point was that the entrance from the street was really narrow and the site was totally hidden, you couldn’t see it from the outside. Our first move actually was to say, we have to create a landmark – a place, an image that people can remember. People need to talk about this place,” Kruger insists. He and his team decided: “We need to demolish some buildings, we need to create some public space, so when people pass by they can see the space, see the main building and remember this landmark.”
So The People’s Electrical Machine Plant’s main production hall was ripped open and glassed in, opening a public space in front, and revealing the soaring wooden beams inside. “This kind of hall doesn’t exist in Shanghai,” Kruger notes. “We did some market research of comparable event spaces and realized that there’s nothing like this, no place like this in Shanghai, so we saw the potential.”
The first steps were to clean up all the rubbish lying around inside the main hall, remove its roof, add insulation, and build a second floor with VIP rooms and preparation rooms attached to the exhibition hall. Despite having been empty for between 5 and 10 years, the buildings were in good condition, because factories “are built to be much more robust than villas”, Kruger noticed. He and his team “quite carefully re-established the previous character” because fashionable facades just don’t last. If you go with today’s style, “in 10 years you look at it again and say 'shit.' You want to renovate it again in 10 years. We’re quite sure in 10 or 20 years you’ll look at these buildings and say it’s interesting.”
There isn’t one, overall aesthetic, because 800Show encompasses 15 buildings, each constructed at a different time, from the 1920's up to the 80's or 90's. That's a 70-year span. “The interesting thing is the mix of different styles,” Kruger says. “When you go through, you are able to discover some art deco elements. And, we have this French villa, you have a terrazzo floor, with original tiles, original tiles. And wooden roof structures you hardly find in Shanghai anymore – we have two buildings with this structure. You find all different kinds of materials from concrete and brick to wooden floors and ceilings.”
Until September 30th, you will also find a lot of art at 800Show: animations, film, photography, and installations from some of China’s top artists. We dropped by and got a sneak preview while artists were setting up. Hu Jieming was connecting up a bunch of computers inside these salvaged hunks of a rusty, old ship. His videos will be projected through the portholes. Check it out.
Rebirth art exhibition runs September 12th to September 30th. VIP opening September 11th. 800 Changde Lu, just south of Changping Lu.
