Life Hub @ Bund Central is located along North Sichuan Road, once one of the busiest shopping streets in Shanghai.
Rethinking The Future Awards 2025
Second Award | Urban Design (Built)
Project Name: Life Hub @ Bund Central
Category: Urban Design (Built)
Studio Name: DP Architects
Design Team:
Project Director: Angelene Chan, Niew Pey Ran, Chua Zi Jun
Architectural and Interior Design Team: Goh Yong Qin, Wang Jian, Tao Jia, Lu Jiaping, Wang Xiao-en, Cassandra Ho, Fan Hua, Gao Xue-lu, Liu Chen, Peng Zi-jun, Shawn Teo, Wang Liyi, Wu Xiao-jun, Yin Zhen-qin, Zhu Yuelin, Dong Su-hong, Leng Yu-han, Wang Zhen, Yu-fang Ruo-di, Zheng Yi, Zhong Xiaohui, Zuo Jiali
Area: 293,700 sqm (Total BUA, including 15,000 sqm of conservation buildings)
Year: Completed 2025
Location: Hongkou District, Shanghai City, China
Photography Credits : Chong Bang Group, DP Architects, Schranimage
Render Credits : DP Architects, Shanghai Shining Concept Computer Graphics
Other Credits:
This street’s recent lacklustre retail performance opens questions to the commercial sustainability of prevailing models of mixed developments. The urban design of Life Hub @ Bund Central revisits experiential possibilities a new urban mixed development can have with its adjacencies, and how this, in turn, translates into more commercial possibilities, and an opportunity to re-generate North Sichuan Road as a shopping destination.
The greatest challenge to the project’s planning lies in the need to concentrate a massive volume of new buildings within half of the site, with the other half occupied by low-rise conservation buildings. Respecting the scale of the conservation buildings, the entire project terraces down in massing, starting with the 180m office tower at the south, to an open park space along the north.
The new buildings along the south are sculpted to respond to the main vehicular thoroughfare, Haining Road, creating a City Gallery Interface. The textured and laced elevation stretches across the perimeters of the new buildings, turning into a large display screen at night. Terraces and balconies slide across the elevation, opening views out into the city from within, acting as a prelude to the porous urban fabric beyond.
The northern half of the project includes one of the largest conserved in-situ ‘shiku-men’ neighbourhood, Gongyi-Fang, together with century-old shop houses, forming the Heritage Zone that defines a Cultural Corridor Interface along Wujin Road and a Heritage Shopping Street Interface along North Sichuan Road. The extensive network of ‘li-longs’ (alleyways) within is a time capsule that carries century-old urban stories of people who lived here.
With the change in use to retail and commercial, new life is breathed into the once run-down residential neighbourhood. Sensitive alterations and additions, akin to Urban Acupuncture, are performed to reinstate a holistic heritage environment for new urban stories to take place. These include intentional formal and spatial ‘Re-fills’ that strengthen boundaries and new stretches of open spaces to ‘Re-activate’ the Heritage Zone.
Central to the masterplan is a large 7-storey mall, carefully planned to link with, yet sensitively sculpted to distance from, the Heritage Zone. The plan subverts the traditional black-box mall, opening multiple avenues of physical and visual connections with the outside. A 3-dimensional Garden Walk further opens the mall towards the Heritage Zone, where the terracing form of the mall extends and strengthens the connective relationship, from plan to elevation.
Receding platforms break down the mall into fluid layers, which in turn opens spectacular aerial views onto the 5th elevation of the conservation buildings. Slopes and gentle steps link these sculpted terraces, creating a continuous landscape, carved with strategic accesses and spatial openings. This interesting interface between the old and new turns the development into an urban park with many experiential and commercial possibilities, inviting locals and visitors to take a walk into the city’s heritage and immerse in a century of urban transitions.
