Shanghai
Heatherwick Studio, who designed Fosun Foundation's Shanghai building in collaboration with Foster + Partners, is delighted to bring their inspiring new exhibition to China. This third installation of “Building Soulfulness” is a monument to the studio’s strong ties and deepening friendship with the city of Shanghai. The exhibition, curated by Mami Kataoka, Director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, presents architectural models, drawings, furniture designs, and interactive installations illuminating more than thirty landmark projects around the world across six different themes, showcasing many of the studio’s projects in China and beyond.
As its golden curtains turn in endless cycles, the Fosun Foundation has maintained its dedication to the public, holding numerous important architecture exhibitions since its opening. Architecture has long been a recurrent thread and research focus at Fosun Foundation as a means for deeper probing and discussion of humanity and society. By transforming design drawings and abstract theories into captivating exhibitions, Fosun Foundation hopes to lead more architecture students, lovers of architecture, and the broader public towards a greater understanding of the ideas behind the creations of these architecture masters, and to pay closer attention to the things around us. Our hope is that the public will engage with the people and buildings that surround us and ask, what can be done to make this city more wonderful?
Exterior view of Fosun FoundationShanghaiHeatherwick Studio, founded by Thomas Heatherwick, is acclaimed for its extremely innovative projects in such cities as New York, Singapore, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. Since its founding in 1994, it has grown to become one of the world’s most acclaimed design teams. Shanghai has particular significance for the studio. Heatherwick Studio designed the UK Pavilion for Expo Shanghai 2010. The resulting design, named the “Seed Cathedral,” attracted an average of 50,000 visitors a day. Shanghai is the first city where Heatherwick Studio established an office outside of London. Heatherwick Studio's Fosun Foundation design was unveiled at the Bund Financial Center in 2016. The three-story flowing glass curtain wall opens every day to music, making for a landmark new addition to the Bund skyline. “To be able to hold this exhibition in a building we designed feels like a natural step forward in our relationship with this incredible city,” Says Heatherwick.
New RoutemasterHe recalls being enchanted as a child by the “soulfulness” of the little objects made by craftsmen and artisans. Could the giant buildings and urban spaces we build for our cities and towns be imbued with this same soulfulness? Heatherwick Studio's designs are always rooted in the belief that even massive urban projects should have human scale, utilize natural forces, and have emotion as an integral component.
“The Orbit” ,ShanghaiThis exhibition will present models of architectural projects Heatherwick Studio has designed around the world, made from different materials, in order to facilitate deeper understanding of how the studio employs agile working methods to establish better links to the surrounding environment. The car designed by the studio will be driven into the Fosun Foundation. The Airo, an electric car that can purify air, will be parked in the plaza in front of the Fosun Foundation's first floor, presenting a model for a cleaner, friendlier future car. On the second floor, a 1:1 scale model rear section of the next generation double-decker bus designed by the studio invites viewers to ponder how cities and everyday life can be made better by changing details. “Little Island,” which the studio realized in the Hudson River off of Manhattan in New York, will be brought to the exhibition space in immersive form, with models, videos, projections, and posters bringing the audience on a journey of design through this park on the water. As the first comprehensive presentation of the studio's work in Shanghai, this exhibition will also present their latest urban project, “The Orbit,” revealed along the West Bund in Xujiahui this November, presenting the birth of this new landmark along the river through models and design drawings.
“Little Island” New York“What kinds of buildings do you want for your cities?” In the exhibition's final section, Heatherwick invites the audience to enter the studio and join in an experience, exploration, and dialogue on cities. Here, the architect is more than just a teller of stories, but also an interlocutor and the exhibition is transformed into a site for creative discussion and investigation, documenting people's needs and inspirations for the places they live. Heatherwick Studios has always aspired to maximize its positive impact on society. “We hope that when audiences leave the exhibition, they can feel that not only are their emotions respected, they are woven into the thinking and allure of our works.” “Building Soulfulness” invites audiences to empathize with buildings, with cities, and with the people who reside within them, and to ask, how can the city be made more wonderful?
Spun
About Thomas Heatherwick
Thomas Heatherwick is one of the UK’s most prolific designers, whose varied work over two decades is characterized by its originality, inventiveness, and humanity.
Defying conventional classifications, Thomas founded his studio in 1994 to bring together architecture, urban planning, product design, and interiors into a single creative workspace. Working across multiple scales, locations, and typologies, Heatherwick Studio has developed into a team of over 200 makers and inventors with no signature style. Led by human experience rather than any fixed dogma, the studio creates emotionally compelling places and objects with the smallest possible climate shadow.
From their studios in London and Shanghai, the team is currently working on over 30 projects in ten countries, including Azabudai Hills, a six-hectare mixed-use development in the center of Tokyo, the new headquarters for Google in London (in collaboration with Bjarke Ingels Group) and Airo, an electric car that cleans the air as it drives.
The studio has also recently completed Bay View, Google’s first ground-up campus, and Little Island, a park and performance space on the Hudson River in New York as well as the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town; and Coal Drops Yard, a major new retail district in King’s Cross, London. Thomas’ forthcoming book, Humanise, will be published by Penguin in 2023.
About Heatherwick Studio
Heatherwick Studio is a team of over 250 problem styles. Led by human experience rather than any fixed dogma, the studio creates emotionally compelling places and objects with the smallest possible climate shadow.
From their studios in London and Shanghai, the team is currently working on over 30 projects in ten countries, including Azabudai Hills, a six-hectare mixed-use development in the center of Tokyo, the new headquarters for Google in London (in collaboration with Bjarke Ingels Group) and Airo, an electric car that cleans the air as it drives.
The studio has also recently completed Bay View, Google’s first ground-up campus, and Little Island, a park and performance space on the Hudson River in New York as well as the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town; and Coal Drops Yard, a major new retail district in King’s Cross, London. Thomas’ forthcoming book, Humanise, will be published by Penguin in 2023.
