Hasta La Ideas

Chinese studio Neri&Hu has unmasked the I-beams structure of the oldest steel-framed building in Shanghai to create an Italian restaurant with a raw industrial interior (+ slideshow).

Neri&Hu stripped the inside of the space, leaving exposed brickwork, peeling plaster and Victorian ceilings mouldings intact. The architects then added steel-framed partitions to create a drinks bar, a pizza bar and a series of private dining rooms.

“Stripping back the strata of finishes that have built up after years of renovations, the design concept celebrates the beauty of the bare structural elements,” say the architects.

The main dining area is loosely modelled on a traditional marketplace, which inspired the name Mercato. The two bars are located at the centre and feature industrial steel shelving and reclaimed timber canopies, while glass lamps hang over tables like street lights.

Banquette seating runs through one section of the restaurant, which the architects built using wood found onsite and tubular steel frames.

The three private dining rooms are surrounded by an amalgamation of materials that includes antique mirrors, blackboards, metal mesh, recycled wood, raw steel and textured glass.

“Constantly playing the new against the old, [our] design is a reflection of the complex identity of not only the historical Bund, but of Shanghai at large,” says the studio.

The entrance to the restaurant is a sliding metal gate with words spelled out between its horizontal bars.

Mercato is one of six restaurants at Three on the Bund, a department store along the river in central Shanghai, and it is run by French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

Architects Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu have worked on several renovation projects in Shanghai, including a design gallery in a former colonial police station and the reworking of a 1930s townhouse. Speaking to Dezeen last year, the pair explained that interest in conservation and small scale development is growing in China.

The studio also won World Interior of the Year in 2011 for transforming a disused Japanese army headquarters into a hotel in the same neighbourhood.

See more design by Neri&Hu »
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Photography is by Pedro Pegenaute.

Here’s some more text from Neri&Hu

Mercato at Three on the Bund

Neri&Hu puts the “industrial” back in three Michelin star dining and refined interior at Mercato.

Situated within the prestigious Three on the Bund, Mercato is renowned chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s newest culinary destination in Shanghai, the first of which to serve up an upscale yet rustic Italian fare. Neri&Hu’s design for the 1,000 square metre restaurant draws not only from the chef’s culinary vision but also from the rich historical context of its locale, harkening to early 1900s Shanghai, when the Bund was a bustling industrial hub.

Stripping back the strata of finishes that have built up after years of renovations, the design concept celebrates the beauty of the bare structural elements. Three on the Bund was the first building in Shanghai to be built out of steel, and the architects’ decision to reveal the original steel columns pays homage to this extraordinary feat. Against the textured backdrop of the existing brickwork, concrete, plaster and mouldings, new insertions are clearly demarcated. Constantly playing the new against the old, Neri&Hu’s design is a reflection of the complex identity of not only the historical Bund, but of Shanghai at large.

Coming off the lift, one notices immediately the Victorian plaster ceilings above, its gorgeous aged patina juxtaposed against raw steel insertions: a series of lockers along the wall, a sliding metal gate threshold, and the suspended rail from which a collection of eclectic glass bulbs hang—the opulence of old Shanghai coinciding with a grittier side.

Making reference to the restaurant’s name, the vibrant atmosphere inside the main dining space recalls a street side marketplace, featuring at its centre the Bar and the Pizza Bar, both encased in steel mesh and wire glass boxes with recycled wood canopies. Above, a network of tube steel members, inspired by old-time butcher’s rails, intertwine with the exposed ductwork and form a system for hanging both shelving and lighting. Like a deconstructed sofa, the banquettes along the edge of the dining area are made from wood salvaged on site and embedded into a metal frame.

The private dining rooms are also featured in the space as metal-framed enclosures, infilled with panels of varying materials: reclaimed wood, natural steel, antique mirror, metal mesh and chalk board. A band of textured glass along the top edge of each PDR affords some transparency, while sliding doors between each room provide maximum flexibility. This language continues into the corridor between the kitchen and dining area, where a back lit wall of textured glass panels – inspired by old warehouse windows – encourages interaction between the chef and his patrons.

Diners seated along the edges of the room experience a different sort of ambiance. To bring lightness into the space, the perimeter represents an in-between zone: between interior and exterior, between architecture and landscape, between the domestic and the urban. Clad in white travertine, the walls here act as a temporary departure from the other rich textures and palettes. The focus here is simply the breathtaking views of the Bund beyond, drawing the far reaches of the city into the dining space itself.

The post Mercato at Three on the Bund
by Neri&Hu appeared first on Dezeen.

Shanghai studio Neri&Hu has reinterpreted traditional Chinese architecture and courtyard typologies for the design of a 300-room hotel in one of China’s oldest cities (+ slideshow).

The hotel, for international chain Westin, is located in Xi’an, the 3000-year-old city where tourists flock to visit ancient sculptures the Terracotta Warriors. Neri&Hu planned the hotel as a modern building but added details that reference the historic local vernacular, such as gently inclining rooftops and bold flashes of red.

Interpretations of Chinese courtyards begin with a large rectangular garden contained at the heart of the building. Meanwhile, a top-lit atrium is located on the eastern side of the plan and forms the centre point for four smaller indoor courts.

“As in Chinese architecture, the ‘Tian Jing’ is an important concept that we wanted to bring to this hotel in a city that boasts rich Chinese history, artefacts and heritage,” the architects told Dezeen. “Its spiritual functions in Chinese traditional architecture are profound and we intended to bring this experience into the hotel.”

Dark stucco and stone clads the exterior of the five-storey building and a narrow strip of glazing separates the walls from the sloping roof. Vertically sliced windows decrease in size towards the top of the facade to create the impression of a tapered volume.

The architects cite the bulky massing of the city walls as inspiration: “The monumental scale of the Xi’an Westin building is not to be missed and inevitably it makes a lasting impression on each visitor to the hotel. But this is also a local character, given that the building footprint and massing is largely defined by the municipality, to be in keeping with the character of Xi’an as one of the most historically significant ancient cities in China.”

Flashes of red colour the window recesses, revealing the thickness of the outer walls. In most places these openings are slanted to direct views towards nearby landmark the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda.

Pools of water line the perimeter to give the illusion of a floating building, while slatted timber canopies mark the entrances for guests. One entrance leads into a ground floor lobby, while the other brings visitors down into a subterranean museum.

Neri&Hu also created three restaurants for the hotel, including one where diners sits beneath a cluster of skeletal pendant lamps.

Chinese architects Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu previously designed a hotel inside an abandoned former army headquarters, which was named overall winner at the Inside awards in 2011. In a recent interview, the pair told Dezeen that Chinese architects need to stem the tide of “half-assed” building projects in the country.

Other recent projects by the studio include a design gallery and event space in a former colonial police station and an apartment where rooms are displayed like exhibits. See more architecture by Neri&Hu or more architecture in China.

Photography is by Pedro Pegenaute.

Here’s some more information from Neri&Hu:

Xi’an Westin Hotel

In an ancient capital of China, Neri&Hu Design Research Office’s design of the Westin in Xi’an emerges as a tribute to both the city’s importance as a hub of burgeoning growth in the region, as well as its long standing status as a cradle of Chinese civilisation. With 3,100 years of history embedded in the layers of the city, Xi’an is not merely a formidable backdrop to the building itself but has provided the architects with design inspirations that inextricably link its past to its present and future.

Above: ground floor plan – click for larger image

Arriving in Xi’an’s historic center, one is immediately struck by the fortress-like expanse of its enveloping city walls, and the architecture of the Westin takes cues from this heavy monumentality. Respectful of its urban context, the dark stucco and stone clad building blocks adopt the profile of vernacular Chinese architecture. While the sloped contours and overhanging eaves of the roof are immediately recognisable, its traditional details have been reduced to the clean lines of a minimalist contemporary architecture. The rhythmic sequence of deep-cut openings on the façade shifts playfully, getting smaller on each subsequent level of the five storey structure, giving the illusion of the building mass tapering as it rises. Each opening, lined in a vibrant red hue, is slanted to direct views to neighbouring landmark the Big Wild Goose Pavilion and reveals the thickness of this architecture, as deeply rooted in its history as in the ground itself.

Above: basement floor plan – click for larger image

The apparent heaviness of the architectural volumes is constantly juxtaposed against elements which bring a certain lightness to the project. From afar, it becomes apparent that the pitched roof, which is typically quite low and heavy in a traditional Chinese building is here, handled with more delicacy. Bulkiness shed and curves straightened, the roof is lifted from the building mass below by a band of glazing and floats one level above. Approaching it, one discovers that the entire assemblage of buildings is surrounded by a reflective pool of water, leaving the impression of a building that is suspended in an infinite sky. At either of its two main entries, wooden slatted canopies are gently attached to the façade and allow light and shadow to permeate deep into the interior, drawing visitors in further. Once inside, a pleasant surprise awaits, the light which floods in through skylit courtyards carved from each volume, as a piece of landscape implants itself into the center of each block. The architects’ constant effort to extend the exterior into the interior manifests most grandly perhaps in the sweeping set of stairs at the East entry, which brings visitors down two levels below into a large sunken garden at the very heart of the project, around which are located the main public spaces. Like the Neolithic Banpo village on the skirts of Xi’an, or the terracotta warriors for whom millions travel each year to visit, the architecture is a celebration of the subterranean.

Above: third floor plan – click for larger image

Along the journey from the East entry to the central sunken garden is a feature which is unique to the Westin Xi’an, a museum housing ancient mural art from the region. Neri&Hu’s concept for this space is grounded in the basic notion that the display format for murals should be inherently different from the display of any other form of art. As historic objects of art needs strict humidity, lighting, and temperature control, the design of the exhibition space starts with those basic units of exhibition, metal cases hung on bare white walls. Departing from the quintessential “white cube” museum idea here, each unit of display casework is positioned in a way that expresses each case’s individuality and the individuality of each work of art within. By detaching the casework from the white wall, and then framing the mural fragments as individual works, one is able to more deeply appreciate each one as a unique art piece.

Above: section A-A – click for larger image

The Westin Xi’an features three restaurants whose interiors Neri&Hu was also responsible for. The Chinese restaurant is a free-standing building which caps off the sunken garden on the West side, and its detachment from the other buildings allowed the architects to experiment more freely with its massing. Cleverly playing on the notion of the heavy roof, the entire building here is expressed as a Mansard roof which drops so low it appears to only be slightly hovering off the ground. Dormer windows protrude on each side to provide light, and the structure of the roof is exposed on the interior, so that one is constantly reminded of the inhabitation of this roof. The Private Dining Rooms are contained within a brick mass with vertical cuts through it, bringing unexpected light and views to the dining experience. The concept for the Japanese restaurant is derived from the stage of Kabuki theater, where actors surround the audience and perform in the round. In this restaurant, the main circulation paths are elevated around the perimeter, with diners inhabiting the sunken area in between; servers and passersby become performers on stage. Continuing the theme of performance and display, the All-day-dining restaurant features glass encased dining and buffet areas in the center of the space. Like a marketplace display vitrine, the food and spectacle of feasting become focal points.

Above: section B-B – click for larger image

With Neri&Hu Design Research Office’s fresh take on historic references, the Westin Xi’an pays due homage to this ancient city, while continuing to break through preconceived notions of Chineseness in architecture.

The post Xi’an Westin Hotel
by Neri&Hu appeared first on Dezeen.

News: Chinese architects need to develop their own design manifesto to stem the tide of “half-assed” building projects in the country, according to Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu of Shanghai studio Neri&Hu.

Speaking to Dezeen in Shanghai last week, the duo talked about “the absence of a modern Chinese architecture and design language” and added: “Architects feel lost”.

Neri and Hu made the comments at the opening of their Design Republic Design Commune in the city’s Jingan district, where they organised a series of discussions about the need for a new design manifesto for China.

Hu said the loss of belief is common to architects around the world, but is particularly critical in China due to the frenetic pace of development in the country. “A lot of architects in the US are lost, but there are no projects,” Hu said. “Here, we are lost and we are building cities.”

Neri added that Chinese developers often brief their construction teams by pointing to pictures in magazines: “It’s done in such a half-assed way that it becomes scary,” he said.

Last week Neri&Hu Design and Research Office invited international designers, architects and founders of design brands to Shanghai to discuss their own design manifestos at the opening of the building, which will be used to introduce Chinese audiences to design.

At the launch they distributed a booklet resembling Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book containing a series of slogans such as “We seek beauty in the everyday” and “We denounce design for the sake of design, “which intended to stimulate debate about the meaning of design.

“If you tell people this kind of stuff here, they don’t understand why you’re even doing it,” said Hu. “In the west, when you tell people about this, at least they understand why you’re searching. They might be lost, but they know that they are lost. People are lost here, not knowing they’re lost. That’s a real danger.”

Last month Aric Chen, the creative director of Beijing Design Week, told Dezeen that China needs to “slow down” and pay more attention to issues of authenticity, process and identity.

See all our stories about Neri&Hu | See all our stories about Shanghai

Top photograph of the Shanghai skyline is from Shutterstock.

Here’s an edited transcript of the interview with Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu, conducted by Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs:

Rossana Hu: Lyndon and I are both architects but after we started our architecture practice here in Shanghai we also started another company called Design Republic. Design Republic is really a platform for design. We started with a retail concept but there are other things with regards to Design Republic that we’d like to incorporate into the retail environment.

One of them is education: educating the public about design, to bring designers from different parts of the world to China, to speak, to show their work, to engage with dialogue with the local designers here.

Lyndon Neri: The idea is to bring the best of what the world can offer to China. And hopefully, one day, our aspiration is to bring the best of what China can offer from a design point of view back to the world.

Rossana Hu: This week at the Design Republic Design Commune we are opening the space to the public and we’re having a two-day symposium series called Manifesto. We’ve invited a lot of guest speakers from all over the world to come and talk about design in different ways.

If we don’t do this, and we only show and sell products, it’s just meaningless. And vice-versa, if we only do the talks, and you read about these products but you don’t see them, you don’t touch them, that’s also meaningless. And that was the case [in Shanghai] before Design Republic opened. You couldn’t see classic modern design anywhere. There were no design museums, there were no shops that sell modern classics. People were just not interested.

Lyndon Neri: The idea of Manifesto started about actually seven years ago when Rossana and I edited a book called Persistence of Vision. We interviewed fifty architects practicing in Shanghai. We asked them twelve questions.

At the back of our mind was the notion of trying to find a manifesto in a city that is so busy; a city that is just building like mad. We realised that it was important to make sure that people are thinking, having a discourse.

Rosanna Hu: It all derived from when we first started working here. We were talking to both local and overseas Chinese who returned about working, the conditions of working here, and everyone’s so busy and has no time to think, no time to talk to each other. And every time you do have time to talk, it’s five to ten minutes, and you can never really engage in a meaningful way. And we thought, okay, if everyone feels that way, then that means everyone must welcome the chance to engage.

So we did the book as an effort to bring about community, and it did I think. It made all the people we interviewed rethink about why it is they’re here. We asked a lot of questions about culture, space, location, your work; what your responsibility as an architect and designer is; are you happy with what you’re doing here; those types of questions.

So we wanted Design Republic to be a platform, and the retail just became the easiest thing to start because the form of a shop is easy. It is something that people understand: you sell products.

But there are other things that we wanted to do: create a brand that incorporates other designers in China to bring about a Chinese voice in modern design; to be able to bring it to the world and to engage in the problems that exist here today.

Marcus Fairs: And how does that relate to what you’re doing here? A lot of the speakers you have for your Manifesto talks here are from the West.

Rosanna Hu: From the book project we realised a lot of people were asking what today’s manifesto in design is. And actually that’s not just a Chinese problem; it’s a global problem. Architects feel lost, we’re no longer confined within architecture with the big A, the way I thought we were say fifteen years ago, twenty years ago. It was probably easier to design because everyone shared certain beliefs. We believe in manifestos, we believe that you need to stake your belief. If you know your dream, then you can chase after it.

Lyndon Neri: And be rigorous about it.

Rosanna Hu: And also we notice the absence of a collective voice. The absence of a modern Chinese architecture and design language.

Lyndon Neri: In China, the phenomenon of copying is very great. So people look at magazines and they go, “I could sort of do this minimalist thing, I’ll have the contractor do something like this.” It’s done in such a mama huhu way; a half-assed, half-baked way that it becomes, you know, scary.

Marcus Fairs: Shanghai’s quite funny to that extent because you have these western-style skyscrapers with Chinese details bolted on the top. It’s quite surreal.

Rosanna Hu: Yes, and I mean it goes back to our thesis projects in graduate school. I remember having a discussion with my teacher at Princeton. I remember talking to him about my thesis proposal, discussing the problem of modernism, and regionalism versus globalism. He thought that to modernise means basically what Rem [Koolhaas] believes: the tabula rasa. There’s no history; that’s all baggage that you don’t need. But I still insist that you are who you are. None of us can erase our past, and you bring the baggage with you and you’ve got to work with the baggage that you have.

And how do you then exist as a contemporary architect, working with a modern architectural language? How do you exist in this environment, what is it that we take with us? Maybe it’s not our history from the Ming and Qing Dynasties or even earlier. Maybe it’s what we see today. Maybe it’s the toilet that’s across your nongtang [traditional Shanghai lane-house] window that you can see from your neighbour’s bathroom, or it’s the broom that everyone hangs up. Maybe it’s those very kind of mundane things of the everyday that gives you a clue to what to design.

But also, we recognise that we’re only one part of the world, and we’re only one very small part of the larger Chinese modern context. I like to learn from other disciplines, and I think that to learn from, say, how Chinese modern literature, Chinese modern art, Chinese modern music, has evolved to where they are today.

The modern [Chinese] language, the writing system is actually influenced from English writing; the same with poetry. People have gone abroad, studied and brought things back. You know if you look at the [Chinese architects] who are doing significant work here, very few of them have actually never done work abroad: Yung Ho [Chang] Ma [Qingyun], Ma Qingyun, Ma Yansong. Most of use went abroad, and now we are all back here, taking what we’ve learned and creating something new.

Lyndon Neri: [Vancouver-based architect and designer] Omer Arbel said something very interesting today when he was asked what he would say to Chinese architecture students. He says, growing up, it was easy to model his career on the protagonists of his time. In his case it was Rem Koolhaas. But then quickly he realised it was not just unattainable, but it was so abstract that to people in Vancouver it was meaningless. So then he started finding meaning within the context that he was practising, and that became interesting.

Marcus Fairs: You mentioned that these are global issues; to what extent are they issues in China too?

Rosanna Hu: It is even more of an issue here because more people are working here, and it’s at a faster pace.

Lyndon Neri: It’s amplified, exaggerated.

Rosanna Hu: So if you get lost, you get lost faster. And if you fall, you fall deeper.

Lyndon Neri: A lot of architects in the US are lost, but there are no projects. So they could be lost and not build. Here, we are lost and we are building cities. We’re building cities, you know. For crying out loud!

Rosanna Hu: If you tell people this kind of stuff here, they don’t understand why you’re even doing it. They don’t understand the need to have a manifesto. In the west, when you tell people about this, at least they understand why you’re searching. They may not have it, they might be lost, but they know that they are lost. People are lost here, not knowing they’re lost. That’s a real danger.

Marcus Fairs: So the manifesto needs to be figured out pretty soon. And how are you going to do that?

Rosanna Hu: I don’t really see that there needs to be an end. I don’t think it’s like saying, “Okay, once we formulate our manifesto, then this is it.”

Marcus Fairs: You produced a little Manifesto booklet for the opening event [above and below].

Rosanna Hu: We really worked hard [on that]. We really thought about it and the reason why it’s mostly blank pages is so that you write your own. And then they’re offset with quotes from both Chinese writers, poets and Western writers’ quotes about life, about ideals, about utopia. This helps you set the tone. It’s the beginning but the key is that you’re searching for something, and that your work will hopefully stand for something.

The post “Architects in China are lost”
– Neri&Hu appeared first on Dezeen.

A large glass vitrine holds rooms like exhibits at the centre of this apartment in Singapore by Chinese architects Neri&Hu.

Only the kitchen meets the walls of the Wu Residence, while other rooms are surrounded by a single corridor that lines the perimeter.

“The client was provoked by his kids that he was not cool enough,” Lyndon Neri told Dezeen. “So he selected the craziest scheme.”

Behind the layer of glass, Chinese stone defines the walls and surfaces of the study, the bathroom is lined with copper and the master bedroom is positioned in front of a single wooden wall.

Translucent curtains are all that screen the rooms from the surrounding corridor.

“By having this transparency the entire flat felt bigger,” said Neri.

See more stories about Neri&Hu here, including our interview with Lyndon Neri about the hotel they completed inside a former army headquarters.

See more stories about apartments »

Photography is by Pedro Pegenaute.

Plan – click above for larger image

Here’s a design statement from Neri&Hu:

Wu Residence: Design Statement

Shanghai-based architects Neri&Hu recently completed a 250 square-meter private residence in a high rise tower in the heart of Singapore. The client’s mandate was simple: “Give me three bedrooms and a project that will challenge the conventional notion of what a flat should be.” Rising up to this challenge, Neri&Hu initiated the project by questioning the fundamentals of the “house” typology itself, asking themselves: How can we free up the plan and make it feel light and loft-like? What is the relationship between the communal and private? When and how should privacy be maintained, if at all? What are the essential and non-essential program components that make a “home”? What is domesticity?

The resulting parti breaks though all conventions of the standard apartment layout by placing the rooms away from the building edge, reserving a continuous corridor along the entire perimeter. Rather than enter into the center and then radiate outwards towards individual rooms, a configuration often taken for granted as the ideal condition in high rise residences, here, the private zone forms the core of the space, while the public circulation zone envelops and ties everything together. The strategic insertion of three free floating volumes, clad in wood, stone, and copper, adds to the depth of the spatial layers, enclosing within them the most private and intimate rooms of all—the study and the two bathrooms. The remaining space is kept transparent, pushing the boundaries of how open and extroverted a room can be, while still maintaining privacy. The project rejects the parcelization of spaces found typically in apartment layouts, creating an openness and expansiveness that is more conducive to the contemporary lifestyle.

The post Wu Residence
by Neri&Hu appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen screen: in this final interview from our series of Dezeen Talks filmed at the Inside awards in Barcelona, Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs talks to Lyndon Neri about his restaurant design within a hotel where cut-outs in the ceiling mean diners can look up into the bedrooms above. Watch the movie »