Neri & Hu give life to an old building by a sculptural staircase that goes through the different levels offering endless space visuals.

Also they create a very special facade using drawings of designs of chairs, tables, lamps...

Memory of project by Neri&Hu

The new Design Republic's Design Collective is located on the outskirt of Shanghai in a town called Qingpu. Neri&Hu inherited an existing building and were given the task of completely redesigning both the exterior and the interior without demolishing the existing structure.  Neri&Hu’s concept was to cover the existing building to create a new exterior identity and simultaneously fabricate an introverted spatial platform to create a new identity for the Design Republic's Design Collective, a group of avant-garde furniture retail initiatives in the city.

The existing building has been completely covered with an opaque graphic wrapper made with carbon fiber panels to create an introverted spatial condition to showcase furniture both visually and experientially.

The main entry is characterized by a large steel funnel, serving as a transition element from the urban context to the exhibition space. The shape of the entry tube also serves as a means of emphasizing the arrival into the 3 story exhibition hall where the visitors introverted journey begins.

The staircase wrapping the interior of the main exhibition space leads the visitor through the multiple levels of display where the furniture can be experienced from varying spatial relationships and viewed from different vantage points and voyeuristic snippets of retail display. This journey is accentuated as the visitor climbs higher through the gallery levels by the seven large openings in the roof which serve to allow daylight into the exhibition space while at once generating a moment of visual release from within the introverted exhibition environment.

About Design Republic.

Design Republic stands for a new birth of life and style. At its foundation, it is a republic of life - life that creates meaning and understanding through its relationship to objects of habitation. Seeking to explore the relationship between people and the simple objects they use in life - a plate, a teacup, a chair; it is here where we discover the beauty of everyday life.

Design Republic is also a republic of style - a style that creates new ideologies in design, retail, and merchandising concepts embodying a distinctive aesthetic for contemporary China. It crosses traditional boundaries to merge old and new, traditional and modern, opulent and austere, to ultimately create a dynamic platform of design.

Design Republic Qingpu store is located on the first floor, with a total area of 2,000 sqm. The Design Republic offers a unique collection of products created by the world's best design talents collaborates with many designers both foreign and local to create products that will explore a new modern Chinese aesthetic.

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Architects
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Neri&Hu Design and Research Office. Partners-in-charge.- Lyndon Neri, Rossana Hu.
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Project team
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Research Office (Interior Designer). Architecture and Interior: Dirk Weiblen (senior associate), Federico Saralvo (architectural designer), Aleksandra Duka (architectural designer), Stephanie Chu (architectural designer). Graphics: Christine Neri (associate), Evelyn Chiu (graphic designer).
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Client
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Design Republic store on GF.
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Area
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7230 sqm (Gross square footage).
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Dates
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July 2011 – April 2012 (Construction Period). December 2010 – July 2011 (Design Period).
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Location
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Qingpu District,Shanghái, China.
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Photography
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Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, founded in 2006 by partners Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu, Neri&Hu Design and Research Office is an inter-disciplinary architectural design practice based in Shanghai, China. The practice’s burgeoning global portfolio includes commissions ranging from master planning and architecture to interior design, installation, furniture, product, branding and graphic works. Currently working on projects in many countries, Neri&Hu is composed of multi-cultural staff who speak over 30 different languages.  The team's diversity reinforces a core vision for the practice: to respond to a global worldview, incorporating overlapping design disciplines for a new architectural paradigm.

Neri&Hu’s location is purposeful. With Shanghai considered a new global frontier, Neri&Hu is in the immediate center of this contemporary chaos. The city’s cultural, urban, and historic contexts function as a point of departure for design inquiries that span across a wide spectrum of scales. Furthermore, Neri&Hu has expanded the conventional boundaries of practice to include complementary disciplines. A critical probing into the specificities of program, site, function, and history is essential to the creation of rigorous work. Based on research, Neri&Hu anchors its ethos on the dynamic interaction of experience, detail, material, form, and light rather than conforming to a formulaic style.

Lyndon Neri, Honorary FAIA, co-founded Neri&Hu Design and Research Office with Rossana Hu in 2006, an inter-disciplinary architectural design practice based in Shanghai. Neri received his Master of Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design and his Bachelor of Arts in Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. Alongside his design practice, Neri has been deeply committed to architectural education and has taught and lectured at numerous universities. He was appointed as Visiting Faculty at Princeton University School of Architecture for the spring semesters of 2024 and 2025. Neri was appointed the Howard Friedman Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of California, Berkeley in 2023, the Design Critic in 2023 and the John C. Portman Design Critic in Architecture in 2019 and 2021 at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor in 2022 and Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor Chair in 2018 at the Yale School of Architecture. Neri co-authored and edited Persistence of Vision: Shanghai Architects in Dialogue, published by MCCM Creations in 2007. In 2017, his first monograph, Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, was published by Park Books. In 2021, the second monograph, Thresholds: Space, Time and Practice, was published by Thames & Hudson, and the Chinese edition was translated and published in 2023 by Guangxi Normal University Press. Neri was elevated to Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 2025.

Rossana Hu co-founded Neri&Hu Design and Research Office with Lyndon Neri in 2006, an inter-disciplinary architectural design practice based in Shanghai. Hu received her Master of Architecture and Urban Planning at Princeton University and her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, with a minor in music.

Alongside her design practice, Hu has been deeply committed to architectural education and has taught and lectured at numerous universities. Hu was appointed the Howard Friedman Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of California, Berkeley in 2023, the Design Critic in 2023 and the John C. Portman Design Critic in Architecture in 2019 and 2021 at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor in 2022 and Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor Chair in 2018 at the Yale School of Architecture. Hu was appointed as Chair of the Department of Architecture at Tongji University in 2021 and Chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design, effective spring semester 2024.

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Published on: May 30, 2013
Cite:
metalocus, ÁNGELA SOLÍS
"Design Republic's Design Collective by Neri&Hu" METALOCUS. Accessed
<http://www.metalocus.es/en/news/design-republics-design-collective-nerihu> ISSN 1139-6415
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