For all those Spanish who are in China and miss Spanish food but with an international twist, and also for everyone who likes to enjoy good food in a great atmosphere, you should go to The Commune Social, a restaurant designed by Neri&Hu.

Memory of project

The Commune Social located at the Design Republic Design Commune is a new tapas restaurant designed by Neri&Hu Design and Research Office of Shanghai. The food concept is a fresh and modern take on Spanish tapas, where the small dishes served are refined interpretations of the tapas genre with an international twist.

The design concept of the space is to emphasize the "sharing" idea of eating tapas, and the four distinct areas in the restaurant (tapas bar, dining room, dessert bar, and the secret bar) are meant to provide different flavors and ingredients for diners to "share", like they do the food. The diners are encouraged to move from having drinks at the Secret Bar to the tapas bar or the dining room for dinner, then end up at the Dessert Bar to finish the meal. Each room serves something different, and each room evokes a different atmosphere.

The four adjoining rooms provide also a communal and social aspect that is in the original spatial concept of the Social restaurant group. (Pollen Street Social in London, and 22 ships in Hong Kong, both designed also by Neri&Hu.) The moving feasting idea is a way for diners to be active in the restaurant, and engage in social activities while dining.

The design approach is similar to 22 Ships in that Neri&Hu emphasized raw materials to accentuate the "freshness" of visual encounter, while making associations to the freshness and rawness of food. Materials such as raw iron, reclaimed wood, unfinished concrete, and exposed bricks all work together to form a tapestry of texture and patterns. While all other spaces take on a rustic industrial rawness, the dessert bar juxtaposes its clinical whiteness against the others, equipped with a full accoutrement of custom light ensemble that reminds one of the dentist clinic. It is meant to set the dessert served against a clean backdrop, and elevate the position of the dessert to above just the "finishing course", but an "otherworldly" experience of culinary finesse and ecstasy. Then one is reminded of the price a sweet tooth must pay, thus the reference to a dental clinic.

Text.- Neri&Hu.

CREDITS.-

Architect & Interior Designer.- Neri&Hu Design and Research Office.
Collaborators.- Cai Chun Yan (associate-in-charge), Wang Yan, Guo Peng, Fu Ying. Graphic team: Christine Neri, Siwei Ren, Ivo Toplak. Product team:Brian Lo, Nicolas Fardet, Chen Xiaowen.
Date.- March 2013 (Completion Date); April 2012 – November 2012 (Design Period).
Surface.- 295sqm + 200sqm(outdoor).Capacity (Persons Count): 93 seats.
Site Address.- No.511 Jiangning Road, Shanghai, China.
Project Type.- Restaurant.
Program.- lobby, dessert bar, dining room, tapas bar, drinking bar, lounge bar, courtyard dining area, roof bar.

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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: November 25, 2013
Cite:
metalocus, ÁNGELA SOLÍS
"The Commune Social" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/commune-social> ISSN 1139-6415
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