David Chipperfield Architects . photos: © Raw Vision Studio
A new mixed-use commercial building, Expo Riverside Dingbo, has completed on the banks of the Huangpu River in central Shanghai, the centrepiece of the redevelopment of the 2010 World Expo Site.
Prominently located on the Huangpu River and adjacent to the Power Station of Art – a contemporary art gallery housed in a former power station – Dingbo Expo Riverside is a new commercial building, with a total of 60,000 square metres of retail and varied office typologies. The centrepiece of the reconfiguration plans for the site of the 2010 World Expo, the design follows a competition won by David Chipperfield Architects in 2013 and assumes an iconic role in this area of Shanghai.
Dingo Expo Riverside acts as a counterbalance to the Power Station of Art which is the dominant building on the skyline, and together the two buildings define a new public plaza in between. The massing concept consists of three stacked volumes which decrease in size as the building increases in height. The stacking of the volumes references the massing of the Power Station of Art and creates a strong dialogue with the urban context. When viewed from the east, the building appears as a ziggurat, gently stepping down to a more human scale facing the river and plaza. The steps break down the traditional tower and podium composition and create a series of outdoor landscaped terraces facing the river. From the highway to the north-west, where the different volumes are not set back from each other, the building appears as a tower.
Internally, the volumes are shaped by multi-storey atriums and influenced by the terraces’ natural landscape. Large façade openings face the river and extend the atriums onto these landscaped terraces. The façade uses vertical fins with a considerable depth to emphasise the verticality of the stacked volumes and provide sun shading. The material for these elements is dark brown glazed terracotta, a traditional material used in Chinese architecture. It makes the building appear to shimmer when seen from the distance and gives it a strong, natural character when observed in detail.
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Project start
2013
Completion
2023
Gross floor area
57,500m²
Client
Shanghai Expo Riverside Property Co., Ltd.
Architect
David Chipperfield Architects Berlin and Shanghai
Partners
David Chipperfield, Mark Randel, Libin Chen
Project architect
Christoph Goeke, Diana Schaffrannek, Mathilde Planchot, Miguel Bispo, Chuxiao Li
Project team
Ekena Kasumova, Maoxue Li, Dalia Liksaite, Carthage Murphy, Lydia Remakers, Lijun Shen, Liping Xu, Andrew Irvin, Fengjuan Sun, Qianqian Zhang, Jidi Pan, Zhexu Du, Huiqun Liu, Jinghui Hou, Tianyuan Fan, Zou Yundi, Chenghao Lyu
Local design institute
ECADI
Structural engineer
Arup, ECADI
Services engineer
Arup, WSP, ECADI
Façade consultant
Schimidlin Facade Consultancy
Lighting consultant
Speirs and Major, KGM Architecture Lighting
Landscape architect
Levin Monsigny Landschaftsarchitekten, Fish Landscape Design
