800SHOW: Logging on to creative hubs
From Tai Kang Lu to M50 and beyond, Shanghai is abuzz with creative parks and hubs. One of the most recent to spring up, 800SHOW, is a one-time steel factory spanning 20,000 sqm in the heart of Jing’an District. This week, we caught up with logon, the architectural firm behind the renovations, to get the inside scoop on 800SHOW and understand this interesting side of Shanghai’s never-ending urban development. 800SHOW, conveniently located on 800 Changde Lu, is made up of fifteen buildings built over a 50-year period, including the principal 120 metre-long factory hall, colonial-style villas from the 1920s-30s and office buildings from the 1960s-70s. Over two years, all were renovated with their historical standing intact and aim to be ‘a place with face’, providing office space for creative companies as well as events and leisure spaces to shake up the densely commercial area of Jing’an. In October, the space also held the Shanghai International Creative Industries Week, supported by the municipal government. Behind 800SHOW is the German-based international design office, logon, a melting pot of urban planning, landscape design and architecture. It takes an intercultural approach to its work by developing within and adapting to the Chinese market, rather than implementing European models. It blends its Chinese context with a German approach of architecture needing to serve a purpose, and places users at the top of their priority list. For Pascal Hartmann, a German sociologist who has been working at logon in Shanghai since early 2007, successful creative parks are based primarily on clear and well-managed business models. This means making sure spaces are functional for users above all. In constructing 800SHOW, Hartmann told us, “The first priority was to ask how can we use the space and develop the area in relation to its context, rather than just developing a design concept. Plus, we wanted to design it with respect to the original architecture. The area is interesting and