The Hub by Neri&Hu: A Five-Storey Urban Oasis for Performance in Shanghai
A new public heart for Hongqiao
In Shanghai's Hongqiao district, The Hub Performance & Exhibition Center is part of a mixed-use development intended to give a rapidly expanding commercial and transport area a cultural gathering place. Neri&Hu's interior design creates a strong counterpoint to the scale and visual intensity of surrounding towers, stations and business infrastructure. The centre is imagined as a five-storey urban oasis: a solid landscape carved to accommodate exhibition, circulation, hospitality and performance.
Visitors move through a sequence whose character changes from subterranean passage to dramatic public atrium and more contained performance rooms. The overall experience is deliberately spatial, encouraging people to discover the building over time rather than understand it as a simple stack of independent floors.
From the subway to the exhibition halls
The approach from the nearby subway network begins underground. A ceiling of metal tubes evokes the roots of a forest above, suggesting an unseen landscape before visitors emerge into the primary public spaces. This intervention makes the transition from transit infrastructure to cultural venue memorable while giving a large underground area a legible identity.
An escalator tunnel with deep ceiling recesses carries visitors upward. Its elongated section heightens anticipation, offering a directed movement towards the main exhibition hall. Circulation is treated not as leftover space but as the opening act of a public experience.
A floating timber canopy
At the centre, a three-storey atrium is covered by a floating canopy of timber sticks. The repeated pieces evoke a dense forest overhead, producing a sculptural element whose scale is large enough to be experienced from multiple levels. This suspended composition contrasts with the heavier sandstone surfaces enclosing the galleries and gives the heart of the building its principal visual identity.
The canopy makes light and shadow part of the experience. Seen from below, it gathers the immense atrium into one architectural gesture; from higher galleries, it becomes part of a larger landscape of bridges, openings and terraces. The relationship between the individual timber members and the large surrounding void gives the hall a distinctly crafted quality.
Sandstone galleries and connected viewpoints
Carved sandstone-like surfaces form the gallery enclosures. Interlocking balustrades in sandstone and light walnut create transitions between different parts of the building, while bridges and mezzanines allow visitors to see other people moving around the central void. Rather than isolate events from one another, the architecture makes activity visible across several levels.
This changing viewpoint recalls a larger urban experience. Visitors are sometimes spectators looking into an exhibition, sometimes participants crossing a gallery and sometimes part of the spectacle for people on a different floor. The spatial design celebrates those shifts without requiring every room to share the same programme.
A performance hall concealed in the upper levels
The main auditorium is positioned in the upper part of the building, where its enclosure resembles a treasured object inserted into the larger rock-like landscape. Its 750 seats support cultural performances, and floating screens within the interior recall the bamboo slips historically used to record Chinese writing. The reference gives the room a sense of story without making it a literal historic reconstruction.
Within the transition from atrium to auditorium, the architectural mood changes from expansive social space to the concentration required for performance. This contrast allows the hall to serve its function while maintaining a relationship with the wider material language of the centre.
Small rooms as discoveries within the rock
Neri&Hu extends the design idea into secondary spaces. Bars and salons appear as timber houses inserted into the heavier enclosing mass. A cigar room and other private areas provide intimate destinations, while reflective glazed tiles and dramatic material contrasts give restrooms and lift lobbies distinct identities.
VIP areas incorporate handcrafted details, including painted tiles whose imagery relates to Hongqiao's history. These elements suggest that a cultural building can create moments of discovery at every scale, from a substantial public void to a single private room.
A civic interior shaped by movement
The Hub is ambitious because it treats public circulation, architectural form and cultural activity as interdependent. Its carved sandstone spaces and suspended timber canopy establish a memorable identity, but their real purpose is to guide visitors between different events and encounters.
Completed in 2015, the project remains a substantial example of how architecture can provide public life within a largely commercial development. Neri&Hu uses a landscape metaphor to make a 15,700-square-metre complex more coherent and inviting, turning passage through the building into an experience of culture in its own right.
Project information and image credits
Project: The Hub | Performance & Exhibition Center. Address: 33 Shaohong Road, Minhang District, Shanghai, China. Interior architecture: Neri&Hu Design and Research Office. Developer: Shui On Land. Gross area: 15,700 m². Completed October 2015. Performance hall seating: approximately 750. Photography: Dirk Weiblen. Each photograph is credited in its caption.
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