This article was originally published in Domus 10523, January 2020.

Designed in 2016, the Shanghai Cofco Cultural and Health Center is a social condenser, fostering community among the residents of the surrounding housing blocks with a public space and park along a canal. While the adjacent housing blocks are repetitive, here the architecture is one of spatial energy and openness, inviting the whole community in for recreational and cultural programmes. Shaping a central public space, the Health Center and Cultural Center are exoskeletal concrete constructions. Subtractive cuts in the concrete structure continue
the space shaping the architectural language.  

The landscape and new public buildings are brought together by a concept of “clocks and clouds”. The landscape is organised in large, clock-like circles forming a central public space, and the buildings are cloudlike in their openness. Although the cloud-like porosity in the original drawings and models was to be white, the beauty of the tiny formwork tie holes convinced us to leave the concrete as it was. The energy of the architecture stems from the openings in dialogue with its materiality.

The Cultural Center hovers over a glass base that reveals a café, games and recreation rooms. A curved ramp climbing up to the second floor creates a continuous experience of overlooking. The Health Center is shaped by the curves of the landscape. Both buildings have green sedum roofs which merges them with the landscape when seen from the surrounding apartment buildings.

Opening image: image of construction work on the Cofco Cultural and Health Center in Shanghai, due to be completed in spring 2021. © Aogvision