The Art Forum is an essential part of the Duolum District Project in Shanghai, acting as the head and the gateway of the planning operation. Its strategic location provides a very active condensation of the urban and symbolic interpretations of the history and the natural memory of this district in the city.

The building’s 480 m. length and 20 m. vertical bay bends to the different urban tensions of the zone, rising vertically in the final section to shape a 120 m. high tower. This broken unit is separated 9m. from the horizontal plane, and manifests itself as an entrance gateway to the whole future urban operation.

Like all outstanding units with a powerful symbolic presence, the Art Forum generates interior and exterior spaces that are intertwined in the itineraries and their perception. The surrounding urban space plays an active role in the building, with water planes that act as a perceptive vibration, and rest and recreation areas that relate to the various entrances to the building.

The multiple, diversified brief for the Art Forum (leisure, culture and entertainment), gives rise to the generation of a section in continuous transformation within a 20 x 26 m. box– somewhat like a continuously folding cross-section, which outlines and constructs a series of spatial environments with different uses and qualities. The vertical Tower is affected by this living cross-section in a succession of syncopated vertical spaces, a proposal that we have also studied in other tower projects of ours over the years.

The double glazed outer skin expresses the different activities and spaces of the building using different nuances and textures by day and by night.