Bound to Shanghai, a spatial concept exhibition by architect YU Ting, opened at the China Art Museum, Shanghai in early 2026 and will unfold throughout the year through the successive unveiling of seven conceptual spaces. Abandoning conventional image-based presentation, YU Ting revisits, reflects on, and gives form to his deeply intertwined relationship with Shanghai through seven real spatial constructions, each measuring 3 × 3 × 3metres.
Space is Spirit
When an Architecture Exhibition No Longer Relies on Images
I gave up images, models and videos. In this exhibition, I am not presenting representations of architecture, but seven real constructions.
This is not a gesture of formal radicalism, but a reflection of my understanding of what an architecture exhibition should fundamentally be. Architecture is not an object to be looked at; it is something to be entered, experienced and perceived through the human body. When an architecture exhibition retreats into images, models and videos, it ultimately becomes an experience of reading. Yet the most irreplaceable expressive capacity of architecture lies precisely in space itself.
Space is the core language of architecture. Space makes architecture happen—through the construction of space, an architecture exhibition allows architecture to move beyond being an object that is merely described and become a place that continuously generates experience.
Architecture is Affect
Bound to Shanghai
I have condensed my understanding of Shanghai and architecture into seven 3 × 3 × 3-metre spatial cubes, unfolding through seven spatial chapters——home, city, museum, café, garden, community and sacred space. These seven spatial types, seven materials and seven emotional states come together as seven spatial installations that can be entered, immersed in, or simply observed from the edges.
The exhibition does not unfold all at once. Over the course of a year, the seven spaces will be unveiled one by one at the China Art Museum, Shanghai. Together, the seven spaces form a process of mapping Shanghai through memory, experience and architectural insight.
I call these seven spaces the “Seven Treasure Caskets.” One layer opens after another, leading us ever deeper toward the core. The “Seven Treasure Caskets” are not only a way of organising the seven exhibition spaces, but also a way for me to reconsider my own relationship with Shanghai.
Over thirty years of architectural practice, I once thought of Shanghai simply as the place where I worked and practised architecture. It was only when I was asked, “What is Shanghai-ness?” that I realised how inseparable Shanghai had already become from my architectural practice and my life. Shanghai is my true source of inspiration.
Place is Percept
The Seven Treasure Caskets as a Curatorial Experiment
The “Seven Treasure Caskets” are not an abstraction of architectural types. They emerge from my three decades of living and working in Shanghai as an architect—from the observations, memories and experiences that have shaped my understanding of the city. We come to know a city through the places where we live, work and spend our time. These places carry our everyday lives, while quietly shaping how we remember and understand the city.
Treasure Casket One: Home
A Nine Square Cube that Holds the Dignity of Shanghai Life
On New Year’s Day 2026, the first Treasure Casket, Home · Dignity, was unveiled. A white 3 × 3 metre cube contains the complete life of a family of three.
Home grew out of my work The Dignity of Nine Square Metres, which I created ten years ago. In that 3 × 3 metre space, I once arranged a life for a family of five. Early Shanghai was marked by extremely small living spaces, with several generations often sharing a single room. Yet even in the tightest of spaces, people took pride in keeping their homes orderly, finding clever ways to make everyday life work within just a few square metres. This is the distinctly Shanghai combination of pragmatism and optimism.
I constructed the space as a white, model-like environment, turning the entire dwelling into an art installation. Inside are a sofa bed, wardrobe, bathroom and the multifunctional dining table familiar to Shanghai households—a dining table, a desk, and a tea table for receiving guests.The higher part of the space is designed to be a space for the child: a bed and a desk, a small world of their own.
The family of three reflects the city’s changing demographic structure, while also pointing to a broader shift: living space per person continues to grow.
A home is not defined by its size. A home is about preserving the dignity of everyday life and creating a safe haven for those who come back to it.
Exhibition Information
Title: Home · Dignity
Architect: YU Ting
Project Lead: HUANG He
Dimensions: 3 m × 3 m × 3 m
Material: Plywood
Year: 2025
Treasure Casket Two: City
A Labyrinth, a Shared Sense of Belonging
On March 19, 2026, the second Treasure Casket, City · Pride, opened, expanding the exhibition’s narrative from the scale of the individual home to the city itself.
I imagine Shanghai as a vast labyrinth. Its complexity can leave us lost, disoriented, even frustrated. Yet it is precisely by finding our way through it—by wandering, exploring, and sometimes taking a wrong turn—that the city gradually reveals itself to us. And in that process, we begin to find our own place within it.
Living in Shanghai for long enough can also make us take the city for granted. We may become disappointed, or even choose to leave. Yet distance often makes its presence more tangible: a familiar Shanghai accent can suddenly bring back a sense of belonging. Shanghai is not simply the place where we live; it is a place we carry with us.
City is constructed from colour-printed steel panels. I condensed this experience of Shanghai—its confusion, exploration and accumulated memories—into a nine-square-metre labyrinth. Its narrow passages shift direction repeatedly, making it easy to lose one’s way. On the exterior, my watercolour paintings and sketches of buildings such as Xujiahui Library are scattered across the surface like fragments of the city, marking places where I have worked, walked and lived over the years.
A city may make us lose our way, but in finding our way through it, we find our own location.
Exhibition Information
Title: City · Pride
Architect: YU Ting
Project Lead: MU Zhilin
Dimensions: 3 m × 3 m × 2.4 m
Material: Colour-printed steel panels
Year: 2026
Treasure Casket Three: Gallery
One Person’s Gallery Where Solitude Can Take Place in Public
On May 1, 2026, the third Treasure Casket, One Person’s Gallery, opened. The exhibition turns its attention to one of Shanghai’s most important forms of public cultural space—the gallery/museum.
Shanghai has a large number of galleries/museums and an equally large audience, yet the experience of visiting a museum is usually one of group viewing: many people looking at the same things within the same space. Ten years ago, I created One Person’s Library and One Person’s Gallery, exploring what it might mean for an individual to be alone within a cultural space. This time, I wanted to move beyond the relationship of group to group, and create the possibility of a more direct, one-to-one encounter between a person and the gallery.
In designing the space, I reinterpreted several elements of traditional Chinese spatial language through architectural means: the translucent interface and the Taihu stone. A black solid volume, conceived as a Taihu stone, is wrapped in translucent white polycarbonate panels. Between the two, I carved out a layer of transitional space. Black and white, curved and straight, transparent and opaque, open and enclosed—these pairs of opposites shape the experience of the space.
An opening at the top of the black volume allows daylight to fall into its interior. The light changes with time, leaving the space open to different experiences. I also invite each visitor to take a selfie with the space, creating an image that is uniquely their own.
A gallery becomes truly public when each person can find their own relationship with it.
Exhibition Information
Title: One Person’s Gallery
Architect: YU Ting
Project Lead: ZHU Xingyuan
Dimensions: 3.1 m × 3.5 m × 3.4 m
Materials: Foam, polyurethane foam hardener, polycarbonate panels
Year: 2026
Treasure Casket Four: Café
Acupuncture for Urban Public Life
On August 7, 2026, the fourth chapter of Bound to Shanghai, Café · Satisfaction, opened at the China Art Museum, Shanghai.
Shanghai has one of the highest numbers of cafés in China. With their varied scales and forms, cafés have naturally woven themselves into street corners, lanes and neighbourhoods. A café is like a needle inserted into the urban fabric: a small but precise intervention that activates the surrounding public life, creating a space somewhere between the public and the private.
A café should be light, open and adaptable. Around eleven years ago, I designed a “Paper House” in Lin’an, Zeshengju, as an exploration of lightweight space, using bamboo and oiled paper to create spatial boundaries with an Eastern sensibility. Given the different duration and construction conditions this time, the Café uses curtains and prefabricated aluminium profiles instead.
The aluminium profiles serve as the structural system. Their C-shaped cantilevered frames gradually revealed a strong visual presence, so rather than concealing them, I made them part of the spatial expression, forming the café’s “exoskeleton”. Inside, the seating is folded directly out of panels extending from the floor and walls, visually integrating the furniture with the architecture.
Set against this rigid skeleton are the curtains on three sides of the space that can be raised and lowered. When open, they connect the café to the museum’s public space; when closed, they create a more intimate interior. Light and silhouettes shift as the curtains move, while the aroma of coffee comes and goes, creating a constantly changing boundary between inside and outside.
With its fluid boundaries, the café makes a precise intervention into Shanghai’s urban fabric, creating a subtle pause amid the intensity of metropolitan life.
Exhibition Information
Title: Café · Satisfaction
Architect: YU Ting
Project Lead: SUN Liran
Project Team: HANG Zihan
Dimensions: 3.9 m × 3 m × 3.1 m
Materials: Aluminium profiles, bamboo-charcoal metal panels, curtains
Year: 2026
Existence is Event
The Spatial Experiment Continues
Bound to Shanghai is still unfolding. Over the months ahead, the remaining three spaces will gradually open at the China Art Museum, Shanghai. The “Seven Treasure Caskets” are not a finished answer, but an ongoing spatial experiment.
As each visitor enters, bringing their own memories and experiences into the encounter, the exhibition continues to unfold—allowing each person to form their own understanding of what it means to be “bound to Shanghai.”
Exhibition Information
Exhibition: Bound to Shanghai — A Spatial Concept Exhibition by Architect YU Ting
Venue: China Art Museum, Shanghai
Dates: January 1, 2026 – early 2027
Photography: LI Haoyang
