Neri&Hu and Design Republic's New Home / Neri&Hu Design and Research Office

As a practice, Neri&Hu has always sought after adaptive reuse projects, and we were immediately drawn to this project as yet another opportunity to reutilize an artifact of urban excess, to celebrate and even elevate the mundane. Within a small complex of ex-industrial buildings in the middle of bustling Jing’an Temple area, the site for renovation was a four-story nondescript office and dormitory building for the local telecoms company. Instead of just discarding it for a newer, yet still unremarkable, building as the previous tenant saw fit to do, we embraced instead the potential to transform it and give it a chance to not only survive, but thrive as a beacon for design.