Bund Soho

The riverbank promenade at the Bund is a highly recognizable place, a visual highlight in the cityscape. From here, a vista opens to the Pudong finance and business district. The row of fifty historic buildings at the Bund forms an architectural ensemble with a stylistic diversity ranging from Neo-Gothic to Art Deco. For the design of Bund Soho at the interface between the Colonial city and the historic city center, the story had to be continued in accordance with the unwritten rules of the place.

The design consists of six buildings, which create a composition of slabs combined in a sculptural, three-dimensional way—a specific system with facades of different characters that unifies the different scales of the surroundings.

The four high-rise office buildings ranging between 60 and 135 meters in height form a distinct edge to the development towards the south and replicate the sequence of gables of the historic promenade facing the Bund. Two lower buildings create a transition in scale to that of the neighboring buildings. Between them there is a sequence of lanes and plazas, an urban space interwoven with its surroundings.

As visitors move about, Bund Soho appears as a holistic ensemble that changes dynamically with the changing angles of view: initially the built sculpture appears as a closed ensemble before its glazed appearance becomes apparent when viewed from the front. In this way, Bund Soho forms a contextual contribution to Shanghai’s cityscape.