Ultra-tech Ode to Culture by Foster + Partners at Shanghai

The Fuson Foundation building stands at the centre of the Bund Financial Centre which is designed by the combined skills of Foster + Partners and Heatherwick Studio in visually highly textured surfaces of granite and rose gold (or bronze, if you prefer). As the grand, kinetic centre piece of this ambitious layout, the building has a spectacularly eye-catching exterior of three layers of fluted walls made of polished rose gold PVD coated steel tubes that move (yes, they actually do) over each other in wave like patterns. As they move, they alternately conceal and reveal parts of themselves as well as the open stage on a massive corner balcony behind them.

Traditionally, Chinese theatre is said to have been performed on open air stages, which is the inspiration behind this design with a moving veil which lifts to reveal an open theatre stage on its balcony. It was described by the architects at an earlier stage of design as a building covered with “a moving veil, which adapts to the changing use of the building and reveals the stage on the balcony and views towards Pudong”.

The movement of the ‘veil’ is achieved by the telescopic arrangement of steel tubes that constitute the wall of the veil, which are moved up and down hydraulically by digitally fed controls to give the appearance of wave formation. The polished rose gold horizontal fluted lines of the cornices below the stage-balcony and above the roof-line perfectly complete the glittery vertical fluting of the veil’s rose gold tubes looking akin to a shiny musical organ, evoking a harmonious melody. 

Other than the grand stage for live performances, this 4000 sq. m. multi-level art and culture building has spaces for exhibitions, displays and other events, including one on its roof-top. The entire mixed development district itself, with eight buildings consisting of banks, retail spaces, boutique hotel and restaurants, has been planned along the Huangpu river front in Shanghai, at the mouth of the Bund Street that connects the new city with old Shanghai.

With both the businesses of finance and culture congregating at this newly established district, which also happens to overlook the quays along the river front where cargo boats come docking, and even connects physically to the older part of the city, the area is likely to become the aspirational nerve centre of Shanghai. And, when a development of such scale and criticality is handed to international designers to conceptualise and create, they are obviously expected to deliver something special and superior on all counts.

And boy, have they delivered! The salutation to local traditions with state-of-the-art technology employed to express it; the sophisticated articulation, at once eye-catchingly grand and delicately nuanced, of a well-planned long term facility; the veiled iconography (pun intended) of the individual building gelling, yet, so well with the visual homogeneity of the rest of the district surrounding it – all fall into place with the finality of a perfectly resolved jigsaw.