Shanghai’s Columbia Circle began as a country club for expatriates in the 20s, became an industrial park in the 50s with the addition of 11 buildings, and most recently was renovated by OMA in 2016 into a vibrant mixed-use hub, now regarded as one of Shanghai’s most successful urban regeneration projects.
In the southern portion of Columbia Circle, where the emphasis is on public cultural activity spaces, Blue Bottle Coffee commissioned Neri&Hu to design a cafe that would exemplify their brand value of community culture, inviting people to connect and exchange over coffee.
Neri&Hu was inspired to create an implied sense of domesticity, an imprint of “home,” to reflect on the essence of inhabitation in a condition where things surrounding are constantly shifting and changing with the pace of the city.
As Rachel Whiteread argues in her work “the connection between architectural absence and memory,” the negative form of a …