Situated amidst a sea of skyscrapers in the Pudong District of Shanghai, the Artyzen NEW BUND 31 Shanghai is a key destination within the flagship property of the Qiantan development, which includes an office tower, shopping center, and a performing arts center. The hotel is adjacent to the performing arts center, also designed by Neri&Hu, and this direct connection creates a unique typology and junction point in the city where the individual and collective spheres meet. While the performing arts center serves as the cultural heart of the district, the hotel is envisioned as an urban oasis that takes its guests on a journey of surprise and discovery.
The hotel arrival experience starts on the ground level, where guests are greeted in the lobby. The lounge on level 3 serves as the waiting and arrival space connected to the performing arts center. From there, guests can travel to level 5 to check in at the reception, which connects to various public amenities and to the 202 guest rooms housed in the tower above the podium.
Conceptually, the hotel is conceived as having been carved from a single monolithic mass. On the ground floor, guests are greeted by a subtly textured concrete façade, with a scalloped pattern that finds resonance in the feature arches of the performing arts center. In the ground floor lobby, a large opening punched through to the south facade near the ceiling allows natural light to flood the seemingly enclosed space.
From the intimately scaled lobby, guests are taken directly to the fifth-floor podium roof level, which accommodates all the main public spaces of the hotel—reception, restaurants, lounges, tapas bar, event spaces, and outdoor gardens. These various programs are woven with a continuous stone landscape from which these spaces are carved. A series of floating pavilion-like structures demarcate each venue, and guests are invited to leisurely meander throughout. With abundant outdoor landscape spaces, Artyzen NEW BUND 31 Shanghai offers a rare experience in an urban hotel, a sense of respite, and escape from the bustling city of Shanghai.
The concept of nature as respite is also applied to the guestrooms in the tower. Taking inspiration from the palette of traditional Chinese gardens, each room’s central area is lined in a white plaster layer that wraps over the carved greystone mass of the entry and bathroom. A wooden platform and headboard for the bed bring a sense of warmth to the austere palette, while bronze metal details add a subtle touch of luxury. Custom furniture pieces by Neri&Hu inject a sense of domesticity and casual comfort into the guest rooms.
