Not far from Shanghai’s prestigious Pudong financial district and surrounded by four major upcoming trade and entertainment developments, lies that city’s hottest new residential development: Legend of Shanghai. Following previously successful projects with Guangzhou Vanke, including Opalus, Shanghai Vanke retained Lorenc+Yoo to spearhead a vision for this important mixed-use property that would quickly become one of Vanke’s best-selling projects.
Lorenc+Yoo created a branding vision for the architecture, landscape, and streetscape of the project, including the critical entrance courtyard. Perhaps most importantly was the integration of “Shikumen-style” architecture. Shikumen is a rich esthetic hybrid of Western motifs and Chinese spatial sensibility pioneered in the 19th century in Shanghai. Not only is Shikumen important visually, but also communicates the link between Pudong and Old Shanghai.
Lorenc+Yoo reshaped the entrance landscape, reorganized the circulation, and designed the entrance gates to integrate with the adjacent marketing center. The design also included concepts for the entrances of residential clusters, along with various ways to introduce Shikumen’s brick and terra cotta aesthetics to the base of all of the residential towers.
Upon its initial roll out in 2012, Legend of Shanghai exceeded Vanke’s same-day record sales. That record itself was exceeded in the second sales offering in 2013. Vanke has since repeated the application of Shikumen with modern sensibilities for other projects in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, Zhangzhou, and Fujian Province.
Lorenc+Yoo is proud to have taken part in realizing Vanke’s vision in such a successful development series that looks toward the future while paying homage to the past.