During this year's joint exhibition "Design Week" and "Sino-International Real Estate Summit" a seminar about New Public Space was held by FAR. This is a non-profit foundation to facilitate the communication and collaboration between architects in China and Shanghai.

The eight speakers of this seminar covered a broad spectrum of topics. Starting with the presentation of architecture projects for public use and of projects covering bigger urban space, followed by a presentation of art in public space, and finally the discussion of the direction and pitfalls of urban planning in China and Shanghai and the teaching approaches at local universities. More details about the speakers here.

Using sample cities in North America as examples, David San Roman suggested that 'standard of living' is not equivalent to 'quality of live'. The first refers to quantitative measures whereas the latter cannot be expressed in this way but is rather influenced by the design and planning of public space.

Pius Leuba spoke about his teaching approach at Tongji University, where he is forcing students to look at micro-local needs and requirements for public space. The focus is an interactive and lively usage of our common living area. As counter-example he mentioned Wujiaochang which is built around cars instead of people.

Speaker James Brearly compared different parts of the city in Puxi and Pudong and explained that the so-called modern development currently results in over-scaling and mono-functional usage. This leads to non-connected and dull environments which hinder cultural and ecological development. He invited the audience to support the creation of networked, mixed-usage public space that is more livable and social.

So, with that, we invite you to visit a perfect example of a mixed usage space: a clothing store that doubles as a live music venue, bar and restaurant. Our party at ENO starts in less than two hours.