Office: VIASCAPE design | ArchDaily

the Happy Spot under the Light Rail / VIASCAPE design

韩爽 — Wed, 06 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Beginning in the spring of 2022, our team commenced working on the comprehensive environmental improvement and renewal project for the surrounding Caoxi Rd. Metro Station area. The overall renewal plan had completed by July of the same year. The plan aims to establish a renewal framework through a holistic urban design approach, achieving functional transformation of a blighted area in Shanghai's urban core through a phased, incremental implementation process, and realize overall regional revitalization by integrating spatial optimizations based on functional adjustments of the metro station's internal space and its adjacent plots. At the end of 2023, "Caoxi Road Pocket Park"1 designed by our team was built as the first phase of the project. The second phase, "the Happy Spot under the Light Rail", was designed by us in Dec 2023 and constructed by March 2025.

Flying Chess Kindergarten / VIASCAPE design

韩爽 — Sun, 09 Nov 2025 02:00:00 +0000

After its completion in late 2023, Tianlin Park1 designed by VIASCAPE has been receiving positive public feedbacks. Coincidentally, teachers from Xuhui Science and Technology Kindergarten2 visited Tianlin park multiple times during 2024–2025, both spontaneously and in organized groups. They found that the natural habitat design, which integrated into the holistic landscape experience, closely aligns with their ongoing early childhood nature education program. This led to an initial contact with VIASCAPE through connections, in which they expressed a strong interest in collaborating on the landscape enhancement of their kindergarten's Wending campus (hereinafter referred to as "the kindergarten"). Following this initial contact in April 2025, VIASCAPE design team was invited to give a tour guide for the kindergarten teachers, introducing the landscape-oriented natural habitat design in Tianlin Park. During the visit, design team also elaborated on the concept and value of "urban habitat," an integrated approach that combines natural, vibrant, and cultural elements. This process laid a solid foundation for the following collaborative design marked by mutual inspiration.

The DECK / VIASCAPE design

韩爽 — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 19:00:00 +0000

Youyou Community where the DECK locates is an old residential community located in Huamu Sub-district, Pudong New Area, Shanghai. Constructed in the context of Pudong's development, it represents one of the earliest "self-built new towns" in the area. Starting in the early 1990s, these settlements were built using farming land expropriation compensation funds, developed independently by local village collectives1. Viewed forty years later, the community presents an external spatial experience characterized by confinement, enclosure, and introversion, lacking relatively concentrated spaces for social activities. This is largely due to the setting of its road system, which is composed primarily of community-level streets. Most of the streets are mixed-use for both vehicles and bicycles, two-way traffic with a total width not exceeding 9 meters. Narrow sidewalks flank these roads, which are severely packed with roadside parking. And the site of the DECK was a closed-off greenbelt with disordered vegetation, zigzag internal paths with almost no activity areas before its renewal. Missing public character, coupled with its relatively complex spatial structure, undoubtedly exacerbated the negative perceptions of the overall community space.

the CORNER garden / VIASCAPE design

Pilar Caballero — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

1. Inborn Corner Garden - The site is at the southeast corner of Shou'er Community along the boundary wall. Considering that overgrown weeds are spreading, open space is illegally occupied with drying racks and the general physical appearance is decrepit, we proposed a new community garden with a total area of 360 SQM, the CORNER garden. Regarding community planning, the Shou'er community built in the 1990s, where the CORNER garden is now situated, is one of the two areas that possess clear and coherent spatial layouts in the Hudong Sub-district, the other is Hudong and Huyi Community which were built in the 1950s.

Tianlin Park Renewal / VIASCAPE design

韩爽 — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

1. To Be A Contemporary Community Park

Tianlin Park, initially a fenced-off green space named "Tianlin Central Green Land", was built in 1999. As a public green space serving nearly 20,000 residents in an area with a radius of 300 meters, it had only one entrance at the southwest before renewal. This fact isolates the park from its surroundings and fails to build connection with the daily life. This green land, providing minimal chance for residents in the east to get access, run at low efficiency as one of the public goods. This calls for a truly open community park without the fence.

The PAPER House / VIASCAPE design

Pilar Caballero — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The PAPER house is a community house located in Dongbo yuan, a residential compound in Hudong Sub-district. VIASCAPE has been working on urban regeneration projects in this area for years, while the PAPER house appears to be a unique experimental case among all VIASCAPE's practices. This pioneering project targets at a compatibility of design regulations and site restrictions through full-term public participation, with which spatial installation, and design thoughts could be weaved into residents' daily lives. We also continually try to exploit a possible way of combining formal and informal construction with more common benefits.

Coax Road Poket Park / VIASCAPE design

Valeria Silva — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 02:00:00 +0000

The project is situated at the southeast side of the busy crossing of Caoxi Road and South Kaixuan Road, covering an area of 6300m2. The site was initially occupied by low-quality illegal building blocks and a car park. Ren'ai Hospital is to the west of the site, giving little setback from South Kaixuan road, and results in narrow access and poor spatial experience. The site is an elongated channel in between metro line 3 station in northeast tothe. The shadow cast by interwoven Metro line 3, Inner Ring and Huming Elevated Bridge makes the site an overcrowded grey mess.

Jinqiao Caojiagou Riverfront Renewal Design / VIASCAPE design

July Shao — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Caojiagou is a tributary of the Huangpu River, which is excluded from the key channel system of Shanghai. In contrast to the renowned Huangpu River or Suzhou Creek, the Caojiagou riverfront appeared to be enclosed, poorly maintained, desolated and lacked interaction with local inhabitants and urban functionalities before renewal. So how to transform the small channel side space from the back side of the urban landscape to the front side of public daily life is the key point of the renewal design.

Leshan Pocket Park / VIASCAPE design

Collin Chen — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The source of Happiness: Reconstruct the public life behind Zikawei - Leshan pocket park, covering an area of 5600m² in the very center of the Leshan community, appears to be the only integrated open space in the whole community. The pocket park is only 800m away from Zikawei, and within walking distance of various adjacent office towers, Schools, kindergartens, and universities. Before the renovation, the pocket park has an enclosed space with deteriorated conditions, making it hardly feed the current needs of public life. The concept of “shared happiness” of Leshan pocket park is weaved into the fabric of multifunctional spaces for both the elderly and kids, for viewing and wandering, playing and resting, reading and sharing. The final design covers activities for a full range of age groups while providing a holistic solution of landscape design as a public good. The design reconstructs the flourishing public life of Zikawei at the back, making the park itself act as an essential medium to activate urban public life.

The PAVILION / VIASCAPE design

Collin Chen — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 01:00:00 +0000

Breakthrough ： Rebuilding the daily public life for the residents
The Pavilion is located in XiangDong village, a Huangpu riverside community that is composed of mostly grungy apartment buildings. 480 local families live here in a room of only 10 square meters of clear floor space. The designer applied a positive design approach with a focus on a questionnaire survey and interviews as a start. With this method, the final design provides a reconstructed space that maintains local inhabitants’ daily life.