Expo Place

The Expo Place complex transforms a once-disjointed portion of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo grounds into a vibrant, mixed-use urban district. Following the Expo—an event that welcomed 73 million visitors and announced China’s global emergence—the site was left with a patchwork of temporary pavilions, abandoned infrastructure, and limited long-term vision. Early attempts to convert the area into a massive single-use hotel zone proved unsuccessful, leaving half-built foundations and a prime development opportunity without a consistent draw.

The project reimagines this zone within the former Expo site as a connected, human-scaled neighborhood that considers the site’s past while enabling meaningful future growth. Existing below-grade structures and caissons were carefully studied, retained and adaptively reused. This strategy not only minimized waste but also provided a foundation for a new mixed-use program. Above ground, a fully integrated urban center is composed of twin Class A office towers, boutique office villas, residences, layered retail, and two hotels—including Asia’s first Thompson hotel and a Mumian hotel. Below ground are direct connections to active retail space.

A central design goal was to create a contemporary town center where daily life naturally unfolds. The architecture avoids a monolithic mega-development aesthetic; instead, each building adopts its own character. Activated pedestrian streets, sunken plazas and multilevel indoor-outdoor connections mirror the intimate scale of old Shanghai alleyways while accommodating modern circulation needs.

Natural landscape weaves through the project, from ground-level public spaces to lush rooftop gardens and outdoor dining terraces. Vehicular circulation is pushed to the perimeter and separated across multiple levels, creating a protected pedestrian realm and seamless links to mass transit. The result is a lively, day-to-night urban town center where living, working and leisure activities coexist in a highly walkable setting.