Concrete, geometry - dishui lake metro city furniture

Public spaces such as parks, plazas, and streets in city centers often generate spontaneous civic activity. However, in developing suburban areas, the lack of daily gathering means these spaces frequently lose urban vitality. Faced with this condition, how can design intervention guide and stimulate the possibility of activity? How does the project respond to the Shanghai Urban Space Art Season's theme on the relationship between art and urban space? The Dishui Lake Metro Station exhibition area is the guiding zone for the 2021 Shanghai Urban Space Art Season's Future Community sample exhibition in the Lingang Special Area. It sits at the convergence of the metro station exit, the city bus terminal, and the exit of an underground commercial space awaiting development. The site is a large expanse of hard paving where civic activity has become mere passage. The design introduces urban art furniture to optimize the activity potential of the site. Rather than avoiding the inherent passivity of the plaza, the design extracted pedestrian circulation paths—where people move quickly between the metro station, bus stop, and city road—and set these paths aside. Between them, three groups of semi-enclosed steel rod systems were inserted. These rods form the defining boundary of the urban furniture and enclose a centripetal gathering space that reduces the perceived scale of the immense plaza. The orange color of the steel members further enhances the gathering quality of the plaza, attracting people to linger. The steel system activates multiple interactive relationships at three different heights—450 millimeters, 1200 millimeters, and 2000 millimeters—supporting sitting, leaning, resting arms, and hanging. The tallest group of enclosed rods combines steel cables with membrane at the top, forming a retractable sheltered space that creates more lingering possibilities within the previously open and shade-less plaza. The Blue Cube seating module consists of seventeen 660-millimeter units that can be rearranged to adapt to different gathering needs. The project demonstrates how carefully designed urban furniture can transform a residual suburban plaza into a place that invites social interaction and artistic engagement.