Garden Of Delights

100architects was commissioned by Shui On Land to create an activation for the public spaces of Xintiandi in Shanghai during the 2021 National Day holidays. Xintiandi is a landmark urban-renewal district blending Shikumen architecture with modern shops, cafes, bars, restaurants, and office buildings, conceived as a public living room of Shanghai. The proposal converts the public pedestrian space into an urban maze, keeping the spirit of a celebration while offering an active, outdoor, social, and interactive experience for people of all ages. The design is driven by one single element: the tree. A series of real trees plus artificial tree sculptural columns, interwoven with a hand-drawn circuit wall containing ten modular details, generates a playful maze. The columns host public-light fittings on top, act as vertical greenery surfaces below, and at ground level are painted with custom hand-drawn patterns. The circuit wall begins in the South Block plaza and winds through the commercial street, making people stop, explore, and wander, ultimately leading to a public forest at the back of the block. The most spectacular nodes are a huge urban forest at the South Block entrance and a larger urban forest composed of scattered tree columns in the North Block plaza. The hand-drawn wall contains ten different modules that change along the maze, so that while wandering visitors encounter holes to peek through, modules to climb, small steps to rest on, or nets to hang on, and can even swing or slide. All modules are designed so that children do not clash with adults walking the maze. The project acts as a visual magnet in the open public space, aiming to gather people and catalyze social interaction and entertainment during the celebration.