Architectural Record – August 2019

(^62) ARCHITECTURAL RECORD AUGUST 2019 BUILDING TYPE STUDY LANDSCAPE & LEISURE
inserted galleries, dining areas, a music club, and event spaces, among
other facilities.
“The unique grouping presented so many possibilities” says Qiao
Zhibing, one of China’s most prominent contemporary­art collectors
and the cultural impresario chosen by West Bund authorities to operate
the programming at Tank.
Since the site is zoned as an urban park, new building aboveground
was limited. What is now Tank’s main entrance on Longteng Avenue
was the edge of Longhua airfield, one of Shanghai’s main airports from
1922 to 1966.
The once­restricted zone controlled by the Chinese military needed
Tanks for the Memories
A once-industrial area is transformed into a public park with cultural facilities.
BY ALEXANDRA A. SENO
PHOTOGRAPHY BY WU QINGSHAN
Tank Shanghai | Shanghai | OPEN Architecture
n the last six years, 12 acres of land on the banks of Shanghai’s
Huangpu River, where five cylindrical metal tanks once stored
aviation fuel, have been transformed into a park and culture com­
plex. Now called Tank Shanghai, the ambitious endeavor, which
opened in March, is about a half hour’s drive from the downtown.
In 2013, the Shanghai West Bund Development Group, a local
government unit, hired Li Hu and Huang Wenjing of Beijing’s OPEN
Architecture to design and build the project. The result features
645,800 square feet of gardens, pavilions, plazas, and underground
halls (for multiuse functions and mechanical rooms) that connect the
five structures. Inside the giant industrial vessels, OPEN Architecture

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