PIG DESIGN was tasked with designing NEOBIO Shanghai as a fun, inventive, and inspiring place for play in Shanghai, China.

NEOBIO is an original Chinese indoor entertainment brand focusing on high-quality space and super-creative content. Every time it arrives in a new city, it becomes a landmark for local parents and children. After completing its Shenzhen store, PIG DESIGN led by Li Wenqiang was invited to conceive the brand’s new premise in Shanghai. Amidst a highly modernized urban context, the project’s differentiated design = reshapes a ‘back mountain’ that is rooted in nature and provides an exploratory environment.

The project is located in Zhangjiang Town, within Shanghai’s Pudong New Area. Zhangjiang is an area with many of China’s cutting-edge technology companies, and to some extent, it reflects the innovative prospects for humanity’s future. NEOBIO’s new store in Shanghai features an extraterrestrial organisms-like singular architectural appearance, which contrasts yet coordinates with Zhangjiang’s built environment. The building’s facade extends the brand’s main hue and neutralizes it as an earth-toned yellow, perfectly matching the natural theme. The pacifier-shaped visual symbol along with a series of curved doors and windows stand out against the gray urban backdrop, creating a three-dimensional “Solarpunk” sculpture that wraps up a “nest” that nurtures new life.

The layered and irregular entrance mimics a time cave that is mixed up with contrasting light and shadow, opening up a journey for imagination to roam. The silhouette of “mountain” transforms into a shoe changing area with various large and small spatial surfaces and furniture modules. This area uses abstract colors and patterns to depict memories of nature, while the velvet grass installation adds a surreal visual appeal.

An isomorphic relationship exists between the spatial forms and the activity background, hence giving the entire place a unique character. The presently occurring childhood in the urban context, and the long-gone “back mountain” in childhood memory, children who are growing up, and adults who have an “inner child”, all those different roles and stories mix together, creating seemingly familiar yet completely new scenes, which sustain a collective memory of this place and generate new experiences and emotions.

Design: PIG DESIGN
Design Team: Li Wenqiang, Zhu Yiyun, Yan Junjun, Yang Zhiwei, Liu Chao, Qian Mengmeng, Shen Taotao, Cheng Liang
Photography: SFAP