Launch of RAM Assembles architecture biennial

The strengths and weaknesses of our cities are becoming more apparent every day…The potential for the city to function in our common interests requires us to maintain an idea of what a city should be, and public space is always central to this vision. —David Chipperfield

RAM Assembles is a new biennial festival for interdisciplinary thinking in architecture and design, jointly launched by the Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) Shanghai and the Rockbund team. The inaugural Artistic Director is Pritzker Prize-winning architect David Chipperfield, whose new museum entrance and Museum Plaza opened on September 22, completing his 17-year association with the storied Rockbund neighbourhood.

Located north of the famous Bund in central Shanghai, the Rockbund neighborhood is a collection of historic architecture built from 1896–1932. These buildings represent examples of Shanghai’s Art Deco style, characteristic of the city’s late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century architecture, which combined European and Asian elements. In the early 2000s, David Chipperfield Architects was commissioned to restore, update and convert 11 historic buildings of the Rockbund. Chipperfield also designed a new extension to the Art Deco building that was originally built for the Royal Asiatic Society and now houses the Rockbund Art Museum (RAM), in addition to a new RAM entrance and Museum Plaza.

To mark the completion of the Rockbund construction project and the opening of the new museum entrance and Museum Plaza in September 2023, RAM has launched RAM Assembles—a biennial festival of architectural thinking—to bring together diverse perspectives on historical and new architecture and engage with contemporary architecture, urbanism, art, and design. For each edition of this new biennial, the RAM team, led by its Artistic Director X Zhu-Nowell, will invite an architect as an artistic director to create a new architectural intervention in the ROCKBUND neighborhood, with a focus on the Museum Plaza.

RAM has chosen architect David Chipperfield as its first artistic director to celebrate his long association with this site. RAM Assembles has also created a network of collaborations with curators, institutions, universities, architecture studios, artists, and creative companies, inviting globally-minded experts and professional teams to co-create this distinctive event. The International Advisory Committee includes: curator Hou Hanru, Li Xiangning, Dean of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at Tongji University, and Caroline A. Jones, Professor of Art and Architecture Theory at MIT.

Chipperfield’s theme of Public Space takes art beyond the museum walls and integrates it into the daily life of the Rockbund to celebrate the spontaneity and multiplicity of urban life and “in between” spaces. Chipperfield’s design interventions expand the physicality of the new Museum Plaza, providing new public spaces that are flexible rather than prescriptive, imbued with purpose yet not restricted to specific functions, which mediate the relationship between performance and informality. Chipperfield comments: “In a non-western context, where public squares are less prevalent, these liminal spaces provide room to be part of something and to share space and time.”

The inaugural RAM Assembles represents a moment to enhance our understanding of public spaces and to celebrate the urban vitality and complexity driving the creativity of the city and enriching our experiences in a rapidly changing world. Zhu-Nowell comments: “RAM has long been invested in the contemporary and historic culture of the Bund area and committed to creating a kind of cross-pollination between the local communities. We hope the opening of Chipperfield’s new Museum Plaza and RAM Assembles can create social and creative gathering spaces beyond the museum walls, focusing on the Rockbund area as a dynamic site for cultural experimentation.”