Ecstaquarter on Huang Pu River: an interview with the director of one of Shanghai's most innovative creative clusters

Abstract

This interview with Huang Gai is about a creative business park named ‘Creative Shanghai Riverside’ built on an old General Electric (GE) factory along the western bank of the Huang Pu river, the most important drinking-water source and shipping artery of Shanghai. The reason we call it an ecstaquarter is that we see it as an existing imaginary place that foregrounds the sensual and philosophical side of the founder and designer — Deng Kunyan, where you could undress yourself and cast your body in the role of mediator through which to explore.Deng Kunyan, a self-made architect from Taiwan who has devoted the best twenty years of his architectural career in Shanghai, and is well known for his conversion of an abandoned 1930s warehouse along the banks of Suzhou Creek, another important shipping route in Shanghai. The success of that project sparked an artistic renewal of the surrounding industrial district, saving old factories from demolition, and winning him the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Award for Culture Heritage Conservation in 2004. In Creative Shanghai Riverside, Deng Kunyan has integrated Taoist and Buddhist philosophy in his architectural and interior design work, lending modern spaces an atmosphere reminiscent of ancient Chinese traditions. Due to the absence of Deng Kunyan, we have interviewed the managing director of this creative business park, Huang Gai, who insisted humbly to be called ‘the assistant of Mr Deng’.