Thomas Heatherwick, the designer of Fosun Foundation’s Shanghai facilities, is bringing his largest retrospective to date to China. The exhibition “Building Soulfulness” is a monument to his strong ties and deepening friendship with the city of Shanghai. The exhibition, curated by Mami Kataoka, Director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, begins with the studio’s projects in China and expands outwards, with architectural models, drawings, furniture designs, and interactive installations illuminating more than thirty landmark projects around the world across six different themes.

This exhibition will present models of architectural projects Heatherwick Studio has designed around the world, made from different materials, in order to facilitate deeper understanding of how the studio employs agile working methods to establish better links to the surrounding environment. As the first comprehensive presentation of the studio’s work in Shanghai, this exhibition will also present their latest urban project, “The Orbit,” revealed along the West Bund in Xujiahui this November, presenting the birth of this new landmark along the river through models and design drawings.

In the exhibition’s final section, Heatherwick invites the audience to enter the studio and join in an experience, exploration, and dialogue on cities. Here, the architect is more than just a teller of stories, but also an interlocutor, and the exhibition is transformed into a site for creative discussion and investigation, documenting people’s needs and inspirations for the places they live.