Mosaic Bookshop at Tank Shanghai | Guo Jason

This summer, Mosaic Bookshop was invited to open a pop up store at Tank Shanghai, which is their first branch outside the Pearl River Delta area. Turtlehill Design was obliged to work with Mosaic Bookshop again to explore new possibilities of bookshop.  

The project locates at Tank Shanghai which sits at the west bond of the Huangpu river running across Shanghai. We walked along the recently built riverfront landscape while visiting the site and was impressed by the super tidy and clean environment which reminded me the other side of the city - the “Long Men Jia”.

“Long Men Jia”is a nick name of drying racks often found on buildings in the old town area of Shanghai which are usually suspended from the facade and its length is over 3 meters. It could be considered as an intrusion into public space. The boundary of private space and public space hence is blurred and complicated in such old neighborhoods. Whereas at west bond, the shaping and maintenance of public space is always under control and the boundary between private and public is clear and impassable.     

Shanghai is never a city of stereotype but a mix of old and new, chaotic and tidy. We tried to bring the counterpart of the west bond to the site, so both faces of the city could be presented.

Inspired by “Long Men Jia”’s suspension cable system, we devised a prototype which then were developed into a family of components that could fulfill various needs of a bookshop. Integrated with the branding VI, the suspended panels compose a collage in space, which is in line with Mosaic bookshop’s vision.  

However, the design was rejected as expected because of its “untidiness”.While keeping the idea of “Long Men Jia”,we paired the discrete components and flipped half of them so the solid panels could cover the voids to achieve a visually tidier appearance as the stakeholders requested.

In order to complete the pop up store as quick as possible, we skipped all drawing phases and used the 3d digital model directly to instruct fabrication and installation which could be a rapid BIM practice to some extent.