Yushe Design Company

Yushe Design (YSD) is a Shanghai-based design firm with international vision, which provides integrated design of architecture, interior space and landscape. We focus on unban regeneration, creative and cultural space as well as tourist and residential projects, which share a good reputation for the high quality and value of design.

Yushe Design believes strongly in research as a design tool, as each project bears its unique set of contextual issues. We search for the best solution of each project as architecture isn’t a work of utopia and arbitrary, but a result of multiple restrains. We begin with a rigorous study and analysis of each site’s specific composition: the obvious and the hidden, the natural and the social environment. We study each program and how people involved want to live, work, play. We analyze materials, lights, that are ecologically responsive to the site conditions, support each program and reflect the characteristic of the space and the sensibility of people live in. We seek to synthesize all this so the outcome appears obvious, inevitable. Architecture is put into the service of making place, a place rather than good looking, but with external beauty- that we find in balance between aesthetic ideal and pragmatic function, simplicity and variety, individual artistry and social concerns, globalism and regionalism.

Founded in 2012, Yushe Design has witnessed the wax and wane of the real estate market, under which situation speed and quantity are prior to quality and cultural value of architecture. It is critical for us that in architecture we find the means to contribute concrete and definitive improvements to the city and to the lives of those we serve, thus to create a new and better reality. You can see this philosophy in many of our projects, especially in the urban regeneration projects guided by the local government or private investors. For example, in the renovation of historic buildings located in former “French Concession” in Yuyuan Road, Shanghai, Yushe Design showed full respect to the historic building by leaving some of the rough columns exposed and a dedicated fireplace discovered accidently to keep the integrity and memory of the past. All of these bring the Chinese design market our own design paradigm and give us our own name.

The architectural firm is run by four co-founders, Xu Yi, Gao Shantong, Simon Chen and Li Zhiqiang, two of whom are also actively involved in academia, teaching and lecturing at China Academy of Art. Along with Shigeru Aoki, Japanese famous architect specialized in refining architecture, the four co-founders translated his book Refining Architecture into Chinese and will be published soon in March, 2019 in China.

The work of Yushe Design has been featured widely by the press around the world, including Interior Design, Wallpaper, d+a Magazine, Curve Magazine, InteriorWorld Magazine, Dezeen.com, Designboom.com, Archidaily.com and countless more print and online media. We have also been recognized by a number of international design awards, such as The Perspective 40 Under 40 Awards, The 2018 American MasterPrize, Grand Prix Design Paris 2018, archilovers Best Project 2018 and etc.