Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) and the ROCKBUND team have launched RAM Assembles, a new biennial festival for interdisciplinary thinking in architecture and design which will open 22 September in Shanghai. David Chipperfield is the inaugural Artistic Director and has selected the curatorial theme of ‘Public Space’. In a statement, he writes:
“The publicness of places is defined by the activities they can accommodate rather than their built form alone. It relies as much on the physical environment as the social infrastructure: the tacit connections between people, and the willingness to share and to participate. We hope that RAM Assembles can serve as a catalyst to initiate this process.”
ROCKBUND is a collection of historic buildings located in the former European concession, just to the north of the Bund in central Shanghai. In 2006 David Chipperfield Architects was commissioned to restore, upgrade and convert eleven historic buildings within this wider development. The inaugural RAM Assembles celebrates the completion of the project, and marks 17 years’ work by David Chipperfield Architects.
ROCKBUND