- Project: PARKLIFE | Spatial installation in the downtown
- Architect: TEAM BLDG
- Location: China, Shanghai
- Year: 2022
- Area: 90 m2
- Photography: Studio FF
On the bustling Middle Huaihai Road in Shanghai’s Xintiandi district, TEAM_BLDG created PARKLIFE, a 968-square-foot spatial installation for the Design Shanghai·Xintiandi Design Festival 2022. More than an architectural experiment, PARKLIFE reflects on the concept of “home” during the pandemic and explores how micro-urban spaces can foster pause, reflection, and reconnection with nature amid the city’s fast pace.
Concept: Home and Micro Park
In 2022, after long lockdowns, the notion of home became central to urban life. At the same time, nature—plants, animals, and small ecosystems—thrived despite human absence. PARKLIFE addresses this duality, reinterpreting “home” as an open, shared, micro-park within the city, offering passersby a place to pause, rest, and rethink the meaning of domestic and public space.
Encircling House: Reconstructing the Rooms of Home
The installation deconstructs three essential rooms of a house—living room, bedroom, and bathroom—and reorganizes them into distinct volumes with varied sizes and heights (ranging from 2.45 to 5 meters).
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Form & Circulation: Sloping roofs direct rainwater into a landscaped courtyard, while intersecting pedestrian lines cut through the volumes, encouraging fluid movement.
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Materials: Plywood and frosted corrugated panels blur inside and outside, real and virtual, creating permeability and curiosity.
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Windows & Light: Strategic openings enhance transparency, allowing visual connections with the urban environment and natural greenery.
By reversing the structural logic to expose the keel, the installation reflects the vertical growth of surrounding trees, linking built form and natural context.
Engawa Space: Between Public and Private
At the center lies a micro-park courtyard, inspired by the Japanese concept of Engawa—an intermediate zone between indoors and outdoors.
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Raised platforms and colonnades embrace plantings and pathways, forming a space that is sheltered but open.
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The courtyard reduces urban noise, offering a serene pocket where visitors can rest among wind chimes, flowers, and shrubs.
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Corrosion-resistant wood pathways guide circulation, creating an accessible, garden-like setting for individuals and groups alike.
The installation thus redefines the boundaries between private and public, house and nature, transforming them into a continuum.
Flowing Room: Blurring Boundaries
As visitors move from “room” to “room,” they experience a flowing transition between architecture and landscape. Minimal decoration shifts focus onto light, plants, and furniture, while translucent panels allow daylight and evening shadows to animate the spaces.
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By day, natural light floods the interiors, reinforcing the connection to greenery.
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By night, blurred silhouettes and shadows create intimacy and layered atmospheres.
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The installation demonstrates how even temporary architecture can reshape urban perception of home, life, and community.
Sustainability and Reuse
PARKLIFE was designed as a temporary installation, built in just three days with prefabricated components for efficient on-site assembly. After the festival:
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All potted plants were adopted into new homes.
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Plywood elements were dismantled and reassembled into new furniture, ensuring a sustainable afterlife.
This commitment to circular design reinforces TEAM_BLDG’s philosophy of architecture as a process of renewal, continuity, and social value.
With PARKLIFE, TEAM_BLDG created a micro-park installation that merges home, community, and nature in one of Shanghai’s busiest districts. By blurring boundaries between private rooms and public space, architecture and garden, permanence and temporality, the project encourages city dwellers to pause, reflect, and rediscover the simple joys of togetherness and nature within urban life.
