The Red Planet

The Red Planet
Life Hub | Daning Lu | Shanghai, China
Public space in the heart of shanghai commercial district

The Red Planet is a colourful play and art experience composed of a bubbling basketball court, climbing surfaces and a race track that weaves around obstacles creating new spaces, allocating benches and seating features as well as some triangular red board drawing surfaces.

The red planet is a colourful painted landscape from which volumes emerges generating shapes that can be enjoy by different users.
It has many different functions for entertainment of kids and adults alike. It also offers shading and resting features.

The Red Planet is a public space intervention designed to foster interactions, attract customers and enhance the experience in the privately-owned public space within an open-air Retail Street.

Life Hub @ Daning, a 250,000 sqm mixed use development with 110,000 sqm shopping mall, is one of the hottest shopping centers in Shanghai, due to it’s open-air retail street.

The Life Hub @ Daning team insisted on creating something IMAGINATIVE, INSPIRATIONAL & INNOVATIVE. Something unexpected beyond any typical decorative installations, that would attract kids and adults alike to come and use it, rather than pass by and observe it. An intervention that, by itself, would turn a circulation area into a “SPACE” to stop & stay, where their customers could bring their kids and families and spend some quality time interacting with other kids and families.

The SURREAL approach, from the intention of breaking the conventional rules of perception, of what is already conceived as reality, in order to trigger kids’ imagination and creativity as well as immersing them in a colorful experience. An unexpected place for passersby.

The Red Planet features a bubbling basketball field which serves as a surreal playground, rather than a typical basketball field, providing an artificial topography for playing, climbing, sliding, sitting, laying, and many other gerunds out of the kids’ own imagination of how to colonize and use the space in ways we did not even imagine at first. To enhance the narrative of the environment, a bent basketball basket was introduced, hosting in it LED lights to illuminate the area.

Other features such as a racing track define the border of the installation, chalkboard pyramids as both obstacles and creativity platforms, benches for parents and other random games, complemented the range of fun activities that both kids and adults were able to undertake.

The monochromatic treatment, with shades of red, was also applied on top of existing urban furniture and decorative elements from the place, aiming to generate a more immersive experience onto the surreal “Red Planet”.

Project Credits

Project name: Red Planet
Designer: 100architects
Design team: Marcial Jesus, Javier Gonzalez, Eunice Tsa
Client: Life Hub @ Daning, (Chongbang Group)
Location: Daning Road, Jin’An District, Shanghai, China
Built area: 245m2
Height: 15mts
Completion: June 2017
Photographer: Amey Kandalgaonkar