Along the edge of Shanghai’s Huangpu River, the emerging West Bund Orbit by Heatherwick Studio is beginning to redefine the relationship between architecture and public movement. Captured in a recent photographic series by architectural photographer Paul Clemence, the project appears less like a conventional exhibition hall and more like a looping landscape of terraces, stairways, and elevated pathways woven into the city’s riverfront.
Located within Shanghai’s rapidly developing West Bund district in Xuhui, the structure has been envisioned as a cultural anchor for the new Financial Hub. The design invites people to walk across, climb around, and experience the building from multiple levels. The flowing outer bands create a network of publicly accessible bridges and staircases that wrap around the central exhibition hall, transforming circulation itself into the project’s defining architectural gesture.
Inspired by the Elegance of the Moon Bridge
The design draws inspiration from the traditional Chinese moon bridge, reimagining its curved geometry into a continuous ribbon-like form. Instead of a single crossing, the idea unfolds into a layered sequence of elevated routes that appear to rotate around the building. The result is a structure that feels constantly in motion, even while standing still. Large glazed openings punctuate the façade, offering glimpses into the galleries inside while visually connecting the riverside promenade with the exhibition spaces.
The building’s circulation system ultimately leads visitors toward a rooftop garden overlooking the Huangpu River and the expanding West Bund skyline. This gradual vertical journey turns the architecture into an urban promenade. Heatherwick Studio describes the project as a building designed to be “explored and experienced,” where public interaction becomes part of the façade itself.
Heatherwick Studio Designs Architecture Around Movement
West Bund Orbit places human movement at the center of its experience. Photographer Paul Clemence notes that despite its radical appearance, the project feels approachable in scale, particularly within a city dominated by high-rise towers. The architecture gains presence not through height, but through its layered paths, terraces, and spatial overlaps that encourage exploration from every angle.
Internally, the main exhibition hall occupies the core of the building, while secondary galleries and public spaces wrap around it. This layered arrangement blurs the boundary between inside and outside, allowing the building to engage both exhibition visitors and pedestrians along the waterfront.
West Bund Orbit Reflects on Shanghai’s Architectural Memory
The project also carries symbolic significance for Heatherwick Studio. West Bund Orbit stands directly opposite the former site of the studio’s celebrated UK Pavilion—the “Seed Cathedral”—created for the Shanghai World Expo 2010. More than a decade later, the new riverside structure reconnects the practice with Shanghai through a permanent civic landmark shaped around public participation and urban interaction.
As the project nears completion, West Bund Orbit introduces a different architectural language to Shanghai’s skyline, one built around movement, encounter, and the experience of walking through architecture itself.
Image credit: Heatherwick Studio
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