Shanghai Zhongfang Architectural Design Co., Ltd.: Winner of the Architect of the Year Awards 2025. Located in the heart of Shanghai’s Yangpu District, Yangpu Riverside One stands at the intersection of the Wujiaochang commercial hub and the Yangpu Riverside New Economy Belt, within one of the most dynamic areas of the city’s regeneration efforts. The compact site—only 78 meters wide and 160 meters long—covers 1.2 hectares with approximately 30,000 square meters of built area. Despite its physical limitations, the project serves as a prototype for how small-scale urban renewal can redefine community life in Shanghai’s dense core.

The design was commissioned as Sunac’s first key project on the Yangpu waterfront, with the ambition to materialize the i+ Beautiful Life System—an integrated living model that merges residential comfort with civic vitality. The project introduces a new generation of community living by embedding diverse public functions—childcare, senior services, cultural spaces, community dining, and governance centers—within a limited urban footprint. Over 1,500 square meters of such functions were strategically arranged to enhance everyday interaction and inclusivity.

The design transforms high-density challenges into opportunities for connection. Through spatial layering and the organization of small-scale public interfaces, the project creates a continuous and porous edge that invites the city in. The building frontage along Aiguo Road unfolds as a 160-meter “scroll of life,” where community and city intersect—animated by transparent public functions, shaded arcades, and framed courtyards that encourage visibility and social exchange.

Moderate setbacks generate public plazas and resting areas, turning the street into an active social corridor rather than a boundary. Architectural lighting and subtle façade rhythms give the neighborhood a distinct identity while maintaining the quiet sophistication typical of Shanghai’s local atmosphere.

At the heart of the site, the community lobby acts as a spatial hinge connecting the urban exterior and the private interior. It integrates reception, delivery, mother-and-child facilities, and accessible amenities, emphasizing comfort and dignity in everyday use. Landscaped corridors extend the lobby experience into the central courtyard, creating a gradient from urban activity to domestic calm.

A lifted ground floor connects the southern childcare and elderly areas with the northern cultural and co-learning spaces, forming an open garden that encourages interaction across age groups and lifestyles. Within this framework, Yangpu Riverside One becomes more than a residential compound—it is a living system that reinterprets Shanghai’s urban essence through the lens of community, culture, and continuity.

Compact yet generous, quiet yet vibrant, it reflects a new urban ideal: a community that balances efficiency, emotion, and elegance—a refined embodiment of the i+ Beautiful Life System in the city’s historical core.

Project Details:-
Firm
Shanghai Zhongfang Architectural Design Co., Ltd.

Architect
SHANGHAI ZF ARCHITECTS

Project Name
Shanghai Yangpu Riverside One

Project Category
Residential Built

Team
Tao Huang, Hui Bian, Xiangru Song, Xiang Sun, Yifan Wang, Xiao Yue

Project Location
yangpu,shanghai

Country
China

Photography ©Credit
©Wei Li

Founded in 1979, SHANGHAI ZF ARCHITECTS has a history of 45 years. It is an influential class-A comprehensive design company in Shanghai architecture industry. We provide design services and technical support for the whole process of project planning, planning, architecture, interior, landscape and civil air defense. The company adopts the joint-stock operation mode which is held by the main management and technical backbone, and relies on the cooperation of nearly 400 professionals from various disciplines. Adhering to the design concept of full control of high-quality architecture, the company is committed to creating original works full of architectural ideals and professionalism. In recent years, it has won more than 300 awards in many fields at home and abroad, and provides quality design services for the TOP100 real estate enterprises in China. Attaches great importance to the technological progress and specialized leading, Shanghai earlier BIM team design company, is a center of Shanghai residential development prefabricated architectural design of the backbone units. At present, ZF Architecture is committed to urban renewal, TOD, rental housing, future community and other emerging fields of exploration and research. Zhongfang construction has completed more than 20 kinds of patented technologies, and has been recognized as a high-tech enterprise.