Shanghai-based architecture studio Neri&Hu Design and Research Office will open a new exhibition at Aedes Architecture Forum, Berlin, Germany.

Titled Reflective Nostalgia, the exhibition will showcase around 30 projects of the office – both completed and in the planning stage, from the fields of architecture, interior design, product design and graphics.

Videos, numerous architectural models of various scales, photographs and a collection of chairs and existing development projects will narrate the philosophy and method of the office in the exhibition.

Reflective Nostalgia will open on 15 October and will be on view until 30 November 2022 at Aedes Architecture Forum.

Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, the Chinese avantgarde in architecture, research and teaching, product and interior design has arrived in Europe.

Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu. Image © Jiaxi Yang & Zhu Zhe

In the exhibition Reflective Nostalgia, the founders Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu are convincing in the way they examine the historical and the contemporary as well as the listed and the everyday and to transform them into new uses in a respectful and future-oriented manner.

In addition to their numerous conversions and new buildings in Asia, such as residential and office buildings, theatres, shops or, for example, a chapel and a whisky distillery, the exhibition also shows projects from Europe, including a restaurant in Paris, a hotel in London and the expansion of the creative quarter Cologne-Ehrenfeld with an office building.

Neri&Hu also design products and showrooms for international companies, thus demonstrating their diverse skills and the quality of their work in all scales and disciplines.

Aranya Art Center, Qinghuangdao, China. Image © Pedro Pegenaute

With design confidence, they create exciting, sometimes surprising spatial constellations – from found and recycled materials or building parts of the respective location and by adding new elements. Historicising set pieces are omitted, while the charm and character of the ‘old’ remains legible and tangible and thus identity-forming in Neri&Hu’s positive reinterpretation of the nostalgic. Their transdisciplinary design approach is in the DNA of the studio.

As early as 2004, they were co-founders of Design Republic, a multidisciplinary design platform in Shanghai. The success of the broad spectrum of their work is reflected in numerous international awards.

Aranya Art Center, Qinghuangdao. Image © Pedro Pegenaute

They currently teach at the Yale School of Architecture and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Rossana Hu was also appointed Chair of the Department of Architecture at Tongji University in Shanghai in 2021.

The exhibition installation features architectural models, photographs and videos, as well as a selection of furniture.