The Snow Globe in Shanghai by 100architects

The Snow Globe is a public space intervention on the renowned award-winning Retail Street of Shanghai Xintiandi, in downtown Shanghai, as central piece of their Christmas 2017 campaign, and also part of festival Lumières Shanghai 2017, designed to foster social interactions, attract customers and enhance the Christmas experience in the public realm.

Architect: 100architects
Client: China Xintiandi (Shui On Land)
Location: Shanghai Xintiandi, Madang Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai, China
Completion: November 2017
Built area: 200 m2
Height: 15mts
Design team: Marcial Jesus, Javier Gonzalez
Light & Sound Interaction Design: Dogma Lab (Shanghai) + Anyways, Here’s the Thing (NYC)
Engineering: Squiggle Labs (Shanghai)
Construction: EMCC (Shanghai)
Photography: Amey Kandalgaonkar

From the architect: China Xintiandi, a subsidiary of Shui On Land, is an investor, operator and manager of premium commercial properties in the Chinese Mainland, nurturing vibrant communities and commercially thriving districts built around the idea of ‘live, work and play’. China Xintiandi pursues the mission of ‘bring places to life, and life to places’ throughout their real estate developments, creating landmarks not only for shopping, entertaining, leisure and lifestyle, but also for art display.

The installation should be themed within the Christmas spirit beyond any typical Christmas Tree-type decorative installation, calling the attention of not only kids but adults alike, to use it and experience it rather than just passing by and observing it.

Our proposal arose from the idea of creating a “space” rather than an “object”, from the intention of creating something that surrounds people, instead of something to be surrounded by people, offering an immersive experience in which the visitor would be part of the installation’s narrative.

That’s how the giant Snow Globe was conceived, a 12 m. diameter geodesic dome performed by a stainless steel structure covered with transparent acrylic panels to enclose the space and give the feeling of a glass snow globe. The 3-meter-tall base incorporates 2 staircases to access to the interior of the globe on the 2^nd floor, and also hosts a playful ball pit where visitors land when sliding down the spiral slide that goes down from the 2^nd floor.

As snow globes do, the dome would contain a Christmas Tree inside, a low-poly structure finished with dichroic acrylic in order to offer a spectacular look during both, the day and the night. During the day lights would barely be appreciated, reason why the look of the tree should be interesting enough by itself. The use of dichroic acrylic, a special rainbow-colored iridescent acrylic, provides a subtle mirror-like finish and changes color while moving, from different viewing angles. At the same time, it is transparent, so at night it allows the neon flex LED interactive light structure to be seen clearly on the other side. Perfect for performing light shows at night.

But the interactive lighting structure hidden within the tree is not the only lighting feature of the installation. The entire geodesic dome is equipped with neon flex LED lights in every single edge of the triangulated façade, creating a spherical canvas for lighting shows and interactive purposes.

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