Heatherwick Studio has offered a first look inside their new Shanghai studio, the first overseas office to be opened by the London design firm. The office is located within 1000 Trees, a building designed by Heatherwick which opened in 2021.

Located on the fourth floor of the 1000 Trees’ shopping center, among retail and hospitality units, the new studio is described as “a public space where passers-by will be able to engage with the studio’s designs.” The studio will also offer guided tours to visitors wishing to learn more about the firm’s work.

The front of the workspace features multiple stacked cubes serving as display boxes for a collection of models from the studio’s Asian projects, including the Bund Finance Center, the Nanyang Learning Hub in Singapore, and the 1000 Trees development itself. Alongside its public function, the studio will accommodate a team of ten architects leading Heatherwick’s Chinese and Asian projects.

“Ever since we built the UK Pavilion for the Shanghai 2010 World Expo, our studio has had an amazing connection to the region,” Thomas Heatherwick said, announcing the news. “It feels natural and exciting to properly set up a permanent base in one of our own buildings, with our doors wide open to the public. I have huge respect for the design talent in China as well as people’s appetite in this region to commission daring and exciting work. We can’t wait to collaborate with everyone even more than we’ve had a chance to before.”

News of the office’s opening comes weeks after photographs showed construction progress at Heatherwick’s Toranomon-Azabudai district in Tokyo, at the same time that Heatherwick and KPF offered an update on the design of Singapore’s Changi Airport Terminal 5.

Away from Asia, the studio recently completed a kinetic glasshouse in the English countryside for a historic garden estate, while in California, the firm completed Google’s Bay View HQ campus in collaboration with BIG.