Qiantan CBD Masterplan
Shanghai, China

Defining the framework for Shanghai’s third CBD

Service

Masterplanning

Client

Lujiazui Group

Size

100-hectare, 1.8 million m² core area (office, retail, residential, hotel)

Challenge

In 2012, Benoy won an international competition to masterplan the core area of Qiantan Central Business District in Pudong, Shanghai, commissioned by Lujiazui Group. The winning concept plan, developed in collaboration with the Shanghai Academy of Urban Planning and Design, established the urban framework for a 100-hectare site encompassing approximately 1.8 million m² of commercial office, retail, residential and hotel space, served by three intersecting subway lines. Qin Pang, Director and Head of Benoy’s Shanghai Studio, led the design.

Solution

The brief inherited a conventional arrangement: landmark towers configured around a central road junction, with fragmented commercial podiums cut up by a radial street network. Benoy’s proposal inverted this logic. The towers were relocated to secondary roads, freeing the core of the district for a high-density, human-scale commercial zone at the interchange of three subway lines. The central area was reimagined as a series of connected, pedestrian-friendly squares, continuous, absorbent, and designed to draw people in rather than project outward.

The geometry shifted from a radial arrangement to a more permeable grid, with setbacks and green landscaping integrated to support movement and activation at street level. The result was a commercial core organised around people rather than around the appearance of a CBD from a distance.

Result

Qiantan has since developed into one of Shanghai’s most significant new urban quarters. Benoy went on to deliver architecture and interior design for several plots within the masterplan, including the New Bund World Trade Center (Phases I, II and III) and L+mall, translating the masterplan principles into built form.