YEARLY PLAN Gallery: Granite and Glass in Shanghai

On a tree-lined street in Shanghai, a white cube glows through frameless glass. YEARLY PLAN Shanghai Gallery, designed by Dongqi Design, is a fashion retail gallery housed in a renovated historical building. The architects preserved the original massing and street presence but replaced everything inside with a new structure: rough granite columns, white concrete floors, frameless glazing, and a central staircase that is both the circulation and the centrepiece.

The project sits between heritage preservation and radical insertion. The exterior reads as a calm white volume on a leafy Shanghai street. The interior is raw, precise, and theatrical. A rough stone stair core rises through the centre, lit by a single continuous LED line. Everything else is white, oak, and glass.

The Exterior: A Glowing Cube

From the street at dusk, the gallery is a white lantern. Two storeys are visible through the frameless glass: oak floors, white walls, and the dark angular mass of the stair core. The building sits on a concrete forecourt with a garden of ornamental grasses and mature plane trees at the rear. The facade has no mullions, no frames, no signage. The glass is the wall. The architecture is visible through it.

The garden path along the side is the approach sequence: white rendered walls, a glass balustrade, ornamental grasses, and concrete steps. On a rainy day, the planting and the misty air soften the building's precision. This is the right setting for a fashion gallery: quiet, private, and slightly hidden.

The Staircase: Granite, Glass, and Light

The central staircase is the project's strongest element. Two rough granite columns rise through the full height of the building, supporting a stone core between them. The stair treads are white concrete, wide and open. The balustrade is frameless glass. A continuous stainless steel handrail runs from bottom to top, embedded with an LED strip that provides the only artificial light in the stair void.

The contrast between the rough granite and the smooth glass is deliberate. The stone is hand-finished, textured, and geological. The glass is industrial, precise, and transparent. Together they create a staircase that feels ancient and contemporary at the same time. This is the detail that elevates the project from a clean white gallery into something with material weight.

The Gallery Floors

The gallery spaces are open, white, and minimal. The upper floor has oak flooring, white walls, and a dark angular ceiling beam that cuts diagonally across the room. Two leather chairs and a coffee table sit in front of the frameless glass wall, framing a view of the Shanghai streetscape. The ground floor is similar: oak floor, white walls, and the rough stone stair core visible at the centre. The frameless glass walls bring the garden trees into the room.

The fitting rooms and storage are concealed behind flush white panel doors that disappear into the wall. A concrete column with exposed aggregate stands at one corner, a remnant of the original structure that the architects chose to leave visible. Every surface is either white, oak, stone, or glass. There is no colour, no decoration, and no distraction from the clothing on display.

Details: Handle, Ceiling, LED

The details are worth studying. The door handle is a stainless steel T-form on frameless glass: minimal, functional, and satisfying to grip. The ceiling junction is a geometric fold where angular concrete planes meet, creating a faceted surface that catches light differently on each face. The LED strip in the handrail is the only decorative light in the building. At night, it traces the staircase from basement to roof, turning the stone core into a glowing sculpture visible from outside.

Plan

The ground floor plan shows the organisation: entry from the street, central stair core, open exhibition and retail space wrapping around it, fitting rooms and storage on the side, and a backyard garden at the rear. The plan is compact and clear. The stair core is the anchor. Everything else is flexible open space.

Why This Project Matters

Shanghai has thousands of heritage buildings being converted into galleries, showrooms, and retail spaces. Most of them are over-designed: too many materials, too much signage, too many Instagram moments. Dongqi Design went the other direction. One stone, one glass, one light. The rough granite core is the single gesture that gives the building its character. Everything else steps back.

If you are designing a gallery, a showroom, or any retail space inside a heritage building, this project is worth studying for how one material contrast and one lighting detail can do more than an entire interior design scheme.

About the Studio

Share Your Own Work on uni.xyz

If you are working on gallery design, heritage renovation, or retail architecture, uni.xyz is a place to publish your work and connect with a global design community.

Project credits: YEARLY PLAN Shanghai Gallery by Dongqi Design. Shanghai, China. Photographs: Yasuko Jima.