Located on Shanghai’s Suzhou Creek, Shanghai Suhe MixC World blurs boundaries between the city’s past, present, and future. The project’s starting point was rethinking commercial spaces to better integrate with their surroundings. The resulting ‘urban valley’ presents a brand-new public space in the city and sets a new benchmark for Shanghai. In 2016, Kokaistudios was invited to participate in a competition for an underground shopping mall in Suhe Creek Green land. Instead, the design opted to present a brand-new public space in the city: a riverside green land with cultural and leisure facilities, incorporating a subterranean commercial area. Property developer CRLand preferred Kokaistudios’ vision for an ‘urban valley,’ the floor of which is a subterranean commercial space that merges into its green land surroundings through a series of stepped slopes.