Founded in 2003 by partners Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu, Neri & Hu Design and Research Office (NHDRO) is an interdisciplinary architectural design practice based in Shanghai, China. The practice works internationally providing architecture, interior, master planning, graphic, and industrial design services. Currently working on projects in seven countries, NHDRO is composed of a multi-cultural, 40-member staff with a capacity to speak over 20 different languages. The diversity of the team reinforces a core vision for the practice: to respond to a global worldview incorporating overlapping design disciplines for a new paradigm in architecture.

NHDRO’s location is purposeful; with Shanghai considered a new global frontier, NHDRO is in the center of this contemporary chaos and engages in the cultural, urban, and historic contexts of the city as a point of departure for the practice’s architectural explorations. Because new sets of contemporary problems relating to buildings now extend beyond traditional architecture, the practice challenges traditional boundaries of architecture to include other complementary disciplines.

NHDRO believes strongly in research as a design tool. As each project bears its unique set of contextual issues, a critical probing into the specificities of program, site, function, and history is essential to the creation of rigorous architecture. Based on research, NHDRO desires to anchor its architecture on the dynamic interaction of experience, detail, material, form, and light rather than conforming to a formulaic style. The ultimate significance behind each project comes from how the built forms create meaning through their physical representations.

Recently NHDRO is nominated for The Great Indoors Award 2007 as one of four finalists for ‘Interior Design Firm of the Year,’ and is also nominated under the ‘Relax & Consume (Leisure)’ category for the design of Y+ Yoga and Wellness Centre. Another project, the Design Republic flagship store, won the DFA (Design for Asia) Best Design from Greater China 2007 award. NHDRO was also named the Best Design Team of 2007 by Elle Deco International Award 2007 China; and at the Perspective Awards 2007, the design of Y+ Yoga and Wellness Centre received the ‘Best Hospitality Interior’ award, and the ZiSha Tea Project was awarded the ‘Best Product Design.’