Reimagining the West Bund: Bridging practice and academia

In 2023, RMIT and SJTU launched this initiative through a joint design studio, enabling students to collaborate intensively over four days on Melbourne’s Greenline Project. The Greenline Project is one of the most significant projects that Australia has ever undertaken, and the initiative saw students work in inter-institutional teams to respond to a purpose-developed design competition brief. The success of this endeavour inspired an even more ambitious undertaking in 2024, bringing students from three universities – RMIT, TUB and SJTU – together in Shanghai, to reimagine the southern area of Shanghai West Bund, a forlorn industrial area, as a cultural and natural landmark. The Shanghai West Bund project grapples with the rapid urbanisation of a post-socialist metropolis, balancing global ambitions with its extraordinary local industrial heritage.

The internationaldesign competition was highly integrated with the local community. Students from RMIT and TUB met and worked with local students from SJTU and local practice to inform their proposals. This “Global-Local collaboration" model moves beyond the transient traveller perspective. Rather than briefly visiting as outsiders, cross-cultural collaboration enabled participants to delve into Shanghai’s cultural and environmental context, embracing cultural differences to explore and investigate issues.


The students were asked to understand the urban substance and existing condition through a palimpsest process, peeling back the layers what was present to uncover the lives and narratives hidden underneath, excavating marks, traces and presences to envision an alternate future for the West Bund riverfront.


Walking together in the site and through the city was at the heart of the programme. Students were encouraged to look for those elements not usually evident in plans and drawings – the contingent, the ephemeral, the vague – that might lead to previously unknown material and experiences with which to inform the design proposition.