Adrian Cheng, Hong Kong mega-collector and real estate tycoon, has announced the latest foray of his K11 culture-meets-commerce empire into mainland China.
A massive cultural-retail complex is planned for the Shenzhen waterfront, home to one of the country’s rapidly growing luxury regions. Dubbed K11 Ecoast, it will be located in Prince Bay in Shenzhen’s Nanshan district.
It’s set to span more than 2.4 million square feet and include a multi-purpose art space, office building, and promenade. The entire complex is worth an 10 billion yuan, or $1.4 billion, according to K11 Group.
Fifty “world-leading” artists and architects have partnered with Cheng for the project, and his star-studded roster of architects includes U.K.-based David Chipperfield, Rem Koolhaas’s OMA, and Sou Fujimoto from Japan. Chinese and international artists are tapped to create public artworks “in honor of Shenzhen’s unique culture,” with Phyllida Barlow from the U.K. and Poland’s Monika Sosnowska among the collaborators.
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Founded in 2008, K11 operates a seven-story art mall in Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui and the nearby K11 Musea, a culture-commerce hybrid describe on its website as “an incubator of art and the artisanal.” Other K11-operated spaces in mainland China include Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenyang, Tianjin, and Wuhan.
The forthcoming complex is jointly developed by New World Development Company Limited, a leading property developer in Hong Kong and the parent company of K11, and China Merchants Shekou Holdings in Shenzhen. It’s part of a plan by the mainland government to develop the country’s nine southern cities—including Guangzhou and Shenzhen, collectively referred to as the Greater Bay Area—into cultural and business powerhouses by 2035.
K11 Ecoast is scheduled to open in late 2024.
Correction, July 29, 2022: An earlier version of this article misstated that the forthcoming K11 Ecoast location would be K11’s first outpost in mainland China. K11 currently operates existing spaces in Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenyang, Tianjin, and Wuhan.