The unprecedented speed and scale of China’s recent city building calls for a new model of development that responds to these extraordinary circumstance while also accommodating the new and diverse “subject positions” that it produces. As one of the Special Economic Zones, Shenzhen’s development from a small fishing village to a megalopolis of over 13 million in 30 years reflects China’s economic success and its concomitant urbanization. Because of its remarkable scale and speed, Shenzhen has become a fertile site for innovation and entrepreneurship. Being the site of many successful hi-tech companies, it’s also the base for numerous startups comprised of young and entrepreneurial workers.

Middle Space is a 1.3 million square meter complex which features four start-up “incubators” located in Shenzhen Hi-tech Industrial Park. This project introduces an alternative to the sprawl of segregated residential and office buildings (mostly slabs and towers) that are now being built in the city. This arbitrary division of living and working is strangling the start up culture upon which any high tech economy depends. Middle Space responds, not only to the fracturing of this vital culture, but also accommodates the diverse programs and individuals that operate within it. While Middle Space forms a single complex, the whole gives way to its four distinctive parts, each of which supports the others. The incubators constitute four experimental sites in which specific live-work models are reinvented to accommodate the various needs for individual live spaces and collective work areas. By negotiating the relation between urbanism and architecture as well as between collective and individual occupation, Middle Space projects an alternative model for not only Shenzhen, but for the new urban China.