People will always face various challenges, but time has a way of healing them.
— Coffee Commune
The Man Po Li Cafe at the Shanghai History Museum, designed by Wutopia Lab, opened its doors in February 2023 on the first floor of the museum’s West Building.
▲ Video © CreatAR Images
Coffee Culture in Shanghai
Shanghai boasts the highest number of coffee shops in the world, featuring diverse influences from Japanese, Korean, American, Taiwanese, to Southeast Asian styles. Even on Yongkang Road, you can find a weathered yet proud 1980s Taiwanese-Japanese coffee shop. However, the history of coffee culture in Shanghai goes far deeper. In her 1945 article “Shuangsheng” published in the magazine Tian Di, Zhang Ailing noted that outings with friends often ended at a coffee shop. At that time, Shanghai cafes served as vibrant public spaces—not only offering coffee and dim sum but also functioning as dance halls, conference rooms, libraries, and hubs for social interaction and information exchange.
A Unique Space
▲ Project Overview © CreatAR Images
The Coffee Shop Floor Plan
The cafe’s floor plan resembles a knife handle. Preservation rules from the Cultural Relics Bureau mandated that the exterior facade remain unchanged. Additionally, the West Building, once part of the original racecourse stable, features high windows fitted with frosted glass, limiting natural light and preventing outdoor views inside.
▲ Analysis Diagram © Wutopia Lab
The cafe is enclosed within the first floor of the West Building. Considering both exterior and interior facades as external boundaries, the main café space is, in a sense, outdoors. This perspective transforms the challenge of limited indoor scenery into an opportunity, blending indoor and outdoor elements to lift the feeling of confinement.
The cafe’s sealed location within the West Building © CreatAR Images
▲ Exterior facade details © CreatAR Images
▲ The front hall has been transformed into a muted grey space © CreatAR Images
Creating an Indoor Square
At the center of the cafe stands a large pillar. Inspired by the small squares that serve as social hubs in European cities, the design draws from “Architectural Pattern Language” to embed an abstract square within the interior of the West Building’s first floor. This cheerful social space forms the heart of the Shanghai cafe.
▲ The large central pillar © CreatAR Images
▲ A lively social atmosphere reminiscent of a small European square © CreatAR Images
The central pillar has been transformed into a monument featuring a wishing pool, with a passage from my novel engraved on its back. Surrounding it are steps, colonnades, a stage with a fireplace, and a glass private room resembling a balcony. This space invites flowers, coffee, a touch of wine, love, gossip, pets, talk shows, sudden memories of the Alhambra Palace, and impromptu tango—loud, joyful, and tinged with hidden jealousy.
Yesterday is just a memory of today; tomorrow is merely today’s dream.
▲ Wishing Pool © CreatAR Images
▲ Steps and glass private rooms serving as balconies © CreatAR Images
A Micro City
Visitors enter the cafe from the street-facing building on Huangpi South Road. Originally, access was through a shared front hall serving both the cafe and public restrooms. We removed three glass doors to transform this area into a muted grey space, creating an outer corridor that echoes the indoor square’s colonnade.
Stepping through the door, guests enter the bar area—the ‘handle’ part of the knife-shaped plan—while the main service area occupies the core space. The hallway was converted into an exhibition and seating area. Near the entrance, a green handmade brick delivery waiting area doubles as a small gallery in collaboration with the Shanghai History Museum. Delivery coffee is discreetly handed out through a hidden frame, offering a delightful surprise.
▲ The hallway transformed into an exhibition and seating space © CreatAR Images
▲ Delivery waiting area made of green handmade bricks © CreatAR Images
At the museum’s rear, a stainless steel sliding door opens onto a white colonnade. The colonnade floor is elevated like a museum platform, transforming the high windows into regular-sized views. Descending from the colonnade leads to the white square. From there, the black bar counter is embedded within the white colonnade, offering a hidden spot to enjoy a drink while watching performances in the square.
Along the outer wall, low sofas line the colonnade, reminiscent of my memories of Istanbul’s hookah cafes. Bathed in sunlight, smoke lazily drifts through the colonnade, embodying the simple pleasures of life.
▲ White colonnade © CreatAR Images
The raised colonnade floor resembles a museum platform © CreatAR Images
This micro city concept—the café with its exhibition hall, colonnades, and central square—is a fragment of my idealized Shanghai. If you enlarge this “Piazza in a Room” by 100 times, you’ll see my vision for the city itself.
“Nobody learns without getting it won.”
▲ View of the colonnade from the square © CreatAR Images
Decorative Details
My vision of Shanghai is far from minimalist. It embraces restrained decorations steeped in memory and symbolism. Embedded in the entrance corridor’s floor are tiles salvaged from the original stables discovered during renovation. Horseshoe motifs honor the stables and appear on the arcade arches adorned with black bars.
High wall panels, enamel tiles, mosaic floors, and green handmade bricks in the black museum space evoke a blend of real and imagined memories of Shanghai. The design draws inspiration from the stained glass ceiling of coffee fruit, dramatizing the concept of memory.
▲ View of the black bar counter framed by the arcade arch from the seating area © CreatAR Images
▲ Stage area © CreatAR Images
▲ Seating Area © CreatAR Images
Materials further enhance the atmosphere. The bar area is clad in black wood, while the entrance gallery and square feature white stone flooring. The floor combines white stone with flexible grid inlays, and corners, including niches, are gently curved. The entrance niche holds candles, while another niche reveals a green takeaway area and a black bar counter, with a faintly visible white monument beyond.
Decoration is not a sin—it is a small gesture that satisfies our need for meaning.
“Because we need a witness to our lives.”
▲ The green takeaway area visible through the niche’s opening © CreatAR Images
Let’s Dance
As a middle-aged man facing a personal crisis, creating this cafe fulfilled a youthful dream—setting a stage where legends like Koushi or Al Pacino could improvise a tango. Leaning against the steps with champagne in hand, feeling slightly tipsy, I imagined the door on the steps as a screen through which my thoughts could travel.
My good friends, dancers Zhou Jitian and Zhu Liqian, performing tango in the square, evoke memories of the 1990s—a time filled with possibility and courage.
▲ Dance scenes in the cafe © CreatAR Images
The colonnade offers an elegant backdrop for the stage © CreatAR Images
Shall we dance? I can’t dance, but I want to dance awkwardly and freely with you. The monument’s ceiling will always be sunny, no matter the weather outside.
“All I want from you is another day.”
Dancers strolling through the colonnade © CreatAR Images
▲ Viewing the dancers in the square from the colonnade © CreatAR Images
This is My Shanghai
Man Po Li Cafe embodies a lifestyle that transitions seamlessly from day to night, representing a fragment of my Shanghai experience. There was a time when I lost faith in the city, lying in a hospital bed and feeling despondent. Yet, as I pushed open the heavy black gate, the familiar, courageous Shanghai surged back to life. Shanghai has always been vibrant and alive.
“Sometimes if you love someone, you have to be strangers to them.”
▲ Outdoor details © CreatAR Images
Leonard once said that life’s bitterness must be endured and that we must celebrate life despite its meaninglessness. — Coffee Commune
Project Drawings
△ Plan View
△ Custom Glass Flower Window Drawing
Project Information
Project Name: Piazza in a Room / Shanghai History Museum Man Po Li Cafe
Design Firm: Wutopia Lab
Lead Architect: Yu Ting
Project Architect: Sun Liran
Design Team: Kuang Zhou, Pan Dali, Gao Bolong (Intern)
Development Company: Shanghai Chengyu Space Design Co., Ltd
Design Team: Dai Yunfeng, Guo Jiannu, Wu Xiaoyan, Zhao Ruyi, Cui Salesian, Wang Binbin, Ma Chuanchuan, Zhang Minmin
Lighting Consultants: Zhang Chenlu, Du Yuxuan
Material Consultant: Sun Jing
Photography: CreatAR Images
Dance Performers: Zhou Jitian, Zhu Liqian
Owner: Fudesu (Shanghai) Enterprise Development Co., Ltd
Construction Company: Wanjiang Construction
Construction Team: Wang Liyang (Director), Chen Weiming (Project Manager), Wu Jishun (Team Leader)
Project Location: West Building, Shanghai History Museum, Shanghai, China
Building Area: 170 square meters
Completion Date: December 2022
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