Shanghai Curators Lab (SCL) is a platform for in-depth research and redefinition of the implications for today’s explosively expanded knowledge, information, and technology in order to nurture young cultural producers in an era of complex crisis. Curators here are not only visual arts exhibition makers in the narrow sense of the past, but also comprehensive researchers for discourses such as architecture, design, big data, writing, ideas, as well as climate justice, food, and health that play important roles in the quality of human life.

Shanghai Curators Lab 3 (SCL3) is organized by the College of Architecture and Urban Planning (CAUP) at Tongji University, co-organized by Tongji Architectural Design (Group), and supported by Shanghai Horizon Art Foundation, with the duration from September 21 to October 19, 2023.

Theme: Urban Regeneration through Art and Architecture Shanghai Curators Lab was founded in 2018 and held two editions before a suspension due to the pandemic. Resuming in 2023, Shanghai Curators Lab 3 will be dedicated to discussing and presenting how art, architecture, and design nourish and regenerate the city, and bring qualitative change to the lives of citizens. This lab, which studies and reconstructs the aesthetic amalgam of the city and its residents, is open to early-career practitioners and researchers with various backgrounds who are interested in visual culture and urban regeneration.

As an intensive residency program, SCL3 conducts informative lectures, discursive forums and interactive site visits by involving 25 experts from multi-disciplinary fields. These include artists, architects, designers, poets, philosophers, urban planners, curators, gallery management and auction experts, marketing and PR specialists, big data innovators, AI coordinators, ecologists, NGO operators, cultural foundation managers, and citizens of Shanghai. During SCL3, participating curators are expected to submit and present their project proposals in groups with the theme of ‘Urban Regeneration through Art and Architecture’. And the selected proposal will be realized with support in the following year. SCL3’s research partners include Rockbund Art Museum and Shanghai Urban Space Art Season (SUSAS).