RAM assembles 2025: Shanghai Picnic

Launched in 2023, RAM assembles (RAMa) is the Rockbund Art Museum’s (RAM) biennial festival of architectural thinking. Conceived and led by X Zhu-Nowell, the museum’s Executive Director and Chief Curator, the initiative explores architecture’s evolving role in shaping public space. For each edition, an architect or architectural thinker is appointed as Artistic Director, tasked with developing a site-specific intervention in the ROCKBUND neighborhood, a historic district in the heart of Shanghai, focusing on the open-air Museum Plaza outside RAM’s main entrance. In addition, the Artistic Director curates a series of public programs and events that activate the broader ROCKBUND. For the second edition, Zhu-Nowell has invited all(zone), a Bangkok-based architecture practice, as Artistic Director.

all(zone)’s concept of “Shanghai Picnic” proposes a flexible, open-ended framework that reactivates underused urban spaces through conviviality, creativity, and ecological awareness. Using lightweight, reusable canopies and adaptive programming, Shanghai Picnic invites citizens and visitors alike to experience the city in ways that are improvisational, playful, and often unexpected — beyond what architects or designers might anticipate.

At its core, a picnic is about choice: people decide where to sit, what tools and utensils to use, what food to bring or buy, and how they engage — whether up close as active participants shaping the event, or from a distance as observers. This informal, improvisational element transforms the city into a shared canvas, a kind of picnic blanket, where spontaneous interactions, collective imagination, and activities become integral to the space itself. 

The interplay between the designed and the improvised engenders new ways of inhabiting the urban fabric, suggesting a more fluid, responsive approach to public space — one that values adaptation over permanence. A picnic cultivates a sense of agency, enabling people to reclaim their surroundings, make the space their own, and realize the festival’s vision through their presence, actions, and choices — fleeting yet meaningful. At the Museum Plaza, this vision takes shape. All(zone) designed Under a Common Sky, a temporary light structure that serves as both shelter and gathering place for the program’s duration.

Rapid urbanization and gentrification often disconnect individuals from their living environments, creating an estrangement that is particularly evident in many Asian cities. Vibrant neighborhoods that have evolved organically, shaped by collective activities, are increasingly replaced by sterile urban developments, which do not take into consideration the pre-existing culture of the neighborhood and its human physical and social interactions. As these conditions come to dominate urban living, how can we empower city residents with autonomy over their space and agency within it? How can architecture enhance contemporary connections between people and their living environments? How can we infuse notions of community, diversity, ecology, and vitality into sterile spaces with spontaneity, yet without chaos? Both RAMa and all(zone) seek to address these questions.

Rachaporn Choochuey, co-founder of all(zone) architects, comments:

‘What if architecture could return this vitality? What if public space could once again feel like a playground for living—spontaneous yet harmonious, energetic but never chaotic? Could design bring back the fun of being together—and, just as importantly, give people agency over the spaces they inhabit?

We see ROCKBUND during RAMa as a site of experimentation, a place to test these ideas in real time. It’s where we come together to explore, create, and redefine what living in urban space can be. It will not be a set of answers, but a public laboratory. Its legacy will be measured not in permanent structures, but in the questions it raises and the observations it generates—observations on how we might truly live, work, and play together in the cities.’

For more information about all(zone)’s design concept, click here.

Open-call projects
In addition to designing a canopied public space, all(zone) have selected six local and international emerging design practices to create interventions within the public space of the ROCKBUND. 

The open call projects explore the challenges and possibilities of urban living in Asia. These practices were selected based on criteria of cultural exchange and diverse programming centered on sharing, performance, adaptability, spontaneity, and ecological responsibility. Their projects embrace the spirit of a picnic, engaging with themes of food, community rituals, performative arts, ecological design, sustainability, and collaborative storytelling.  

The open call projects include: a fresh drinking water station, a furniture-making workshop using upcycled materials, and a “fabric and memories” installation where old clothing is turned into new cushions for people to sit on throughout the event, and the reintroduction of greenery, turning the built environment into a more permeable, inviting, and ecologically sensitive space. 

Public program
Selected through an open call, over 50 events-spanning public conversations, performative interventions, open-air screenings, and a variety of workshops-gather both residents and visitors around food, community rituals, and collaborative storytelling, creating a space for listening, exchanging, and building new ways of being tougher-all while having fun.

Full RAMa program

RAMa participants
Ag, all(zone), Alkhemist Architects, Bai Yang, Erica Borsa, Zheng Bo, Tei Carpenter, Cedar Kitchen, Manyi Chan, Chen Feiyue, Chen Hao, Chen Junnan, Dream Chittmittrapap, Jane Chongsuwat, Rachaporn Choochuey, Da Ai, Jia Yue Ding, Fan Qing, Marcela Godoy, Goumao, Anna Greenspan, HEZO & WORK, Robin Hartanto Honggare, Hu Jiayi, Mingzi, Nahyun Hwang, Kraipol Jayanetra, jeje, Jiang Yini, Jiemao, Ju Anqi, JXY Studio, Li Yingchun, Shasha Li, Sheau Yun Lim, Mae-ling Lokko, Lu Wenyu, Mao Chenyu, David Eugin Moon, Ném, Par, Bart-Jan Polman, Shirley Surya, Tangent Essays, Tang Weijie, Laura Tripoli, Studio Vapore, Vis, Wang Ziyue, WWWorks, Xia Murong, Xu Yihan, Yangao, Yiya, Philip Yuan, Zhou Feifei, Zhu Jingming, Zhuang Muyang. 

About Rockbund Art Museum
Inaugurated in 2010, the Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) is a contemporary art museum located on the Bund in Shanghai. The museum is housed in a historic Art Deco building from 1932 that was originally built for the Royal Asiatic Society. The landmark building was restored by David Chipperfield Architects.

In considering what it means to be an Asia-based contemporary art museum in the 21st century, RAM aims to explore the importance of “archipelago thinking”: connecting to artistic culture across Asia and beyond to gain richer perspectives on today’s challenges, practices, and networks within contemporary artistic practices. We wish to build constructive, creative relationships between multiple localities in Asia and different cultures globally, to create a hub for working with a broad range of artists, researchers, and scholars, and to dive into subtle and dense layers of new experiences with our audience.

With a strong reputation for an innovative curatorial approach, RAM experiments with different models of what an art project can be, from research to alternative learning programs, from exhibition-making to unexpected performative formats. By supporting bold contemporary art practices, we aim to recognize local histories while responding to global art challenges and social change.

International press
Sarah Greenberg, Evergreen Arts: sgreenberg@evergreen-arts.com 
Chinese press: Natalie Niu, Rockbund Art Museum: natalie.niu@rockbundartmuseum.org