In Part 1 of this three-part interview, architect Ben Wood described how preserving Shanghai’s historic shikumen became the foundation for Xintiandi’s transformation. In Part 2, the focus shifts from vision to execution. Wood reflects on the financial and cultural risks that defined the project—from introducing outdoor dining and open-air public space to challenging conventional retail assumptions—and explains how adaptive reuse, strong developer backing, and a deep understanding of community ultimately shaped one of China’s most influential urban redevelopment projects.
Ken Rhee: When you started designing Xintiandi, when Shui On Land started developing Xintiandi, they introduced this idea of outdoor dining, which was unknown. So, what kind of risks were you taking? Or what were people saying about potential challenges for your project?
Ben Wood: There was a feeling in the real estate community that you could only charge for enclosed, air-conditioned space. There was no precedent for charging for outdoor seating, even though there was evidence in other parts of the world. Particularly, some developments I had been involved in in the U.S., where outdoor seating had become very popular, could charge at least 50 percent of the same rate without having to incur costs associated with enclosing space.
The feeling among real estate developers was that, if it’s part of the lease space and it’s indoors, it is the responsibility of the tenant to make all the improvements, as opposed to when it’s outdoor space and it falls under the same purview as public space that borders it. So, it was not easy to convince members of Vincent Lo’s team, particularly those that had gotten their experience in conventional shopping malls—largely in Hong Kong, and if not Hong Kong, then from other places. In other words, they were shopping mall people, not open-air pedestrian environment people. So, it was not an easy river to cross, so to speak.
But as I said often, I persevered. When it came down to the disagreement between the leasing team, the marketing team, and the management team, I was eventually able to convince them that the return on investment would be far greater than what they had in their original plans.
So, I successfully argued that the ROI would be greater than passing on those tenant improvements, indoor improvements, to a tenant. In the end, the proof was in the pudding. People did sit outside, and tenants made as much money as they would have if they had to pay for the fit-out. So, it was just a matter of—I wouldn’t call it re-education but introducing people to new ideas.
Rhee: Obviously, one key reason for the success of the Xintiandi project was very strong support from the developer.
Wood: Absolutely! And I also had an ace in the hole, the head of planning for Vincent’s company, Albert Chan. Albert had gone to Columbia University in New York City and had worked for the parks and recreations department or planning department of New York City. He was part of the movement called “adaptive reuse.” It was a term nobody in China had ever heard of, particularly the people in the local planning department. But Albert knew what it meant. And so, he would stand up in the middle of these presentations to the district government. And he would say, “I spent 10 years in New York, and the most successful projects in New York are the ones where we adaptively reused and integrated new and old.” And he showed examples. So, between him and the unconditional support from my developer and my own bull-headed stubbornness, we did it.
Rhee: When I talked to you a couple of years ago, I asked you about key influences or success factors for your career as an architect. I remember you mentioned your childhood, growing up in rural Georgia—specifically, Roswell, Georgia. Can you talk about that?
Wood: I grew up in Roswell, Georgia, which is now a city of probably close to 100,000 people, but when I grew up, it had 2,000 people.
My parents—one was a biologist, and the other was a botanist. My mother knew the name of every plant in the forest. And my father knew the name of everything that could crawl, fly, or bury itself. They would give these parties for the entire community. And there were potluck dinners where my father would supply the main course, and then everybody would bring a dish. We called it potluck. Their parties became famous.
I would help them. And I learned that what people enjoy most in life is being with other people, in a casual, informal setting, over a good meal. Of course, we enjoyed what we call Southern cooking, which is a lot of fried chicken and things that aren’t so good for you. But I learned from my father and mother how to create environments that brought people together, outdoors. We were under the trees. Our house was big enough. We would have 250 people. We would have half the adults in the whole town. Of course, it was during segregation, so there were no Black people. Another lesson I learned is about racial equality.
Rhee: That’s the secret to your success.
Wood: Yes. And it’s not for the rich, it’s not for the poor. Shanghai was built for the middle class of China. And that’s why it became a huge success. Because, as we were building Xintiandi, there was a rise of the middle class, and they wanted a place to see and be seen. And these private dining rooms, buried in the bowels of these hotels, were not places you wanted anybody to see you. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone there. Xintiandi gave them a stage.
Rhee: So, speaking of hotels, one of the most influential architects in modern China is another Georgian, John Portman. Did you know John Portman?
Wood: I never met John Portman in person. My father took me to the opening of the first hotel with an atrium, with a glass elevator, in Atlanta. That was Portman’s masterpiece; that was the first multistory atrium with glass elevators.
My father was a government official, so, he got a special invitation. And I did see John Portman. I later met his son in Portman Ritz-Carlton, in Shanghai, which was built by John Portman. So, he bet the farm, so to speak, on a hotel in the middle of China. And he was a visionary. I learned a lot just by . . . I didn’t go to Georgia Tech [Portman’s alma mater], but I almost went to Georgia Tech. He changed downtown Atlanta forever.
Rhee: So, John Portman obviously designed a lot of mixed-use buildings in Shanghai, Beijing, and other cities in China. But he came much earlier than you did, in the 1980s.
Wood: Yes, in the ’80s, he built Portman Ritz-Carlton in Shanghai.
Rhee: How do you compare John Portman’s projects in China to yours?
Wood: That’s a good question; I’m not sure I have a good answer. When he built a building, it changed about three blocks around. It changed the people across the street. His influence was limited to the immediate vicinity of his building, whereas my work has more fertilized, is more fertile. In other words, it causes a whole city to rethink their historic neighborhoods. Portman’s buildings—no one rethought anything, except, we just wanted Portman to do one of his great hotels. It was more about an icon. We want a Portman icon. My work is more about making a city within a city, a town within a town, a village within a village, and a house within a house. So, community.
Rhee: Your brother also served as the mayor of Roswell for 20 years. And you maintain a house there, too, and visit on a regular basis.
Wood: I do.
Rhee: I cannot but assume that you had many conversations with your brother on city planning.
Wood: Before he became mayor, he served on the city council. I was still in graduate school when I first started talking to my brother about historic Roswell—in particular, Canton Street. Canton Street was where we went for groceries when I was growing up. That’s where my doctor had a one-room office above the butcher counter at the grocery store, and we had a one-screen cinema.
Soon after I graduated, I was moonlighting. I was not representing Thompson & Wood, but I would moonlight. My brother managed to convince the city council to hire me to come up with a plan for Canton Street, because most of the shops had closed and boarded up; the shopping malls had sucked all the life out of the old historic heart of Roswell. Some of the friends I went to elementary school with, their parents had built shopping malls, and they were all living high on the hog.
I’m the person who suggested that we widen the sidewalks, close the street for traffic, and put a big parking lot behind. I also introduced the idea of The Greenway, where there’s a 40-foot setback and a white fence that’s required in all the commercial districts. So, instead of the lane road butting up against a strip mall, there’s a 40-foot strip of green, and it has to be real, not fake—real trees and grass. And then, the classic is the white fence, because all the horse farm owners in that part of Georgia would put a white fence around their property, so it made it look more upscale rural. Today, Roswell is famous for that.
For coming up with that idea, I don’t get credit, because I was moonlighting. And my brother also introduced the idea of bicycle pads. The funds for a lot of that work came from federal government matching funds. So, all that work on the Chattahoochee River, several parks, boardwalks, nature, wildlife preserves—that all was engineered by my father.
Rhee: Your father was?
Wood: He worked for [President John F. Kennedy]. Every time a Democrat was elected president, we would move from Roswell to D.C. And then, every time a Democrat lost to a Republican, he’d move back to Georgia and work for the state of Georgia as a conservationist. But because he had ties in Washington, he had inside information. Let’s put it that way. And he used it. And my brother used it, and then he became mayor. My father, unfortunately, didn’t live to see my brother become mayor; I think he died about two years before, but it would have been a great day for my father. In 50 years, Roswell had only had two mayors. That was a turning point for Roswell, when they went from a mayor for 30 years to my brother.
Ben Wood with his family in 1967: his sister, Mary Jo; his parents, Roy Kellum “Splinter” Wood, Jr. and Matilda ‘Tillie’ King Wood; and his younger brother, Jere Wood. Roy Wood was a conservationist who served as Undersecretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior during the Carter administration, while Tillie Wood was deeply engaged in political and civic public service.
Ben Wood
Rhee: A younger person?
Wood: Much younger. And with a father who was a conservationist and biologist, and a mother who founded the first women’s club, and founded the historical society, and founded the first book club. Brought the world to Roswell through the book club. That’s my Roswell background, and I think it’s still beautiful. The only thing I regret about Roswell is the idea of a gated community, where there are unwritten clauses in little fine print that basically say, if your skin is not the right color, and you don’t have the right pedigree, don’t even think about buying here. And it’s still practiced today—not through anything written down, but through the way that the real estate industry works.
Part I: How Architect Ben Wood Reimagined Shanghai’s Xintiandi—and Changed Urban Preservation in China
Part III: The Humanity of Architecture: Ben Wood on Designing Cities for People, Not Icons
