Call for participants: RAM assembles 2025 _Shanghai Picnic_

RAM assembles—a biennial festival of architectural thinking organized by the Rockbund Art Museum—was launched in 2023 to celebrate the completion of the ROCKBUND construction project and the opening of the museum’s new entrance and Museum Plaza. Conceived and led by the museum’s Executive Director and Chief Curator, X Zhu-Nowell, this initiative explores architecture’s evolving role in shaping public space. For each edition, the RAM team, under Zhu-Nowell’s leadership, invites an architect to serve as Artistic Director, tasked with developing a new architectural intervention in the ROCKBUND neighborhood, with a particular focus on the Museum Plaza. In addition to this spatial intervention, the Artistic Director curates a series of public programs and events that activate the broader ROCKBUND neighborhood. The inaugural Artistic Director was British architect David Chipperfield, whose 18-year restoration and redevelopment of the historic ROCKBUND site laid the foundation for this ongoing dialogue. RAM assembles brings together diverse perspectives on both historical and new architecture thinking, engaging disciplines across urbanism, public space, art, and design to foster new ways of thinking about the built environment in Asia.