This exhibition examines how small business operators—from shopkeepers to street vendors—informally reshape the built environment in China through adaptation, negotiation, and reinvention. Based on seventeen years of observation, the project traces transformations: from apartments converted into bars and shops to vehicles repurposed as mobile storefronts—revealing how individuals respond to economic pressures, urban redevelopment, and tighter regulations with ingenuity. These transformations mark a turning point in China’s urban development. As expansion slows, informal spaces are increasingly displaced by a more regulated cityscape. The exhibition visualizes these fleeting spaces through drawings, hand-built models, comics, and animations, reflecting how people claim, occupy, and transform them. In doing so, it offers new ways of reading the city from the bottom up—foregrounding informal practice as a source of spatial intelligence and highlighting the ingenuity inherent in everyday interventions, echoing Jane Jacobs’ insights on urban dynamism and adaptability.

Drawing Architecture Studio (DAS) is a cross-disciplinary practice founded in Beijing in 2013 by Han Li and Yan Hu. The studio works across architectural drawing, spatial design, urban studies, and artistic creation, exploring the cultural articulation of architecture through drawings, models, installations, comics, and books. Its projects have been exhibited internationally at the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, Chicago Architecture Biennial, Venice Architecture Biennale, and Shenzhen/Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, among others. DAS’s works are held in the collections of major institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Art Institute of Chicago; and M+, Hong Kong. The studio has received awards including the DAM Architectural Book Award (2021), World Architecture Festival Architecture Drawing Prize (2018), RIBA Journal Eye Line Drawing Award (2016), and The Beauty of Books in China Award (2013). Han Li is a founding partner of Drawing Architecture Studio, a national class one registered architect in China, and a visiting professor at Syracuse University School of Architecture. Li holds a master’s of architecture from RMIT University and a bachelor’s of arts from the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Yan Hu is a founding partner of Drawing Architecture Studio and a visiting professor at Syracuse University School of Architecture. Hu holds a bachelor’s of fine arts from Concordia University. Xintong Zhang is a partner of Drawing Architecture Studio and a national class one registered architect in China. Zhang holds a bachelor’s of architecture from Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture.