Neri&Hu Design & Research Office has done it again! The Shanghai-based creative studio founded by Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu has been named the Practice of the Year in A&D Awards 2020.

The inter-disciplinary architectural design practice won two Gold Awards, one Silver and one Bronze.

It took out Gold for the Interior Design award for Best Hotel for its outstanding work on one of the world’s hottest new hotel brands, Edition Hotels. Edition opened in Shanghai after successful launches in London, New York and elsewhere.

Edition describes itself as the anti-hotel chain, preferring to give its guests a curated taste of the local city in which its hotels are located. Neri&Hu nailed the brief for the Shanghai property (photographed above), which overlooks the historic Bund, by encapsulating the dichotomy of the city – its rich cultural heritage and its new-world energy.

It also took Gold for the Interior Design Award for Innovation & Technology in the Work Space. The Stay Collection is an ensemble of furniture and storage items designed for the home and the home office, the name itself a humorous play on the fact that so many of us are now working from home.

Neri&Hu were the inaugural winners of the Practice of the Year last year. In a recorded video, the founding partners said they were “extremely honoured and humbled” to receive the prestigious award.

Founded in 2004, Neri&Hu works on many global projects and its multicultutral staff speak over 30 different languages. The studio believes strongly in research as a design tool, as each project bears its unique set of contextual issues. It believes that critical probing into the specifics of program, site, function, and history is essential to the creation of compelling design work.