Reading Design (Shanghai) 2026 is the third edition of the Reading Design workshop programme by Grymsdyke Farm. Organised with MBRS in Shanghai, this edition explores learning as an active process. Both literal and conceptual, the theme considers how to build is to materialise knowledge, to shadow is to imitate as practice, and to train is to rehearse and refine. Borrowing ideas from sport, exercise, and conditioning, participants will approach design through endurance, adaptation, and transformation.

The programme brings together participants and invited practitioners including Guan Lee, Marco Campardo, Soft Baroque, and Lorenzo Vitturi to explore design through making, experimentation, and shared production.

Participants will be divided into two groups and work closely with the invited practitioners and design interns, rotating between tutors throughout the workshop. Drawing from previous Reading Design workshops, the emphasis is placed on learning through doing: testing materials, developing processes, observing forms, and working collectively.
Working with manufacturers in the vicinity of Shanghai, participants will develop a series of architectural objects, furniture, and design products that together form Fitness Suite 健身房, an exhibition conceived as a functioning environment.

Presented by Sohe Gallery during Shanghai Art Week, the exhibition plays on the dual meaning of “fitness” — physical conditioning as well as being fit for purpose — bringing together ideas of training, domesticity, public exercise culture, and industrial production within a shared spatial setting.