Shenzhen in a few hours: skyline and creativity

The Ping An Finance Center, at 599 meters among the tallest towers in the world, has an observation deck on the 116th floor from which the Futian district stretches in a grid of skyscrapers still expanding.

At OCT-LOFT, a former industrial zone reconverted starting in 2004, red brick warehouses today host design studios, independent galleries, and cafes, in stark contrast to the futuristic city around it.

The Window of the World, a theme park opened in 1994, houses over one hundred scaled replicas of international monuments — from the Eiffel Tower to Egyptian pyramids — originally conceived for a Chinese audience with few means to travel abroad.

The Shenzhen Museum, in the civic center, reconstructs with models and period photographs the city's transformation from a 1980 special economic zone to a metropolis of over seventeen million inhabitants.

Between the miniature replicas of Window of the World and the real skyscrapers of Ping An, Shenzhen constantly plays with the idea of scale, as if still trying to measure itself against the rest of the world.

OCT-LOFT, with its industrial bricks deliberately left rough, remains perhaps the only corner of the city in no hurry to grow further.