island6 (Fou Foong Flour Mill)

At 120 Moganshan Rd, a lane leads onto a large open green area surrounded by the Suzhou Creek. There, in severe contrast to Shanghai's ever-towering skyscrapers, stands island6, a four-storey red brick building. Its history: Shanghai typical.

island6 and its two sister buildings were established, like most flour mills and breweries, along the Suzhou Creek at a time when the river nurtured a major industrial base in Shanghai. The three buildings (built 1913-1930) came to be part of a complex designed to house the office headquarters and depots of Fou Foong Flour Mill. Signed by Atkinson & Dallas, a British architecture and civil engineering firm that thrived in the city during the early 1900s, the structures are representative of typical masonry architecture, originally constructed with wooden arcades and red brick walls.
The Fou Foong Flour Mill was founded by Mr. Sun Duoxin and his brother Mr. Sun Duosen who made it the most innovative and biggest flour mill of Asia in 1897. It is hard to believe that only fifteen years after the first light bulb was exhibited on the Band Stand in the Public Gardens of Shanghai, Island6 became the most technology oriented factory of China, possessed its own power plant and was fully equipped with American machinery.
In the 1900s island6 stood as the "small packaged flour" warehouse only later to be purchased by Rong Yi Ren, the former Chinese vice president and onetime textile magnate. Today, it has survived a derisory fight with the city; in July 2003, the complex faced imminent demolition to make room for real estate developers. Luckily, the doom of warehouses along the Suzhou Creek was fought by a series of cultural campaigns, architects and university professors, and island6 was declared a cultural heritage and is protected by the Shanghai Municipal Government.

island6 now rises as a center for the arts, one that aims to interact with the cultural relics that surround it. At a time when funding for the arts has become precarious, and many art spaces have had to change their missions to survive, Island6 remains committed to supporting young and emerging artists and presenting innovative, risk-taking programs that explore new curatorial models, challenge the definitions and boundaries of art, and engage in key issues of contemporary society.

island6 is a non-profit organization dedicated to the support of its artists and to the constant initiation of site-specific projects.