上海体育馆

Shanghai Gymnasium, popularly called Wantiguan or the ten-thousand-seat hall, stands at 1111 Caoxi North Road in Xuhui District, at the junction of the Inner Ring and Humin elevated roads, and is the indoor arena of the stadium-park pair at Xujiahui Sports Park. Restarted in 1973, completed in 1975 and opened in 1976, it was designed by Wei Dunshan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and was then the largest and best equipped multi-purpose hall in the country. Its capacity of 18,000 spectators gave it the nickname that later inspired Wantihui, the name of the park's new underground complex. The main hall is circular in plan, 33 metres high, with a roof space frame 110 metres in diameter and a roof weighing about 660 tonnes, originally seating 18,000 and later configured for 12,000 at sport and 10,000 for performances. In October 1999 it was rebuilt as the Shanghai Grand Stage while retaining its sports function, with an olive-shaped stage offering 60 metres of usable width, 32 metres of depth and about 1,250 square metres of stage area. It was refurbished again in 2004 for the World Table Tennis Championships and an NBA China game. A further renovation completed in 2023 produced nearly 13,000 seats including more than 2,000 movable places, and the hall became the home of the Shanghai Sharks in the CBA. Its architectural significance is the strongest claim on the building: it is China's first long-span space-frame gymnasium, with the 110-metre, 660-tonne roof lifted into place as a single unit, and the country's first indoor arena seating more than ten thousand; together with the Shanghai Swimming Pool it was entered in the World Architecture History published by the Royal Institute of British Architects. As part of Xujiahui Sports Park it shares underground space and pedestrian routes with the Shanghai Stadium, the swimming pool and the Wantihui complex. Access is unusually easy: Shanghai Gymnasium station on metro lines 1 and 4 opens at the door, with Caoxi Road station on line 3 and Shanghai Swimming Pool station on line 11 also within walking distance.