OCT Loft

Chinese name: 华侨城创意文化园, Huáqiáochéng Chuàngyì Wénhuàyuán

An oasis of cool in the heart of the city, OCT Loft is Shenzhen’s hippest hangout, and by far the best place in town for strolling, street photography, browsing art and bookshops and having a coffee (or something stronger).

You could easily spend a day here, and it’s equally fun after dark, when the bars and live music venues get going.

Website: www.octloft.cn

Add: 2 Jinxiu Beijie (锦绣北街2号)

Metro: Line 1 to Qiaocheng East, Exit A; 

Line 2/8 to Qiaocheng North, Exit B

● Check out the latest big-name installations at the OCT Contemporary Art Terminal

● Take the pulse of OCT Loft’s creative scene at Old Heaven Books

● Keep an eye out for cool street art as you go

● Catch a live music show (or festival) at B10 Live

● Sip a cocktail at a designer bar like Fannou House

At its core, OCT Loft is a leafy cluster of former factories, workshops and other industrial architecture, thoughtfully repurposed into a lifestyle destination and hub for the creative industries.

Largely closed to cars and other vehicles, its roads and cobbled laneways are lined with towering palms and dotted with engaging street art. As you walk, you’ll discover hip terrace bars, live music venues, design shops, book stores and other eclectic emporia, and there are a multitude of contemporary art spaces big and small.

Staying in the area is strongly recommended, if you can snag a room at the hip Shenzhen Loft Youth Hostel, formerly a factory workers' dormitory complex, or the well-priced and recently renovated City Inn OCT Loft.

From TV factory to arts hub

What became OCT Loft was originally a 1980s era television manufacturing complex owned by electronics company Konka. In the late 1990s, after Konka had relocated to more modern, out-of-town digs, the modest, dated industrial architecture was lying mostly empty. Around 2004, Shenzhen-based architecture firm Urbanus, now one of the most influential in China, was tasked with greening and unifying the various workshops, workers’ housing and other defunct architecture into a new centre for the creative industries.

Inspired by New York’s Soho, Urbanus linked the various zones with tree-lined paths and passageways, and installed garden beds, industrial-style street art and outdoor spaces for resting and socialising.

Officially launching in 2007, government incentives encouraged

the arrival of creative companies in the fields of design, architecture, animation and the like. Shenzhen’s first “Maker Space,” a hang-out for creatives with shared facilities like 3D printers, moved in a year later.

Experimental sounds and all that jazz

Launched in 2008, the annual OCT Loft Jazz Festival (www.octloftjazz.com) is 16 days of cutting-edge and experimental live jazz acts from around the world (usually with a bonafide jazz legend or two), held each October across various venues in OCT Loft.

You can buy day tickets or a pass that covers the whole event. The festival, which also hosts workshops, screenings and exhibitions, is curated by B10 Live owners Teng Fei and Tu Fei. Tireless promoters of Shenzhen's creative scene, they also run Old Heaven Books and organize the Tomorrow Music Festival (www.b10live.cn/ tomorrowfestival).

A fixture in Shenzhen's arts and alternative spheres since 2014, the festival channels the forward-looking spirit of the city by presenting experimental, avant-garde, noise, free jazz and edgy world music from places like Japan, Germany, the U.K., China and Kazakhstan.