A panoramic view of the Factory, designed with a contrast between the leather sofas and the raw ceilings.Photograph by Wang Rongjiang

How to chill out: Lounge on the sofa for a while, sip a drink and surf the Net. Why not record your own song? Get a cool T-shirt or sew your own. Check out interesting paintings and photos. Then play the song you recorded to everyone in the restaurant where you're eating fresh, California-style supper. After dinner you can attend a workshop, a screening or other artsy event. Or just continue to hang out.

All of this is possible all under one roof and on one floor, not in Greenwich Village or East London, but in the comprehensive creative space Factory, which opened in April.

It's across the street from the slaughter-house-turned-art hub 1933 in Hongkou District.

It is difficult to categorize the place, except as "creative space" because all kinds of things are happening - food, drinks, music, fashion, design, video, all kinds of art. Like many creative zones in Shanghai, the Factory is in a former factory, though the space itself isn't sprawling but quite compact.

At a first glance, the place looks rather fancy with comfortable leather coaches and stylishly dressed waiters. But the ceiling pipes, ducts and raw cement remain, a contrast with the floor area.

"A lot of inspirations for this place, from my side, came from New York, because I'm a New Yorker," says musician Sean Dinsmore, creative director and one of the masterminds of the Factory.

"But it would cost millions to do a space like this in New York or in London, and it makes more sense to do it in Shanghai as the whole world is looking at Shanghai now for a lot of reasons," he says.

The other mastermind is Profero Group, a small advertising company. In the past few years, many Shanghai creative zones have opened, modelled after the famous 798 creative hub in Beijing. But the Beijing space is huge with dozens of studios, galleries and cafes of all kinds. It's smaller and more focused in Shanghai.

For example, M50 (50 Moganshan Road) was famous for low-rent housing for struggling young artists but it's now filled with tourists and galleries. The creative space on Damuqiao Road is more for innovative design brains, and there's a cartoon/animation-focused zone in the Wujiaochang area.

Though the Factory is smaller than these others, that's part of the charm, and it provides several inter-connected creative sections.