Every year in September, CIFF (China International Furniture Fair) takes place in the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai), NECC for short, the world's largest single block building and exhibition complex with a total construction area of nearly 1.5 million m².
Located in the Hongqiao district in western Shanghai, a first-class global business and trading district and transportation hub which spurs on the whole Yangtze River Delta area’s economic development, NECC was co-built by Ministry of Commerce of China and Shanghai Municipal Government and is now one of the landmark buildings in Shanghai.
The facilities at NECC include 4 huge exhibition halls, the commercial plaza, office buildings and a hotel. The façade of the NECC building draws inspiration from a "four-leaf clover" with the plaza as the core and the exhibition halls as its leaves.
These four facilities are linked together by an 8-meter-high elevated Exhibition Boulevard so that people can easily traverse these functional areas.
NECC covers a total area of 500,000 m², including 400,000 m² indoor exhibition hall and 100,000 m² outdoor area. The indoor exhibition area consists of 13 big halls with each covering an area of 30,000 m², and 3 small halls with each covering an area of 10,000 m², all accessible to trucks. Over 60 fully equipped conference rooms surround the exhibition halls.
Being about 1.5 km away from Hongqiao Transportation Hub, NECC (Shanghai) is linked to Hongqiao Airport and Hongqiao Railway Station by the city's metro line. Because of the convenient national highway network, the major cities in the Yangtze River Delta region are easily reachable within 2 hours.