“Sun shines through leaves, casts mottled light and shadows, and fills the wood color-dominated space with warmth, vigour and natural ambience,” the design team said.
Designed by ONE-CU Interior Design Lab
Photographed by Interpretation Sublimation
Endowing commercial space with public attributes
In many cases, the design of real estate sales centers in China is luxurious, magnificent, aesthetic and locally relevant, but lacks intimacy and the atmosphere of daily life. ONE-CU, a design studio excels at interior design practices in real estate field, believes that as a carrier of urban lifestyles, property sales centers should be made more human-friendly and intimate through practical design strategies.
Concept of “Community book cafe”
The project sits in Daoyi University Town, Shenbei New District, Shenyang, an area gathering talents and culture. With a complete set of business facilities and transportation system, Shenbei New District has great development potential. Based on local context, the design focuses on how to effectively attract people to the neighbourhood where the project is situated and inject new vitality into it.
“Boxes” of different scales are inserted into the space, which seem to be placed randomly but in fact implicitly demarcate functional divisions and circulation. Through the method of “borrowing scenery", vigorous nature is incorporated into the design to create a semi-outdoor space for visitors to explore.
The overall building is simplistic. Large areas of glass curtain walls maximize interaction with the site, and at the same time convey goodwill to the neighbourhood with purity and transparency.
In terms of spatial design, ONE-CU continued the building’s openness, and proposed to build the sales center into a “community book cafe”, to correspond to local context. Books, cafe and trees together form intimate scenes that fit into the humanistic tradition of the university town, which can also help attracting more people to the neighbourhood.
The wood veneers give people a warm feeling, which opens up the possibility for indoor and outdoor interaction. Natural and artistic interior design languages were adopted to create a popular and aesthetic community, and to enhance the dialogue between people, people and space, people and artworks.
Multi-dimensional interaction under light and shadows
The designers arranged several full-height bookshelves in the space, to link up and extend the circulation route to the negotiation area. The white bar counter contrasts with the towering warm-toned bookshelves, and the wavy stainless steel ceiling enhances the varying visual effects of light and shadows. A graceful lifestyle is invisibly integrated into the community commercial space.
Natural light and indoor lighting are perfectly coordinated, together filling the reading and communication space with warm light and shadows. All the furniture well matches with human body scale and is placed in a balanced manner, which enables people to interact in a comfortable environment.
Diverse combinations of tables and chairs allow different conversation postures. Cotton and linen, wood veneers and leather coverings enrich textures in the space. Green plants refresh the interior, and the artworks that are put in an aesthetic order can evoke thinking.
ONE-CU believes that the consensus on a tasteful lifestyle is the core behind a neighbourhood community. Through this project, the designers responded to architectural and interior design trends in recent decades. They brought art, light, shadows and nature into the human space, and explored more possibilities of life in it.
Aesthetic and artistic settings
The space is dominated by wood tones, and the natural textures of materials produce comfortable sensory experiences. The art installations create a dramatic tension, and shake off complexity and excessiveness, which brings people closer to the space. The huge staircase can serve as an open sitting area, which well integrates spatial experiences with functional demands and hence enhances the reading atmosphere. This stepped corner becomes an artistic and playful setting, and showcases the designers’ ingenuity of approaching details.
The full-height bookshelves are visual highlights, which extend the sight light vertically. A series of red ball installations constitute the art of balance, and evoke thinking via abstract visual effects. Set on a marble base, the property model display area presents a composition aesthetic.
