Designed by Ar. Jiang-Yuan & Song-Chen, CUPONE Gateway Plaza provides a place to drink coffee, while being an extremely functional art installation in itself.
The Lobby as a Visual Delight
They wanted to design a lobby with an artistic visual center, one that allows visitors to forget about monotonous work environments, and provides room to sit back and relax.
“Mountains” deliver a cozy feeling of privacy to the open lobby, while the coming and going of visitors becomes “rivers” extending into the distance, just like gentle streams of water flowing through the mountains. Such a visual and psychological enhancement creates a sense of continuity between the open area of the lobby and the outdoor terrace.
Designers selected nearly 300 vertical “leaves”: their champagne plated exterior provides reflection, forming a three-dimensional dynamic filter. Thus, color and patterns on each leaf change continuously with every move, posture and variation on the clothing of both visitors and passers-by. These leaves of different sizes are planted from the floor up to a height of 2.4 meters. Together, they create a range of mountains.
Different shades of grey varnish were applied to the inner surface of the leaves. Side by side with multiple sets of purple seats, these symbolic elements reduce the influence of external disturbances.
Mysterious Indoors
A colorful yet mysterious tone of peacock blue was chosen as the main colour theme, as well as refined solid wood and marble were the materials to showcase details. As an extension of the “mountains and rivers”, one thousand leaves of white acrylic and reflective stainless steel were hung at the top of the space, using particle hydrodynamics theory to simulate the flow of a stream of water, different material textures, light, and even reflections; just like the gentle flow of water under the sparkling light of the sun.
Project Details:
Project: CUPONE, Beijing, China.
Materialized With: Stainless steel, Acrylic & Wood
Architects: SODA Architects