CUN Design designed the offices of marketing agency Elephant-Parade, located in Beijing, China. Beijing is a complex diversified metropolitan, where everyone attempts for a small sense of belonging and identity. Even troubled by life stress as well as the Fog days they still went ahead. While the longest time of a day people spend is in office. Elephant-Parade said that the power leads new communication era comes from continuously creative spirit. As it is a communication company which specializes in digital integration, openness and diversity culture, we keep penetrating openness, humanized concepts and creative aesthetic ideas constantly into its space structure design. In our opinion, the process of designing is not only simply doing but also beautifying life.
With time goes on, people began to be weary of the “forest” of reinforced concrete and the string light mirror glass, and the more they pursuit of is materials that are close to life. Hence we used bamboo elements in Elephant-Parade’s office and restored its color. Art must come from the nature, since it has already created the most unique beautiful models for people. In the first layer, we cut and broke the single geometrics space, while being able to be recombined and re-displayed, it feels like that it shows and could returns to the original space form. In this way, internal communication function of Elephant-Parade ‘s office is maintained while being as vivid and interesting as jigsaw puzzle.
Meanwhile, it solves the problems of many practical functions, such as lighting and ventilation, line organization, functional partition, etc. The relation of space is about adding and subtracting. In this layer, several geometry of same or different shapes are added to a single piece, while major and minor relationship is maintained, the image and expression of space is highlighted. And subtraction is cutting and emptying the original shape to form new shapes to meet the need of space functions. This makes the blocks have a more vivid shadow and a deeper sense of sculpture. Floor and ceiling of each block has hidden lights, so even in the evening independent space could be formed.
Simple and beautiful, clear and dazed multidimensional design language – digestion and refactoring constructs creative visual space in the structure of the multivariate composite. The office space of Elephant-Parade not only reflects the characteristics of the industry, but also fully expresses its cultural and aesthetic values. While small spaces have a certain sense of privacy, they communicate with the big space. Thus group and individual spaces exist harmoniously and get their functions performed. This is also the relationship between big and small blocks. Bamboo as a building material represents the connotation of ancient Asian architecture system.
Its output in China is enough to support the material consumption, and has the characteristics of high toughness and high plasticity. At the top of the stairs, while using bamboo, we made it curve. Architect Gaudy once said: “the straight line belongs to men, and the curve to god”. Obviously, the curve, which conveys something beyond the building, is what really makes our heart relax and feel like walking in a distant daydream. So we make curve splicing in the stairs and the top of the first layer to extend the flowing of the space. Geometric lines in the interior space is adopted in this way, where nature is better used and no more piling up of traditional elements.
The interface exists for the purpose of this space, and because of this interface, there are materials, structure, construction and entity. And a flowing rhythm in the interior space is formed. Due to the rapid pace of life, the behaviors of people show more clear sense of purpose and shortcuts. Their straight lines of conducting code become another design standard of flowing space. In modern space design, people’s aesthetic appreciation of curve and their linear activities agree with each other better. Nowadays, people are no longer limited by fixed time and space to work, while revolutionary change has happened in their concepts of work and working forms. A more cozy and relaxing work atmosphere is demanded by people to organically integrate with life.
Design: CUN Design
Design Lead: Cui Shu
Photography: Wang Ting, Wang Jin
https://officesnapshots.com/2017/08/29/elephant-parade-offices-beijing/