Following the 48F Mix Match Life Experience Center and the new office of CCD Shanghai Headquarters, 53A/53B at CCD Shenzhen Headquarters is officially opened. It is not merely a life experience space combining books, fashion, cafe, art exhibition, boutique shop, intelligent material showroom and meditation room, but also a dialogue between culture and nature, harmony between art and life, and the epitome of an ideal future life.
Project name: CCD Global Headquarters
Location: 54F/55F, International Chamber of Commerce Tower
Area: 1,768.4 square meters (54F), 1,579.6 square meters (55F)
Interior design: CCD / Cheng Chung Design (HK) (www.ccd.com.hk)
Lighting design: CCD / Cheng Chung Design (HK) (www.ccd.com.hk)
Art consulting: CCD • WOWU Art Consultancy
Completion time: March 2022
Photography: Wang Ting, Qiu Xin
A Tunnel Through Space and Time
Time is like halo that stores fragments of memories. The red bricks are overlapped in an alternating order along the arc, eventually woven into a circle that creates a magnificent field under the arched ceiling.
Nowadays, raw materials are making a comeback. The red terracotta bricks are arranged in highly varied forms, exuding a charming sense of simplicity. It allows people to imagine a rich “inner world” and opens up a spatial dialogue between the past and the future.
Dream as a Horse
The ideal lifestyle represents one’s dream and ambitions. The imagery of horse is invoked to interpret the unique and daring atmosphere of the space.
The design narrative intends to convey the idea that work can be a poetic process integrated with the ideals of life. The majestic posture of the horse appears elegant in the space, and its spirit is the pursuit of our design. The horse jumps out into the space yet is independent from the secular world, conveying a certain symbolic meaning.
The traditional office reception mode is dismissed, and replaced with an enclosed layout promoting communication in a relaxing and comfortable vibe. The historical photos on the wall are a tribute to the glorious memory of CCD in the past thirty years.
Artist Bian Jiang’s statue “Pony Crossing the River” shows the courageous spirit of the horse and its insurmountable resilience.
Poetry and Elegance
When lifestyle and space become one, life becomes a celebration. Through a reasonable division of space, the cycle of time is broken, allowing people to walk in between, stroll, and get lost. When time stands still yet light changes subtly, the rhythm of space, the qualities of light, color, and textures, and even the scent of the greenery, all connect to the most primal self, free from the slavery of time.
The floral art and greenery are strikingly red and lush, adding a touch of brightness to the elegant space. It enriches the space while creating a unique life force.
Three kinds of specially customized seating, including high-back chair, comfort chair, and footstool, are particularly eye-catching in design.
Every corner offers unexpected encounters with art, whether it is paintings, sculptures, or furniture. The contrast between long-standing tradition and new trend provides another possibility for the space, while shaping the designers’ lifestyle and aesthetics. The space decorated by art remains humble in the face of external clamors. With its nourishment, the space becomes romantic, intoxicating and relaxing.
Flower Room, a Romantic Surprise Outside of Everyday Life
“It is a pleasure to commune with flowers everyday.” The flower room is a source of energy, and a backyard of happiness and inspiration. Surrounded by plants, the staff can read, draw, or write without distraction.
The plants in the flower room subtly weaken the separation between the inside and outside. And the open connecting area becomes a place of leisure and spiritual support. The sea of flowers is an ideal place for communication, appreciating flowers, drinking tea, relieving boredom, and dreaming about the distant future.
A Tribute to Craftsmanship
The red bricks carry the color and temperature of the city, and inherits its historical memory.
Authentic as the brick is, it is handmade by craftsman with a touch of quaintness. Thick to the touch, it faintly reveals a delicate aesthetic warmth. Traditional and crude, it is nevertheless full of cultural appeal.
The only way to keep up the original intention is to live up to it. We pay tribute to the artisan spirit of those spending years crafting artefacts with heart and hands.
Nowadays, in the face of the overwhelming fast-paced culture, we are determined to explore traditional craftsmanship more deeply and try to conserve it in various ways, which can be observed in our later works.
In exploring the development of design, instead of simply pushing for technical innovations and breakthroughs, sometimes we have to step back and think about our roots. Consequently, we started to pay attention to giving back to nature.
Smart Material Platform Facilitates Design
CCD’s sub-brand Raritag developed Ideafusion, an intelligent material platform to accommodate global suppliers that cooperate with CCD. This platform improves the efficiency of interior designers’ workflow and realizes digital and information-based material design.
At the same time, it provides designers with inspirations, offers a one-stop service for sharing resources, and propels the industry’s technological development with innovation.
As of now, around 1,000 suppliers have entered the platform, offering more than 130,000 types of materials. The platform is capable of one-click material list generation, online sample request, management of design material, etc.
By incorporating big data, the one-month-long project materials selection process is reduced to one to two weeks, with an improved efficiency of more than 50%. Furthermore, online one-click generation of material list helps with the designers’ modification of supplier and material information, reducing the error rate at 95%.
Quality of Life Begins with Details
Bright colors and fun details are added to diversify the space, creating an elegant lifestyle there.
“We hope everyone is interested and free in such a space, where the soul will be spontaneous, real, and appealing.” The minimalist red bricks in the pantry symbolize the desire for the essence of things and balanced emotions, an attitude of pursuing aesthetics in the most comfortable environment.
The industrial style in the conference room is our attempt at a breakthrough experience that ignores boundaries in search for fun.
High-quality furniture and exquisite ornaments add to the luxurious and artistic atmosphere. Crossing the boundary between vintage and fashion, a polysemic and harmonious collision is created, allowing the space to break free from conventions and the mundane monotony.
The headquarters overcomes the stereotype of the traditional office that is cold, rational and orderly. Instead, it is vibrant, homey and diverse. Like a traveler’s home, each item in the space is gathered from all over the world, telling its own story.
The space can accommodate work, meditation, catering, boutique shop (showroom), painting room, flower room, art exhibition, multimedia display, and leisure, etc., integrating multiple diverse businesses and lifestyles.