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Ziinlife Beijing Store, renovating an old textile warehouse into a furniture showroom

Atelier tao+c

Renovation  /  Completed
Atelier tao+c

  1. Comprehend Ziin’s product philosophy: decent details, clear components, bringing sophisticated and fun experience for users.
  2. Understand the scale of the site and how to merge old and new.
    We would like to re-create an ambiance that is fused in many ways, merging the new inserted structures with the site, to explore their relationships by interior architecture.
  3. Two intersected square frameworks were erected, meticulously rotated at 45 degree, staying sole as an individual structure while also connected to the original brick wall, which forms a separate “house within a house”. Atelier tao+c sought to balance the relation between the existing site with new functions, exhibition and sale, background and objects in the aged industrial space.

Atelier tao+c has transformed an old textile warehouse into a showroom for ZIIN, an emerging furniture brand. The project site is part of Langyuan Station, which features warehouse with pitched roof and brick walls built in the 60s from last century.

The exterior looks like the brick wall of the old building, while we meticulously extended some of the windows to introduce transparence into the interior.

A detailed,juxtaposed bricks were introduced to the editted façade, which fits into the environment of the street, while also speaks for its own renovation story in a compelling way.

Common industrial materials, particularly standard steel beam, profiles, timber and bricks, make up the finish of project structure regardless of cost and grading, roughness or smoothness. By adopting this material selection, we aspire to eliminate the hierarchy, simultaneously making no distinctions in Ziin Store. The inherited character of ordinary materials was studied and their juxtaposition were re-combined on one elevation, narrating an embodiment of every detail design while projects a warm and fun scene. This is an effective cost-control project that uses basic formal logic, mundane materials and construction techniques to deliver a deep expression of adaptive re-use space and details.

The two interlaced frameworks were treated divergently in transparent and solid, establishing a crystal-like structure. The first hint of the interior is suggested to the public by a transparent house, cladded with corrugated polycarbonate panels. Most days, the sunshine is welcomed from the south window through the front house to the back one wrapped in timber panels, proposing the overlapping relation of the two stacked frameworks.

The structure also groups homogeneous rooms in a continuous sequence organized in two sets of identical columns, wherein one designated room leads into another. This route brings, both for different events and spontaneous gathering, flexible places with possibilities.

The negative space, in between the existing brick walls and the new frameworks, that flows along the perimeter, introducing the notion of “semi-interior and semi-exterior”. On the mezzanine floor, unexpected space of triangle balcony, pergolas and staircase were adaptively molded into the new inserted dwelling, becoming interesting elements embedded. The staircase has been placed in a rather constricted area, ‘seeping out’ purposefully and generating a glass box on the façade in triangle shape, thus the tension between architectural boundaries and interior components could be revealed.

Working with atelier tao+c, we captured the authentic craft of construction and express the narrative of structure itself. From the steel structure, timber frame, the substructure of walls to the assembled finish panels, every component is visible and traceable. Each layer of the structure was superimposed during construction, amplified from the steel floor decks to the I-beam, the ducts, piping layer and the dropped ceiling, simulating layers of the earth, clear and identifiable to the viewer.

Credits

 Beijing
 China
 Ziinlife
 exhibition space
 03/2023
 186 sq. m
  164,000.00 $
 Atelier tao+c
 Tao Liu, Chunyan Cai, Haojia Song, Weilu Wang
 Shanghai Tianci Architectural Decoration Co., LTD
 Wen Studio

Curriculum

Founded in 2016, Atelier tao+c is an emerging studio based in Shanghai. Our works ranging from a piece of pendant lamp to a compound development, from the interior of small urban apartments to the renovation of old rural houses, from shops on the street to a youth community. Parallel with the practical works, the office has involved with research and teaching, focus on subjects such as revival of old buildings and objects in domestic landscape.
The design method is semi-architectural semi-interior, retreating to the inner world, allowing the space to grow from inside and break through the perimeter, intermediating the inside and outside.
The practice seeks to explore the beauty of everyday life, pick up the evocative clues, rediscovering values hidden in simplicity and allow life to unfold to us all its complexities.

https://www.ateliertaoc.com/


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