Office Lobby | 4N design architects

Owned by retailer of Dried Seafood and Bird Nest in Hong Kong, this building is their headquarters building house packaging workshops and office space. This design exercise was to create an entrance lobby and garden to cater for all users of the building. The design concept was driven by notion of ‘In search of natural beauty’. The area is consisted of semi-outdoor garden space and indoor lobby concierge space. The garden is infused with arrays of timber slots, timber flooring, lawns and vertical plantations. All greenery is supported by automated irrigation system and advanced-level drainage system.Within the indoor lobby, one major design feature is a circular room that serves dual functions as a museum wall, as well as a locker room for three hundred people. Rainbow-inspired colors were incorporated into the museum wall where marketing message are placed into colored baskets, while the locker cabinets shows arrays of colors.

The idea of bringing nature into the space was challenged by materials and use of green plants, for instance there are numerous timber slots to be clad onto columns, for which those are Asian sourced solid timber slots of over 4 Meters long each, imported from sustainable harvest timber supplier from South-East Asia. The incorporation of vast area of lawn and vertical green were challenged by various technical reasons, such as the limited amount of sunlight onto shaded lawn, irrigation and drainage systems and, the use of specific species, those are all issues our design team worked alongside landscape consultant/vendor, client and contractor to come up with a resolvable final design.

The beautifully designer locker room was indeed a great challenge during design process, the request of such locker room was actually be requested by the client in very last stage of Detail Design period, that affected the overall design language and planning in a great deal. Yet instead of putting the locker room hidden at corner of the lobby, our team twisted the colorful design and turned it into center piece of the lobby. in Summary, the overall design concept was driven by the notions : When beautiful nature was expressed in built-form, could it be green, colorful, organic and natural ! ?

Project Info:

Architects: 4N design architects
Location: Tai Po Road (Tai Wai) & Shing Wan Rd, Tai Wai, Hong Kong
Designers: Sinner Sin and Danny Ng
Area: 8000.0 ft2
Project Year: 2015
Photography: James G. of Hollywood Studio