CHOW TAI FOOK WUCAI CITY SHOP | One plus partnership

The design concept behind this jewelry store in Beijing city, China includes not only the characteristics of both ancient and modern aesthetic elements, but also the unique characteristics of different landmarks in the city, thus making this store unique and stand out from its counterparts.

This design project went through several twists and turns during different phases, from incubation to implementation. Beijing is a place with a rich historical legacy as it was the capital of multiple dynasties in the Chinese history, so it is difficult to pick one thing or a simple pattern to represent the characteristics of the entire city. After extensive thinking, we finally chose two classic royal gardens as the theme of this design - the Beihai Park and the Imperial Gardens in the Forbidden City to represent this city. We’ve also applied modern painting techniques to outline and refined their respective characteristics, presenting the Beihai Park and the Imperial Garden of the Forbidden City in a new way as one painting .

We framed the painting onto the “safe deposit box” element of the "Heritage" theme store: by printing the painting of Beihai Garden and Imperial Garden on fabric, and divide it into countless smaller parts as the doors of the safe deposit boxes, then randomly combining the patterns and colors together, colourful patterns of the Beihai Park and the Imperial Garden of the Forbidden City are organically arranged on the walls of the shop, making the design interesting and unconventional. Visitors and customers can easily spot the iconic white pagoda of the Beihai Park and the rugged rockery in the Imperial Garden. The whole process looks deceptively simple but in fact, took our designers incredibly substantial amount of time and effort, from the selection of fabrics and colours, to reviewing mock-ups and finalizing the ultimate rendition on the walls covered by the different pieces of the puzzle. Furthermore, we also introduced playful numerical features on the wall by assigning each safe box a unique number at the lower right corner of the printed fabrics on the wall, each representing a date or a homophony of love etc., for example, number "520" is the homophone of "I love you" in Mandarin.

We also re-calibrated the carousel jewelry display bar table at the centre of the shop. Surrounded by pink display tables and green chair to pop out from the painting patterns on the theme wall. We also employed a stripe pattern at the base of the it to make it stand out from the many other display stands in the shop. Greenish marble stone was chosen as the table top and hung lamps over the bar table specially made in the shape of tiles commonly used on roofs of ancient buildings. The shop uses pink and green as the main colors and the latter was taken as it represents plants in both the Beihai Park and the Imperial Garden. The combination of these two colors brews a dreamy vibe, and the contrast of the two colors is sharp enough to enable visitors and customers easily spot the cultural landmark symbols on the cloth paintings on the walls, and finding the subtly close connection between the store and the city of Beijing;

In short, this design harmoniously blends modern art and ancient traditions with the characteristics of the ancient city of Beijing in the shop, leaving people impressed and unforgettable at first sight.