Scenery in Motion | Studio DOTCOF

This showroom is in a three-story brick building built in 1992 within Yanfeng Auto Trim System Company's Anting plant in Shanghai. The client wanted to add a showroom on the ground floor to display its automotive interior and exterior products to customers; the second and third floors were reserved for office functions.

In conjunction with Yanfeng's brand slogan "Experience in motion", we hope to create a scenery in motion experience in this architectural space renovation project.

The space of the showroom is generated by a combination of two levels of control logic, internal and external. On the outside, some characteristic elements of the site and the surrounding environment are carefully selected and choreographed to be embedded in the transformed spatial experience. The west side of the building is facing a road, which is not a wide road but the main pedestrian passage connecting the main entrance of the plant and the workshop, the cafeteria, so usually has a large flow of people. We closed the west wall of the building with hollow concrete blocks, and installed a water feature and the "Experience in motion" logo installation, making it the landscape element of the road end. In the afternoon, the sunlight from the west is filtered through the hollowed brick wall, creating a changing light and shadow in the interior. The trees and lawns of the site are maximizing reserved, and orchestrated into the interior spatial experience by reorganizing the placement and size of window openings. The unfavorable factors around the site, such as the parking lot on the north side and the logistic pathway of the exhibition vehicle on the northeast side, were shielded by sealing the windows and other means. The skylight on the second floor of the original building was reopened and the floor slab between the first and second floors was removed so that sunlight was absorbed through the skylight into the ground floor exhibition hall.

In the interior, we hope to create a continuous space with a sense of movement. This space is designed as a wedge shape with one large end and one small end, and the sense of spatial perspective is enhanced. Walking through it, one feels a trend of direction. Such a directional trend has a clear destination, perhaps the external landscape in the previous narrative, or the exhibits themselves within the space. The flow of office traffic on the second floor is concealed behind a half-height sloping wall at the entrance and leads up to the stairwell via a gentle slope. The flow of visitors to the showroom is arranged to the left of the entrance, guided northward by the half-height sloping wall, through the hollowed brick wall and light from the skylight, and then back southward through a dark ramp into the inner courtyard. The flow continues southward along the inner courtyard space to the dark gallery, where the flow turns several times before reaching the south gallery, where the space is once again bright, with long horizontal windows eventually bringing the south lawn and sunlight inside. People finish their visit here and can stay longer in the conference hall, meeting room and outdoor terrace area.

Project: Scenery in Motion

Client: Yanfeng

Design Company: Studio DOTCOF

Design Team: Chen Xi, Li Rong, Zhuang Haolai

MEP Engineer: Li Mu, Deng Peng

Structural Engineer: Pan Chao, Shanghai Pudong Existing Building Quality Diagnise Station

Construction Company: Shanghai Luyuan Construction Decoration Engineering Co. Ltd.

Area: 1370 sqm

Completed: 2022-10

Address: No.540 Moyu Road, Jiading District, Shanghai, China

Photographer: LEIDU