Empty Parts: A Hair Salon with a Unique Twist

Jien-An Lai's Award-Winning Design Merges Memory and Hairstyling

The salon's design features geometric blocks independent of each other, each meticulously shaped and wrapped to shoulder the weight of equipment and provide storage functions. These blocks are placed strategically for various service activities. Some parts of the blocks are hollowed out according to the needs of different service activities, with the hollowed edges wrapped by wood materials to highlight the empty parts. This design creates a moderate atmosphere for customers when they are around the service blocks.

The materials used in the salon are mainly recycled old elm wood, handmade clay bricks, hot-rolled steel, and concrete. The salon spans two floors, with an area of 53 square meters and a height of 4.55 meters on the first floor, and an area of 104 square meters and a height of 4.65 meters on the second floor.

The salon's design is intended to allow customers to relax and deeply feel the changes they experience every time they visit. The first floor presents a slow, even static atmosphere, with a large wooden table and a group of towering lampposts providing a tension but soothing waiting space. On the second floor, all services that require customers to be seated are placed in locations with natural lighting and scenery.

The design project started in July 2016 in Tianjin and finished in October 2016. The design team faced the challenge of the original building's load-bearing structure causing the spatial plane shape to be trivial and the space split into small blocks. The design strategy was to collapse such a sense of space and integrate the space into a large block to meet the convenience of service activities and psychological space comfortability.

The Empty Parts hair salon was awarded the Golden A' Interior Space, Retail and Exhibition Design Award in 2017. This award is granted to marvelous, outstanding, and trendsetting creations that reflect the designer's prodigy and wisdom, advance art, science, design, and technology, and significantly impact the world with their desirable characteristics.