Wuxing Youxing: A Harmonious Blend of Functionality and Artistry

Zhixue Wei's Award-Winning Design Transforms Industrial Heritage into a Modern Workspace

Wei's design inspiration came from the pursuit of the sense of scale brought by large spaces. Using the advantage of storey height, Wei reserved hollow spaces, creating a staggered floor space structure to distinguish functions. The suspended conference room and the sinking book bar are examples of this unique spatial planning. The three floors are integrated yet relatively independent, connected through the continuous up and down response of the stairs.

The project's unique properties lie in its location and the designer's approach. Situated in a former textile machinery factory, the space was transformed into a creative park while retaining its industrial heritage. The designers followed a consistent way of restraint and balance, presenting a transparent, pure, and delicate vision, and completing an unrestrained, frank, concise, and neat expression of spatial emotions.

The realization of this design was achieved by emphasizing the external vision and using a large area of transparent glass to form a visual connection. This approach made the original narrow space bright, spacious, and full of texture. The project covers a total of 680 square meters, and the designers used a modern perspective to turn the space into a carrier of functionality and artistry, establishing the harmony and warmth of space in the comparison between hardness and softness, cold and warm.

The design team, consisting of Guibi Wu, Yuan Gao, Kaiming Xie, Xuefeng Zhou, Shuai Zheng, and Ping Pan, alongside Wei, worked to ensure that the space was not only functional but also aesthetically pleasing. The top floor uses a mobile skylight to guide the scenery into the room, extending the sense of hierarchy of the space longitudinally. The open kitchen restaurant is comfortable and simple, cold but not cold. Exquisite details play a role of more than less, more than simple.

The project started in May 2018 in Hangzhou and finished in July 2018. It was not without its challenges, but the team managed to overcome them, creating a workspace that not only adheres to the needs of the company's overall operation but also creates different visual feelings in different functional spaces, creating the most convenient and comfortable environment for employees to improve work efficiency.

Wuxing Youxing is a testament to Wei's ability to blend functionality and artistry seamlessly, creating a space that is not only practical but also visually appealing. This design was awarded Golden in A' Interior Space, Retail and Exhibition Design Award in 2020, a testament to its outstanding and trendsetting creation that reflects the designer's prodigy and wisdom.