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    Linehouse defines Shanghai office with “unexpected combinations of materials”

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    Interior design studio Linehouse has renovated an office in Shanghai using numerous materials and art from a local gallery.

    Linehouse refurbished the ground floor of a three-storey building in Shanghai that The Independents global marketing group have occupied in Shanghai for numerous years.
    The office is located in a three-storey building in ShanghaiThe 374-square-metre space was designed as a communal area for the staff working on the floors above.
    It includes a reception area, meeting rooms, pantry and communal eating space as well as a flexible deskspace for twenty people.
    Metal curtains are used to blur the boundary between different functional spacesAdditionally, an art installation area has been integrated, taking advantage of the high lofty ceiling of the space, which will be used for monthly rotational curation.

    Linehouse aimed to create a destination by presenting art from a local gallery, which will be rotated monthly, in the space. Combined with numerous materials and abstract furniture pieces, the studio forms what the studio called an “unexpected collection”.
    The entrance features a circular seating installation wrapped in metal curtain”The support of the client to design an office that pairs unexpected combinations of materials was refreshing and a challenge,” said Linehouse.
    “The result is a space that allows art to breathe and creates a welcoming, natural and open place of work.”
    The workstations are located in a sunken seating areaThe spaces are each defined by different materials. Marine plywood was used for the wall of the reception and pantry area, separating them from the meetings rooms. The same plywood was used for to the workstations located in a sunken seating area.
    A circular seating area was wrapped in a metal curtain, with five-meter-high curtains used to divide other spaces.

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    A customised table, made from different shaped pieces of marble and laminates, is used for meetings and dining.
    Other tables in the meeting room features unique surfaces — one being a patchwork of timber textures and the other a gradient of glass transparency, from solid black to transparent.
    “The design challenges the traditional notion of an office to promote a healthier and creative mindset to collaboration and communication, with emphasis on openness and autonomy for how staff use and occupy the spaces,” Linehouse concluded.
    Marine plywood is used on the walls of the pantryLinehouse is a Hong Kong and Shanghai-based architecture and interior design studio established in 2013 by Alex Mok and Briar Hickling.
    The duo won the emerging interior designer of the year category at the 2019 Dezeen Awards.
    Meeting rooms feature custom made tablesThe studio has also recently designed a greenhouse-informed food market in Shanghai and the facade of a shopping centre in Bangkok.
    The photography is by Dirk Weiblen.

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      Olson Kundig's New York office includes a timber cityscape table

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      Earthy tones and a wooden table in the shape of a cityscape feature in the Olson Kundig’s first New York office, which was designed with sensitivity to the 100-year-old building it occupies.

      Located in Midtown Manhattan, the office is spread across the 10th floor of a mid-rise tower constructed in 1923.
      The office features a central living room with a sculptural tableOlson Kundig – a studio with its primary offices in Seattle – created the interior to be its first New York City hub with a material and colour palette that responded to the building’s 100-year-old history.
      The open-plan office is defined by a central “living room” that features a 144-square-foot (13-square-metre) wooden table on wheels with a statement geometric cityscape.
      The cityscape was informed by the office’s New York locationCreated from raw timber offcuts, the table is divided into quarters for different configurations. It was designed by studio principal Tom Kundig and fabricated by Spearhead.

      “The design was the result of a conversation Alan [Maskin] and I had about our teacher, [the late architect] Astra Zarina, and our fond memories of gathering around the table at her home in the centre of Rome,” Kundig told Dezeen.
      “She always had a big pile of candles in the centre of the table, similar to the abstract masses at the centre of our table.”
      “We want to foster the same spirit of conversation and sharing between colleagues and collaborators in this new office space, so it was a natural place to draw inspiration.”
      An unenclosed kitchen is also located adjacent to the stationsA series of wooden workstations are arranged across the open-plan office, while conference rooms feature around its perimeter. An open kitchen is also located adjacent to the stations.
      Platforms are positioned above the workstations offering a display area for sculptures and models. According to the studio, this continues its tradition of integrating art into everyday life.

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      The office interior was designed to reflect its Manhattan location, rather than mirror the firm’s flagship office in Seattle, according to Kundig.
      “The existing shell of the office was largely concrete and glass. We added wood and warmer tones to soften the space, with natural materials to add texture and interest,” explained Alan Maskin, partner at the studio.
      Artwork is displayed around the officeA mixture of vintage and contemporary furniture was sourced locally from locations in Brooklyn and Tribeca.
      Like the Seattle office, the New York space will also host various art events, tying the otherwise-unique locations together.
      Wooden elements define the spaceOlson Kundig was founded in 2000. The firm has completed multiple international architecture projects including a beach house with louvred shutters in Sydney and a timber floating home in Seattle.
      Another practice that designed its own studio is Urselmann Interior, which created its office using only biodegradable and recycled materials.
      The photography is by Angela Hau.

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      Sky-blue cafe in Buffalo features “Alice in Wonderland” staircase

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      Canadian design duo Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster have created a playful all-blue cafe in a century-old house in Buffalo, New York, with an optical illusion staircase.Named Tipico Coffee, the cafe’s identity was formed with the intention of designing a space that encourages social interactions and supports local craftsmanship.

      The cafe’s main bar is grafted from reclaimed furniture
      Reclaimed furniture and lighting made from construction-site string lights feature alongside an oversized staircase to nowhere which forms amphitheatre-style seating.
      The cafe’s main bar is made from ten reclaimed wooden tables sourced from classified advertisements website Craigslist.

      The main bar encourages social interactions

      The tables are grafted together and painted in sky-blue, forming a unified bar which runs along one wall of the cafe.
      “The process of designing the cafe really started with the idea of the social infrastructure of the grafted bar,” Jamrozik and Kempster told Dezeen.

      Drinks on ice are displayed between the bar’s table-tops
      The open bar has clusters of swivelling stools arranged around blue table-tops that jut out of the bar’s customer side, allowing easy socialising between customers and staff.
      “The different shapes of the tables come together to create opportunities for conversations,” continued the designers.
      “This is augmented with the use of swivelling bar stools that allow patrons the ability to turn their bodies to orient themselves to a new connection.”

      Swivelling stools encourage random encounters between customers and staff

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      Groups of circular olive-green garden tables and chairs, as well as built-in blue benches, make up two intimate seating areas behind each side of the bar, which are separated by a wall.
      The tables and chairs used are purposefully outdoor furniture. This means that the seating can be moved onto an exterior patio in the summer months.

      Tipico’s atmosphere is a mix of indoors and outdoors
      Various scattered potted plants blend green and blue furniture together and continue the theme of bringing the outdoors inside.
      Jamrozik and Kempster explained their intentions for using sky-blue as the cafe’s dominant colour.

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      “We wanted to use a vibrant colour to visually tie together the bar and benches to create continuity in the space and give visual emphasis to the bar as the main design gesture.”
      “We chose blue to both complement the olive green furniture and plants, but also to create moments of contrast with the bespoke yellow lights,” they continued.

      Potted plants are scattered around the space
      The bespoke lights designed for the cafe are composed of construction-site string lights, wound around sections of aluminium stock tubes. They hang above the bar and the seating areas.
      “We wanted to transform the string lights, while still making it clear what the source product was,” explained the designers.

      Lighting made from construction-site string lights
      Metal pegboard is another off-the-shelf material used in the space, making up a menu board behind the bar, a merchandise display board and a community message board.
      The bottom of the main bar and built-in-benches was also lined with wooden pegboard in order to “give them both a visual texture, taking advantage of the acoustic properties of the perforations,” said Jamrozik and Kempster

      A merchandise display board made from metal pegboard
      A sense of the building’s historic charm remains in the existing fireplace that is preserved, which is painted in a strip of the same sky-blue paint as the main bar.
      An over-scaled stairwell acts as an additional, cosy seating area fit for a couple of customers at a time.

      The building’s original fireplace and its playful stairwell
      Sealed off by a mirror and leading to nowhere, the stairwell is intended as an “Alice in Wonderland moment,” enhancing the cafe’s playfulness.
      “The stairway’s oversized steps effectively shrink the visitor and act as seats while the mirrored ceiling gives the impression that the space continues up,” explained Jamrozik and Kempster.
      “We imagine people will be drawn to the curious space and hope that they enjoy the tongue-in-cheek reference that plays on the domestic history of the original building,” continued the designers.

      Sealed off by a mirror, the stairwell is an optical illusion
      Jamrozik and Kempster note the importance of playful design in their work, which they believe connects people in public spaces.
      “We use the language of play to create social infrastructures: physical prompts which encourage contact between strangers.”
      “We believe that questioning the way people use and occupy space and their relationship to one another through playful encounters has enormous potential to speak across generations and cultural differences,” they continued.

      The importance of play is an influence in Jamrozik and Kempster’s design work
      Designers everywhere are acknowledging the importance of designing public spaces to maximise social interactions. In Montreal, Ménard Dworkind has created a cafe with a central standing bar, while Central Saint Martins graduates have created blocky outdoor furniture for a public square in Croydon, London.
      Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster have collaborated on design projects since 2003. Their varied work spans temporary installations and permanent interior and architectural commissions.
      Photography is by Sara Schmidle.
      Project credits: 
      Architecture team: Abstract Architecture PC

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