单人；单身人士丨中国上海丨Offhand Practice

Architects:Offhand Practice

Area:60m²

Year:2019

Photographs:Yiqing Gao

Manufacturers:BELLE STONE,JEE-O

Category:Retail Interiors

Design Team:Yuan Yuan, Nie Xuan, Li Yue

Vi Designer:Cynde

City:Shanghai

Country:China

Text description provided by the architects. 185 Yongkang Road formerly was a 60-square-meter street dinner. During our first site visit in November 2018, The venue itself did not leave us a particularly deep impression. The only intuitive feeling is that the venue is long and narrow. In December, client decided to use this venue for a vintage houseware gallery, named 'Single Person'.

A narrow space with light sources only at both ends, isn't this a cave? Once the overall concept CAVE was established, other design elements for this space that shares the same design language naturally fall into place. The first site constrains (also can be viewed as a feature) is that lack of natural lighting in the inner space.By controlling the way light enters, it magnified the experience of a cave.

Another feature of the site is the spatial hierarchy. Apart from using height difference to indicate space, different shades of colour is applied to show further emphasis on the depth. Besides colour, paint texture is also varied in each room to bring subtle contrast in spatial experience.

The maze niche of corridor gallery is made directly out of client's sketch. So does the irregular window in the centre gallery. As more oval shaped details were added in the space, we gradually changed all wall intersections detail to curves.

Through this CAVE project, the concept is formed due to its physical restraints. This made us realise that a true concept should emerges from the process of problem solving, not pre-assumed or imposed. If a site has manifested a concept by itself, why not embrace it?

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