When visitors enter through the plaza’s main access door and take the escalator to the second floor, the view offered by the quiet and rather empty lobby is hardly attractive. On the other hand, the real charm of a cafe comes from the atmosphere created by the diversity of its clientele. For this reason, SODA Architects decided to design a lobby with an artistic visual centre; one that allows visitors to forget about monotonous work environments, and provides room to sit back and relax while enjoying a cup of coffee.

Employees’ wellbeing is currently being spearheaded by businesses worldwide with a new mindset being adopted within the workplace to sustain staff. The design of an office or headquarters is now of utmost importance to a business and today’s interior designers, as well as architects, are being approached to create visually-stimulating places of employment to enhance productivity and concentration amongst employees.

Biophilic design

The use of biophilic design – the idea of incorporating nature into the built environment – within workspaces has been proven to provide employees with a restorative and invigorating place to work. Inspiration, such as colours, textures and patterns, are taken from natural surroundings – such as SODA Architects’ ‘mountains and rivers theme’ – and implemented into the design of workspaces to improve work rate.

The feelings that these themes induce will have a beneficial effect on both the employee and employer. Such as SODA Architects’ ‘mountains’ theme, which delivers a cosy feeling of privacy to the open lobby. While the coming and going of visitors becomes ‘rivers’ extending into the distance, just like gentle streams of water flowing through the mountains.

Such a visual and psychological enhancement creates a sense of continuity between the open area of the lobby and the outdoor terrace. To this end, after countless attempts, SODA Architects selected nearly 300 vertical ‘leaves’; their champagne-plated exterior provides reflection, forming a three-dimensional dynamic filter. Thus, colour and patterns on each leaf change continuously with every move – similar to the effects of leaves during the changing of seasons – posture and variation on the clothing of both visitors and passersby. These leaves of different sizes are planted from the floor up to a height of 2.4m. Together, they create a range of mountains that provides visitors with a feeling of relative privacy and freedom of space.

Different shades of grey varnish were applied to the inner surface of the leaves. Side by side with multiple sets of purple seats, these symbolic elements reduce the influence of external disturbances, allowing guests to enjoy quality time on their own or with friends.

Sophisticated indoors

Regarding interiors, SODA Architects chose a colourful yet mysterious tone of ‘peacock blue’ as the main colour theme, as well as refined solid wood and marble materials to showcase on details. As an extension of the ‘mountains and rivers’, the firm hung close to 1000 leaves of white acrylic and reflective stainless steel at the top of the space, using particle hydrodynamics theory to simulate the flow of a stream of water, different material textures, light and even reflections; just like the gentle flow of water under the sparkling light of the sun. Thus, the stream is born at the entrance to the lobby, then flows through the cascading changes of mountains, into the most dynamic space of the project, right above the service counter, and spreads throughout the cafe, to eventually dissipate like gentle water flowers under the sun of the outer terrace.

We try to change people’s inertial concept of daily space. Therefore, CUPONE Gateway Plaza provides a place to drink coffee, while being an extremely functional art installation in itself. It is based at the heart of a business area that stresses work efficiency, from where it breathes a warm and vivid feeling into the structure.

SODA Architects was founded by Jiang Yuan and Song Chen in 2015, in Paris and Beijing simultaneously. Using their comprehensive background in local and international forms of architecture and art.

Years of experience at Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Paris, and Pei Partnership Architects, Asia, Pei Partnership Architects Asia respectively, allowed both architects to participate in renowned projects such as The Suzhou Museum, The Paris Philharmonic Symphony Hall and The New National Art Museum of China among others.

In 2010, they were shortlisted by New York’s eVolo Design Competition and recently, the duo collaborated with Vogue Magazine on the ‘Gem•Dream•Style’ retrospective jewellery exhibition designed for LVMH’s Bvlgari.

Fact file:

Project year: 2016
Project type: Cafe
Client: CUPONE
Architect: SODA Architects
Project team: Jiang Yuan, Song Chen and Chen Fei
Design scopes: Interior, furniture and lighting
Construction company: SOK Consulting Service
Location: No.18, East 3rd Ring North Road, Beijing, China