dgj153 China Duty Free Ltd , Hong Kong, HK , 2010

A 400 square meters office space for the new headquarters of China Duty Free Limited in Hong Kong. The new office will host the General Manager, 6 directors and 18 employees, provide a meeting room, a conference room, archive and storage spaces.

In order to avoid the sudden boundary between inside/outside the office, depth is given to the entrance, moulding gently the surface of the outer wall into the door, and shaping the desk. Once stepped into the lobby, visitors find themselves yet in the middle of the room and the inclinated reception desk addresses to the meeting rooms and the working areas.

The wooden cladding and the mood of shapes - straight lines into curves - make the entry space look as carved out. The furnishing elements are read as part of the same architectural gesture and not as free-standing objects. The outer walls curve into the office framing the door. One of them slopes down hiding the wardrobe behind and creating an articulated desk. The other wall, backing 90 cm, allows enough space for a built-in sofa as waiting lounge.

Floors are treated with three different floor-tiles, optimizing the sound insulation, applied in different inclinations in order to lead visuals through the sequence from a space to another. Colours are chosen in relation to the luminosity of the spaces (a light Coriander for the working spaces, a mid-tone Peppercorn for the directional spaces, and the darkest Burnt Chocolate for the circulation zones).