GTSO
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2 Boxes in the Space, Green Thumb Office
2019 / Shanghai, China
This workplace designed by B Opposite Architecture is home to Green Thumb a media company. Besides an office area, the whole site of no more than 120 m2 needs also to accommodate two production studios, one meeting room, an office area, a pantry and a living room for clients. How to maximize the limited space is a big challenge for spatial layout. What add to the complication are the irregular ceiling and six columns which fragment the space. The solution to these design problems is box. The studios are inserted in the form of two boxes to envelop the columns and the uneven part of the ceiling. It naturally leaves two semi-closed spaces for office area and pantry. The meeting room is placed in the other half of the site also as a box. But unlike the enclosed studios that provide privacy for production, the meeting room walls are made of glass to create a framed yet transparent space, and to avoid blocking the view from the entrance to the open living room. The glass box ensures the rooms’ individual functions and makes the area seem more spacious as a whole than divided. The contrast between the enclosed studios and the open meeting/living room area is reinforced by the studio wall which is made as a façade with customised light concrete blocks. This façade gives the living room, also decorated with crude materials such as concrete floor and cement plaster walls, an outdoor atmosphere inside the building. These hollow blocks, made of light concrete to minimize weight, introduce some natural light and reflections of trees outside the windows that are enclosed by the studios.