Beijing, China
Led by Wang Yong, Beijing Wuxiang Space Architecture Design has created a dazzling architectonic retail space for Zhima Health—a multi-brand store for the Beijing State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission— that gathers a portfolio of traditional brands representing the humanitarian spirit of a city.
For the shop’s opening at Universal Beijing Resort, the store had pooled nearly 30 local and national time-honored brands, as well as other recognized ones.
Spurred by “China Chic” together with other fashion brands, the store has formed a synergy as a new limelight and a new landmark.
With the experience of two existing stores, Zhima Health has taken consumer-experience to the next level.
In addition to functionality and social networking, the space is expected to offer an ever more critical emotional value for consumers, which is what Wang Yong addressed as the first design challenge.
The second challenge came from the space itself, a 6.5-meter by 4-meter area with a total of less than 30 square meters.
Given its compact size compared to the other two stores, Wang Yong had to mitigate the feeling of the smallness of the confined space through the addition of a “fourth” dimension based on a 3D-design concept.
Yong intended to target a certain customer group for Zhima Health with a brand new architectural style, one that conforms with the Universal Beijing Resort, caters to the diversified consumption preferences of the young generation, and complies with the brand genes of Zhima Health, all in the limited space.
As a result, Yong and his team decided to incorporate inspirations from Inception.
Multiple dimensions, fashion, and traditional brand genes are merged into the design to deliver a space that is on the one hand fashionable and sci-fi, and on the other light and friendly.
As Zhima Health features the display and selling of light drinks in the quasi-concept store, Yong considered its finite space with a raised ceiling.
The architect also designed a light and 3D product arrangement plan and circulation design, resulting in a new retail space that creates a sense of infiniteness while preserving functionality.
Taking advantage of the high ceiling, Yong deployed numerous towering wood arches, designed to intersect on the ceiling and then extend all the way down to the bottom of the rammed earth walls where product shelves are mounted.
Four pairs of wooden spiral stairs echo each other overhead, threading through arches and dominating the shop-in-shop.
The entire space, thanks to the arches and stair structures, resembles an unfolded accordion that “wakes up the folded time and space.”
On both horizontal and vertical dimensions, the use of mirrors enhances visual spaciousness.
Glass on the ceiling and one side of the wall, together with the stretching structures that present a distortion in time and space, seems to eliminate the boundary between space and distorted time in a dazzling way.
Project: Zhima Health at Universal Beijing Resort
Architects: Beijing Wuxiang Space Architecture Design (WUUX)
Lead Architect: Wang Yong
Client: Zhima Health
Images: Le Brand Strategy
