UP Co-working Space, a previous Tofu factory, is located in the heart of Midtown Beijing, concluding a 500 sqm indoor space and a wide outdoor rooftop. The owner wish to reconstruct it into an incubator, which services for entrepreneurs, freelancers, startups and small businesses.
We aim to build not only an affordable shared workspace, but also a serendipity wonderland, the idea is to create maximum interactions between people from different backgrounds, industries, and experiences, to create a synergic vibe of outgoing, spontaneous and symbiosis, and to make people more creative and effective.
In order to achieve that, we blurred the boundary between workspace, and created indoor terraces ascending from south to north to boost interactions. Shared spaces like meeting room, library, leisure corner and storage were scattered on different levels of the terraces. When people are working under the same roof, an internal social network, social events and workshops will happen simultaneously, therefore serendipities, ideas, innovations will be created.
Benefitted from the terrace design, several interlayer spaces were created, those spaces provide not only extra office areas, but also storage areas and areas for plants, even trees. In order to take the best advantage of it, we interwove greens into the workspace with different species.
We reserved the texture of the roof and walls from previous Tofu factory to continue the memory, at the same time, the reservation lowered the cost of renovation, therefore the rental. All those exposed pipelines, historical feelings, the contrast between solid furniture and vivid plants, as well as the comparison between the historical factory and dynamic companies are purposely designed to increase drama, and psychologically nurture creativity.
The absence of walls also invites natural lights and breeze into the workspace，which makes it like a real energetic exterior terrace with the shadow of trees.
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