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Gold 🏆 Winner Global Future Design Awards 2024 XIAMEN SHOPHOUSE COMMUNE Interior Design (Built) Firm SANJ DESIGN STUDIO Architect/Designer JIANHUANG CHEN Design Team NG SEAR NEE, SCOTT CHEN Location XIAMEN CITY, CHINA Country China Photographer/Copyright ©LIGHT STRING STUDIO Website www.sanjdesign.com Instagram N/AGold Winner | XIAMEN SHOPHOUSE COMMUNE | SANJ DESIGN STUDIO
SANJ DESIGN restored & renovated a conservation shophouse and created a new business combination model of “working studio + community cafe” to provide a new gathering point for the local community. The design hopes to participate in urban renewal with the native residents and continue to inherit the cultural development and historical memory of the city.
The design respects the historical features of the original building. While meeting the basic functions, the original building structure and walls are retained as much as possible, and new functions are introduced in a controlled manner. The exposed building structure allows people to more intuitively feel the historical life aspect of the arcade building. Local granite stone and red brick elements commonly used in local ancient houses are used in the space, awakening people’s emphasis on traditional materials and craftsmanship.
Different from traditional design studios, the renovated shophouse studio+cafe is more open and inclusive. Except for the design office area on the top floor, majority of the interior space are used as open spaces to meet the functional needs of local community interaction and communication. The design hopes to use the street cafe on the first floor to attract local residents to gather here, and organize different community activities in the community cultural sharing space on the second floor to share collections of city’s old images and artifacts, exchange and spread the history and culture of the old city.
The shophouse are linear buildings are built side by side in a long row, separated by party walls. The internal structure of the building is exposed and the wall partitions are reduced to create openness and maximized natural lighting into the interior. Ancient city street facade is capture within window, allows people to appreciate the local cityscape culture and history inside the building.
In terms of spatial layout, Second floor consists of three function space. The multi-functional space in the middle allows bigger group event venue, and the tea room and conference room provide a small-sized gathering and communication function. The partition setting of the movable door allows three different independent spaces to be used separately or merged into a large activity space to meet the needs of collective activities of different specifications.
The openness and social model of the “design studio + coffee shop” provides a platform for in-house designers and the local community to interact and communicate, thereby collecting and recording the historical memories of the old town as told by local people, sharing and exchanging each other’s thoughts and aspirations for the development of the old town.