Jinqiao 21 Office / Space Cube Design Lab

Curated by ArchDaily

Architects: Space Cube Design Lab
Area: 35517 m²
Year: 2013
Photographs:Shengliang Su

Text description provided by the architects. Project Background:

The project is located at Jinqiao Export Processing Zone of Pudong New District in Shanghai. Surrounded by industrial buildings, the previous factory was built in 1999 and comprises of three two-story industrial reinforced concrete structure.

PROBLEMS

Due to the land restriction, the site is required to remain its industrial land use. However, with its business expansion, the client，a Chinese emerging e-commerce group had an imperative need to convert these three old factory buildings into modern office space since 2011. Unfortunately, neither the parking space nor the stair meets the need of today’s office building; The central part of the interior space fails to receive natural light due to the over-depth building plan; And the over height ceiling unnecessarily increase the energy consumption of air conditioning.

Jinqiao 21 Office / Space Cube Design Lab - Deck — © Shengliang Su

DESIGN CONCEPT

After in-depth research, S3-LAB finalized the design concept as “creating a garden-style office space which is elegant, comfortable, simple as well as efficient, by bringing in green belts, roof gardens and green wall.”The primary object is not only to transform the abandoned industrial structure to a modern workspace, further, to create a high-tech “office club” with respect to the natural environment.

Jinqiao 21 Office / Space Cube Design Lab - Image 5 of 20 — © Shengliang Su

UNIQUE SPACE DESIGN TO SERVE THE OWNER’S NEEDS

Considered the transparency and flexibility of e-commerce industry, the designers first bring in the natural light and develop various public spaces such as conference room, exhibition corridor and cafeteria, by breaking floor slab in the central part of the building. This idea generates a series of “public living rooms” to encourage the internal communication and information sharing, and on the other hand, it also creates a workspace that is pleasing and light-filled. Additionally, the elevated floor is designed to adapt with Client’s future need; all the function areas are linked with the information center so that the efficiency can be improved by property management department through using WIFI to operate a mobile monitoring and access system for different users.

SUSTAINABLITY

In addition to increase the parking space, the designers ensure the outdoor parking lot is given priority to green parking; and the electric vehicle charging piles encourage a green lifestyle. To improve the space utilization while reduce the energy consumption of air conditioning, the designers also add mezzanines to lower the height. Meanwhile, based on Shanghai’s climate, the designers divide the space into public and private: the new air-conditioning system primarily serves the private space, which can greatly reduce the energy consumption through its “double skin” enclosed by public space and outer walls by using closed ceiling and space partition; but the public section which embraces weak air-conditioning or even without it, passively adjust the temperature through the sweltering from private section as well as opening the skylight and side window.

PROJECT VISION

As for today’s resources depletion, the reuse of old buildings raises more awareness than before. S3-LAB creatively transforms its original dull and unreasonable structure to a modern green workspace, by combining the previous experiences with related case studies. We hope this design would effectively improve the surrounding environment, and make greatest effort to the industry upgrade of Jinqiao Export Processing Zone as well as the urban regeneration of Shanghai City.

Currently, the leasing affairs of Jinqiao 21 Office go extremely smooth with the strong support of local government. It has been declared E-commerce Demonstration Zone of National Ministry of Commerce and Financial Innovation Zone of Shanghai Pudong New District. And the relevant departments are planning to further extend the successful experience as well as design mode in this area so as to promote a board scale of upgrading old industrial buildings.