The office is designed for a Chinese international telecommunications company. It specializes in such areas as public security, aero-space communications, oil industry, power supply, water management and transportation. Part of our design brief was to propose an exposition space for the company’s products and items of Chinese heritage. As a result, we decided to spread the exposition across all the main transit areas of the office, turning the door into a continuous gallery of different volumes and objects. The dark toned glass circular meeting rooms and curved partitions made the space now gradually merging one location into another. We were inclined to use a philosophical approach to choosing the main finishing materials and decorative elements. China is the birthplace of ancient wisdom and a key part of its philosophies are the four prime elements fire, air, water and earth. Looking at them from a scientic point of view they best represent the four standard states of matter, earth being solid, water – liquid, air – gaseous and fire – plasma.

All off these states apply certain properties onto materials. For solids – it is opaqueness and roughness, which can be seen in split face limestone around the columns and on the large museum wall. For liquids it is amorphousness, surface tension and buoyancy which are represented in the large polished stainless steel droplets at the center of the gallery in front of the entrance. Gaseous state is best represented by translucency. The contrast between matt white foggy surfaces and highly reflective, dark glass partitions provides excellent illusion of light passing through different mediums reflecting and dispersing in the process. Plasmatic state is highly energized, glowing in dierent colors, forming arks and strings, burning through the boundaries of objects. These eects are visible strongly in the cold and warm lighting fluctuating across all surfaces. Concealed and visible light sources fill the space with energy lighting up other shapes and forms.