The CRC City Crossing Project is currently the largest mixed-use development in Shenzhen city center including the biggest shopping complex in the city of which to be showcased for leasing in the showroom. As the showroom is located in a hip hotel (also owned by the same client) right next to the project site, our proposal presents not only a showroom in conventional terms (which is more or less a backdrop for advertising display); rather a scheme is developed to generate a symbiotic relationship between showroom and hotel from its unique setting. What means by symbiotic relationship is a shift of use of the show space so that it could function as a new hotel bar, a seminar room for press conference, or a dedicated sales exhibition space for the marketing of the development during different times of a day. Through this strategy of transformation we also envisage that this temporary off-site showroom could become a permanent construction for the hotel as an extension of the existing bar when the leasing period of the shopping mall is finished.
The original show space spans for 2 levels with floor area 90 sqm and 270 sqm. respectively. Our design reconfigures the space into a 90 sqm double height atrium with the insertion of a staircase sculpture and a 180 sqm clubby hall. As a showroom, the atrium presents an overview of the development in the form of a double storey city model covering 3 sides of the space in front of the curtain wall and an advertising video projected top-down to the white stone floor. Exhibits (site model and video images) become the surface material of the atrium box. The orange glass and acrylic wrapped staircase sculpture, serving as a circulation path, a viewing platform and a standing bar, becomes an event generator to programme body movement. The atrium is designed in such a way that the whole space could be open for public at any time of the day.
The hall presents detail information of the development shown in models, posters, video projection and computers. The hall maintains the visual connection with the outside. The existing glass wall is dressed up by a layer of orange glass with stack-up acrylic planks to allow colour-filtered sunlight to penetrate into the space. Besides the overall model and the sectional mall model, the rest of the floor is filled by a grid of orange cubes in 2 designs: swivel seat with built-in computer and swivel seat with display light box. To allow for different grouping of visitors, the set-up of the grid denies the conventional seating layout while opens up possibilities in self-organization from group gathering to single seating. During bar and seminar situations, additional seats can be gained by flipping up the computers and removing the display light boxes. The white wall in perforated metal serves as a projection screen for presentation, film show or ambient images according to different programme modes.