Office Renovation in Old Factory / Qing Studio
2021.01.15
This project is an office space transformed from an old factory, located in the first Chongqing printing factory built in the 1930s. It's like a newly built house, because light industry doesn't leave much of a mark on the house. The interior space is 25 meters long, 5 meters wide and 6 meters high.This is not a small space for a team of less than ten people, but as a planning company, they have a unique way of allocating space: except for eight workstations and a leader's office, the rest of the space is reserved for clients. Including one-on-one negotiations, round-table meetings, large screen display and presentation. In terms of space type, it is not like an office, but closer to a lecture hall or a small theater.
We set ourselves a mission: to create a new mode of viewing behavior, shape it, and do nothing else. First, the space is divided in two in the direction of depth, with a mezzanine on one side and a double height on the other.Beneath the mezzanine is the office space, while the large steps, which occupy almost the entire space, give the second floor a higher publicity and form a whole with the double-height area.
After sketching out the space division, we began to sort out the main line of business and presentation in the section: the big step is a natural amphitheater, allowing customers to "sit on the ground" after listening to the presentation, continue to ascend the stairs to the conference room on the second floor for further consultation.To match the meeting room of 13 people, we have four rows of roughly 13 seats on the steps (the fifth row is a spare seat).
When we open the projector instructions, we will find: in order to clearly identify the color and text, for example, a 150-inch screen should not be more than 5.4 meters from the best viewing distance, and too close distance will make the audience too busy to move their eyes and head.This means that the actual viewing area it takes care of is very limited. Intuition is questioning us: the amphitheater and the curtain hanging in front of us seem to be not a well-matched spatial structure. In order to achieve a balanced viewing condition for all the audience, shouldn't a curtain parallel to the slope of the ladder be used?
Perhaps the biggest problem is sitting posture, as the audience needs to also lie down with the incline.Based on a study of the ergonomics of car drivers' seats, in the sitting position where the legs fall vertically, the comfortable range of the backrest Angle is 20-30 degrees.Therefore, we put cushions on the steps with adjustable backrest gradient, which gives the audience a 30-degree reclined sitting position.
Of course, we did not continue to quantify the audio-visual conditions, to rationally seek an optimal screen Angle and position.Because for a small performance space with only a dozen people, all the serious calculations will only be some insignificant improvements.
Right now, the six-inch screen we're holding in our hands has completely reshaped the way we perceive the world, taking us away from concentration and contemplation with its abbreviated images, fragmented messages, and real-time communications.In this era of the bowed generation, a huge screen hanging overhead may temporarily cure contemporary people's distraction or cervical spondylosis, recovering the tranquility and curiosity of the ancients when they looking up at the starry night.
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***Source: https://www.archdaily.com/954803/office-renovation-in-old-factory-qing-studio
***Author: 韩爽 - HAN Shuang
