Articles by Collin Chen

Coffee and Shanghai – You can find Japanese, Korean, American, Taiwanese, or Southeast Asian cafés, and you can even find a run-down but proudly maintained 1980s Taiwanese Japanese café on Yongkang Road, but there is no such one that represents Shanghai. However, Shanghai has a long history of cafés. In Eileen Chang’s essay “Double Voices” published in Tiandi magazine in 1945, she began by saying that when she went out with her friends, no matter what they did, they would always end up in a café. At that time, cafés in Shanghai were communal spaces in the city, serving beverages and snacks, but they could also be dancing halls, meeting rooms, libraries, information centers, and everyday social places.

Fishtank is not your typical cafe location. Tucked inside an arena in Nanjing, the site was previously a storage room. It sits between two overhanging bridges, faces a four-lane ring road, and looks across an under-podium parking zone. The facade was essentially the arena’s exterior, painted cold grey, with black recess lines and punctures for service vents. When Office AIO was commissioned to design this undistinguished site, it took it as an opportunity to elevate the coffee shop from a neighborhood cafe to a recognized brand. The design team exploits the cloistered and tame site, conceiving an undisturbed world. A world much like a fish tank, contained by a “non-existent” facade but relishing its own sphere of habitat.

In terms of urban design, the Project is selected on Wuzhen Avenue, which connects the center of Tongxiang City and Wuzhen Town, to strengthen the cultural, sports, and tourism characteristics of this urban axis. The starting point of the design is to fully integrate the building volume of the fitness center and the sports park where it is located into a whole. With the fitness center as the anchor point, it creates more public and open Spaces for communication, forming a new cultural and sports center with the integration of sports, culture, nature, and the city, becoming a city living room that citizens enjoy and promote a future-oriented healthy life style.

Project background and city context – In 2022, mou architecture studio was invited to co-design a collection of shops in Nanjing for three lifestyle brands. With two floors of around 600 square meters, it was agreed that the ground floor would house the outdoor lifestyle brand ABC CAMPING COUNTRY and the first floor would be a lost&found x 36ou lifestyle proposal shop. The location of the venue is the Fine Arts Building, 62 Beiting Lane, Nanjing, where Yangtze River Road and Beiting Lane intersect. “One Changjiang Road, half of Nanjing’s history”, whether during the Six Dynasties or the Republic of China, these two roads have witnessed the rise and fall of prosperity in Nanjing’s history. The long history has inevitably shaped the different texture of the city at different times. Through this renovation design, we hope to capture the pulse and texture of the city, so that it can not only become a shop that embraces all kinds of goods but also help the street and the building to rejuvenate again and become a place for residents and customers coming and going to gather and communicate.

A grand, immaculate dune evokes an otherworldly atmosphere, detached from the modern world and providing a serene escape from the urban chaos. It creates a pristine white stage against a pitch-black backdrop, displaying the collections of clothing like precious treasures and luring visitors to embark on an exploration.

On the picturesque coastline of Aranya Community, Beidaihe, you’ll find the Lighthouse of Wishes situated in adjacence to Vector Architect’s Seashore Library. This is a special project made possible after its selection as the “best new years eve architectural proposal” by the community’s residents in an open poll. After two months of design refinement and construction, it was officially completed and inaugurated on December 31, 2022, in preparation for the arrival of 2023. The concept of Lighthouse of Wishes began with an idea – architects retreating to the background, inviting people to participate in the process of architectural design, harnessing civic energy through the process of “co-creation, co-construction, and co-owning”, to create a one-of-a-kind New Year’s Eve installation structure. The entire façade of the Wishing Beacon was painted by the public. On New Year’s Eve, the final empty canvas on the Lighthouse fills with colour, and at midnight, the entire structure was illuminated. During the following period of New Year’s celebration, it continues to offer new aesthetic experiences to locals and visitors. For this project, we particularly investigated material processing and construction, lightweight construction strategies, and cradle-to-cradle lifecycle assessment of construction materials in relation to the relationship between architecture, people, and time.