Cabana Beijing Sanlitun Flagship Store Cabana北京三里屯旗舰店

Cabana Beijing Sanlitun Flagship Store is a design furniture store located at the 3rd floor and 4th floor in the N7 building in Sanlitun North District, Beijing. The original space that houses the store was characterized by an irregular floor plan, with a large fire escape in the middle and other appurtenances taking up a significant amount of space. The continuity of the space has been further broken by four load-bearing columns. Through reorganizing and wrapping the original structures, and an elaborate composition of color schemes and textures, our design was created to resolve the limitations of the original skeleton, redefines the space into one with smooth traffic flow and clear spatial configuration, while maintaining a high visual and functional coherence between the subdivisions.

The purpose of the 3rd floor is for displaying the furnitures and other design products. A centrifugal layout of this floor centered on the entrance area, which is emphasized by the marble tiles and a sky dome, suggesting the starting point of the traffic flow. Five display areas are arranged radially around the entrance area, their themes/functions are distinguished by soft yet vivid colors: the main furniture showroom in beige; children’s furniture section in pink; kitchen section in ochre; design market in mint green; and a special viewing room for office furnitures in blue. The new walls on one hand redefine the traffic logic out of the irregular original construction, and provide an ample storage and display space with a variety of structures such as niches, cabinets and jib doors; on the other hand, they also deftly wrap up the visually interrupting columns and dissolve the original construction with a sculptural language, ensuring the integrity of the form language of the entire space.

The 4th floor is reserved for exhibitions and other events. The large, open space is semi-divided by two curtain-like walls, the subdivisions are still connected through the “peek-a-boo” opened corners of the walls. This creates a different sense of spatial scale in contrast of the 3rd floor, while maintaining a high coherence with the latter in terms of material language. As an extension of the interior space, the balcony is highlighted with its marble-collages on the floor and the wall.

A complex sanding and plastering process endows the walls of both 3rd floor and 4th floor with a natural, subtle texture, which dissolves the visual sharpness commonly seen in commercial spaces. In contrast, the application of marble on counters, columns and floors enriches the color scheme and texture of the entire space. On each floor, there is one load-bearing column remaining visible in each main display space, which is wrapped in marble veneers of different colors and patterns, transforming it into a visual anchor point of the space. The terrazzo flooring with marble inlay echoes the space with its different colors and shapes. On the 3rd floor, to balance the vivid colors of the walls, the floor is muted with neutral, understated grey cement with simple white marble inlay, which contours a projection of the ceiling. On the 4th floor, the suspended ceiling with triangle elements creates a play of light and shadow, adding a crispy hint of rhythm to the fluid, expansive space. Correspondingly, the marble inlay on the floor is in the shape of the light spots casted through the triangular ceiling grid.