Promenade Workplace Of Kano Headquarters
Promenade Workplace of Kano Headquarters
LYCS Architecture
YEAR
2022
LOCATION
Huzhou, China
TYPE
Commercial › Office
Kano is a new Chinese brand company with a broad international view, specializing in the development, production, sales and service of office furniture.
Starting from 2019, LYCS Architecture and Kano have joined hands to create the Kano headquarters, which is now officially put into use.
With a total floor area of 7, 500 square meters, this project is multi-functional for meeting, design, sale, R&D, training and showroom.
The project is located in Anji County, Zhejiang Province. Beneath the mist of clean water and green mountains, Anji, which is the only eco-country in China, also acts as a major town in China’s furniture manufacturing industry.
The Kano headquarters is part of the Kano Smart Factory, which covers an area of approximately 200 acres and has a total floor space of over 200,000 square meters.
The global trade order has become significantly turbulent amidst the impact of the epidemic, and the inconvenience of international communication has made the cross-border traders more cautious.
It is common to see the salesmen engaged with the live steam for the crossborder clients. Therefore, the standardized, highend presentation of the industry has increasingly become crucial to fleshing out the corporate brand image and winning the trust of new trading partners.
How to demonstrate Kano’s capacity for integrating the entire industry chain from design and development to manufacturing, while providing high-quality and inspiring working environment for its employees?
As we always keep in mind, what LYCS Architecture has committed to designing is the interesting lifestyle rather than house itself. Our design has started from the study of the actual needs of the users, and we extracted two core needs of the users: touring and working.
Thus the design team came up with the strategy of “Promenade Workplace”, an attempt to combine the circular flow of the Guggenheim Museum in New York with the atrium of Hong Kong HSBC Main Building.
The office area is arranged around a sixstorey atrium, in the center of which the design team has set up a sixstorey supersized spiral staircase, resembling a huge stage.
Resembling an extended profile, it passes through the space of reception, conference, sales, design, R&D, training, showroom and the president’s office in turn, sufficiently presenting how the whole headquarters works.
The tour begins on the ground floor, where the building’s vestibule opens to the south and the floor-to-ceiling windows blurs the boundaries between indoors and outdoors. The sunlight, the lawn and products in public space meet there, creating a relaxing and warming feeling.
On the ground floor there are a number of different sized areas for negotiation, meeting and relaxation. The space is abstracted with docks, containers, stacks and boats, showing the gesture of opening the doors to welcome guests.
The second to fourth floors are prepared for the teams of domestic and international marketing, design and development and whole-house customization respectively.
The overall style is dark and bright, with three themes of commercial elegance, creative vitality and sweet warmth responding to their different functions.
With the two axes of efficient privacy and open communication, the design team has designed a completely private telephone booth, a partially private glass box office area, a semi-open grille box office area, and an open office area that is completely open and encourages communication.
The design with different scales and levels of openness provides an inclusive, equitable, flexible, sustainable and healthy workplace for all employees. Whenever good at social communication or not, they all feel comfortable.
Height adjustable desks, telephone booths and office furniture all come from Kano’s major product lines, which means that employees are both designers and sellers, but also first-hand users.
They continually contribute to the iterative optimization from the real experience, and provide the use of scenarios for those from different products lines.
The fifth floor is used as the diverse space for meeting and training. With a variety of relaxed and active training formats, it makes the training less boring and knowledge acquisition interesting and efficient.
Walking through the corridor is the corporate exhibition hall, which uses digital surround screens to create an immersive visual effect, giving the space a wonderful sense of art and future. The sixth floor is for the executives, where the overall style is more suitable for business, reflecting the functional needs of modern CEO and showing various styles of CEO workplace.
Looking back at the atrium, you will find the staircase resembles a “veranda” bathed in sunlight. Skylights provide ample sunlight and fresh air for employees on all floors, helping them have a deep relax in between work sessions. Thus the atrium has become a unique identity for this company.
Kano workplace proposes a new paradigm of both work and exhibition to the traditional headquarters office model, demonstrating the new concept of “promenade workplace”, where the workplace acts as the sales space, effectively helping Kano attract more customers and stand out in the competitive market.
