Leilei Wu of F.O.G. Architecture discusses her multicultural design background, balancing tradition and modernity and why agility is essential to making competitive retail environments.

What sparked your interest to start a career as an interior designer?

LEILEI WU: I was trained in architecture and landscape architecture, and since I started working at F.O.G., I was able to work on projects that are more interior-focused. I’m a firm believer that good design changes people’s lives. Working at a very tangible scale makes that experience more personal.

Leilei Wu.

You completed your master’s degree in the US. How does your experience abroad inform a more multicultural design practice?

My work on ToSummer Shanghai’s flagship store is a good example of how I approach multicultural design. The project is set in a Spanish colonial revival style villa in Shanghai and the aromatherapy brand ToSummer is very Eastern at its core. We approached the project with an eastern interpretation of the space through garden making. Views are created by framing and reflection, like making traditional Chinese gardens. There were a lot of conflicts to be resolved in this project. The new and old, the western and the eastern, the modern and the traditional. The challenging part is to reconcile the new program and the villa’s rich historical background. We aim to design a space where visitors are guided to experience the stories that have happened, are happening and are about to happen here. A successful design should not be a finished product. It is an honest dialogue between the user and the space.

For aromatherapy brand ToSummer’s new flagship store in Beijing, F.O.G. Architecture renovated a 280-year-old siheyuan, a type of historical residence dating from the Qing dynasty.

Speaking of ToSummer, you’ve completed other works for the brand. Its flagship store in Beijing saw the renovation of a 280-year-old siheyuan. How did you simultaneously articulate the brand’s identity and preserve the building’s heritage?

The siheyuan was converted into many uses over the years and had been a private club for several years before ToSummer opened a flagship store. In many cases, privatization may not be the best life path for heritage architecture. Converting it for public use by opening it up to the neighbourhood would lengthen its life by making it a landmark. A landmark can revitalize a neighbourhood and bring new life into an old community.

It was never our goal to design a space which directly communicated the brand’s identity. Instead, we focused on revealing the architectural beauty of the site itself. By removing the added walls and cosmetic structures, we intend to show the original wood beams and columns. That transparency exhibits how charming the siheyuan already is and more, and in the end, that originality and gracefulness align with ToSummer’s brand identity. 

Why is it important to maintain this balance between tradition and modernity?

We believe that there’s an excess of architectural structures out there already. Instead of constantly building something new we want to take another look at what already exists and what we can do about it. We live in a modern era, but we need to find ways to coexist with our heritage. That is very important to us. Modernity should not overtake tradition. 

An agile product display system made of 198 moveable, semi-transparent acrylic boxes is central to F.O.G.’s design of the Super Seed store in Hangzhou.

In the age of e-commerce, retail spaces often need to vie for the attention of their customers. Why is agility an essential component of creating effective and competitive retail spaces?

Retail spaces are constantly changing. Every year, every season, even every week. An agile design solution allows the space to adapt to different uses in response to market drives. Less permanent means more resiliency. 

Any store that wants to survive in the new retail era and distinguish itself from others of its kind must recognize that consumers expect to find a unique shopping experience in a refreshing space. In our opinion, this kind of experience does not appear out of thin air but relies on the creative interpretation of conventional spaces and the innovative application of everyday functionalities. For our work for Super Seed, a plant-based skincare brand priding itself on its cutting-edge technologies and competitive research assets, we designed an interactive experience which exposed customers to tech-led and a lab-like setting. The space’s design is based on customers' usual shopping routines but is made visually memorable through its agile display systems which can be changed from visit to visit. Helping the audience internalize these new experiences without alienating them from the spaces is crucial to consider when designing spaces that constantly change.

Cover and above: A 25-sq-m café in Shanghai, the Birdie Cup Coffee Shop was born out of the desire to create an ‘emotional landmark’ in the bustling urban area.

Much of your work has a relatively minimal design language, for example, the Birdie Coffee Shop, using a few different materials and colours to effectively articulate a design narrative. What makes this approach effective? 

Our very first intention was to create a temporary structure that feels like it's floating above the nearby metro station. The story is that it was supposed to be a pop-up store in the brief, but after seeing our initial proposal the landlord appreciated it so much that they decided to turn it into a semi-permanent project. The unfortunate thing is that materials needed to change accordingly, our idea of using light and airy inflated film had to be replaced by prefabricated GRG modules, and structurally it had to be reinforced to withstand the time span. 

Space-making is what we strive to achieve in any design. We think about ways to create spatial arrangements that make one feel certain ways or behave differently. Colours and materials are subordinate to structure when it comes to design. We keep them minimal because they can be cosmetic and may take away from the integrity of the space. Not to undermine our appreciation of materiality, it completes the narrative. We sourced a special batch of travertine for the ToSummer stores. The limestone’s timeless beauty is reflected in all the layers and cracks, giving an unusually warm quality to a natural stone. We used it as a motif rather than a decorative element.