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Alibaba Executive Activity Centre

United Units Architects (UUA)

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Designer
United Units Architects (UUA)
Client
Alibaba Group
Floor area
1600.00 ㎡
Completion
2018

The facilities lie in a 3-story old factory building which covers an interior area of approximately 1,600 sqm. The first floor is an open activity space and rest area. The second floor is a half-open conference and reception space plus a small cinema. The third floor is a private executive reception space, representing a transition from openness to privacy. Given the limited day-lighting conditions, creating good interior spaces was critical to the design. In view of the strong Chinese flavor of the Alibaba corporate culture, the essential idea of the project is to build a Chinese-style garden inside an old factory building, which shall inherit both the gene of traditional literati garden and the gene of industrial architecture and contemporary architecture.
In this project, the factory is considered as the ’boundary wall‘ of the garden. Within this limited space, the spatial relationship featured by China’s traditional literati garden between ’building‘ and ’courtyard‘, between ’indoor‘ and ’outdoor‘ is established. Inside the ’boundary wall‘, various functional spaces are inserted to simulate ’buildings‘ inside the garden; graceful ’courtyards‘ are designed between ’buildings‘. The space, flowing like water between ’buildings‘ and ’courtyards‘, blurs the boundary between ’indoor‘ and ’outdoor‘, thus satisfying the intention of building a classic garden where the scenery varies with each step.