Super Rice Architects has designed a flagship store for meditation brand FLOW - a leading meditation brand online, with the concept of "Receptacle for the soul," creating a tranquil spiritual space in Shanghai. It is also their first offline space. 

The overall space is covered in an earthy tone with shimmering light and shadow. Curved forms are widely used to provide a mellow sense of being wrapped and surrounded. Super Rice Architects started with the word FLOW, breaking down into two essential elements - 1: tension and 2: direction. In the name of FLOW, the architects hope to exemplify the inner energy of life and echo the state of "flow" (the optimal experience in psychological terms). Programmatically, the space is divided into front and back areas. 

The practice and service area mainly occupies the back, which includes the practice rooms, dressing room, and waiting area. The front lobby accommodates a retail, display, and pre-sale service area. In the public space of the back area, the circulation is formed by two circular curves, guide people to go deeper naturally. The opening in front of the secondary entrance allows people to glimpse the activities within the small meditation room, stimulating curiosity and indicating the metaphor of "looking inward," which is the brand's motto. For the first store of FLOW, Super Rice Architects designed three meditation spaces of various sizes: 1.Small meditation room (2-3 people) 2.Large Meditation Room (30-40 people) 3.Open Experience Room (1-2 persons) 1: Small Meditation Room The space adopts a circular configuration. 

In a circular plan, there is no front and back; therefore, the practitioner and the coach can be in an equal state. Architects use the form-making the technique described above to make the four corners functional. As an entrance, display, window, and lighting not only solve the problem of wasted spaces in the circular plan but also connect the separated corners into a coherent whole. 2: Large Meditation Room Drawing inspiration from the typology of the church architecture, a place for spiritual enrichment. 

The recognizable architectural component: the vault, was introduced as a central figure to govern the space. The vault illustrates a continuity and dialogue of tectonic through rotation, interspersion, and craving. The roof massing is sculptured by circular geometry's natural strengths and centripetal and centrifugal forces. 3. Open Experience Room A cylinder volume was carefully picked by the architects to place the program within. The ripple profile lines redefined the stable and symmetric cylinder form, these circles are distributed at different heights with different radii, and various circles overlap and interleave, creating a vibrancy structure with richness and complexity. 

The curvature wall is designed explicitly for fine acoustics. All these manipulations are for the practitioner to achieve inner peace, awareness, and "looking inward."