The project is a law firm. The characteristic of company’s structure requires a big number of small independent offices. Furthermore, inside the office, you can see the best skyline view of Shanghai, which means, the rent is expensive. However, the client’s budget is tight.

How to deal with the relationship between those many small offices and the entire office environment? Will people feel depressed in a very tiny independent office? Will these many small offices obviously separate themselves with the open area, and further separate the manager level and the staff? All the managers want their office to locate along the exterior window for a better view and natural light, how to balance the right to enjoy view and natural light between managers and staff? By taking these challenges, we started our design work.

1. Firstly, based on the principle of using the space economically, we calculated the minimum size for each partner’s independent office. Then, we grouped these offices, but in a scattered way, making them inter-locked with the open area. By doing this, we avoided to create the spatial tension which a bigger volume may bring, and also avoided the “separation” between the manager level and ordinary staff, however to link them together instead.

2. Details create a perfect space. Abundant natural light and appropriate functional divisions are used to assuage the depressive feeling in tiny spaces.