- 2025 Prize
- From top 10 institution
TAOA 798 STUDIO
Project Description
Beijing 798 Art District is an art district with widespread influence, as well as an industrial heritage park. A large number of industrial plants have been renovated as art spaces, and the entire park has a wild vitality and freedom. This particularity attracted us to choose this district as our office space.
This is a retrofit design. The original intention of the design is to be simple, comfortable, delicate and elegant, and to be as close to nature as possible. At the same time, we hope that when the new building is embedded into the surrounding brick wall buildings, its bright and fresh state would bring new vitality to the old neighborhood.
The exterior walls of the building are clad in anodized aluminum panels, which provide a soft reflection. In order to avoid excessive sunlight and eye contact with the opposite building, we bent and punched the entire west side aluminum plate to make the building translucent.
After the renovation, the first floor is used for exhibition space, the second floor for meeting and reception areas, and the third floor is used for work. In order to better connect the three floors into a whole, we removed part of the floor slab and set up a vertical space from the first floor to the roof as a stairwell and also an open lobby at the entrance. As you go up the stairs, the space shrinks, and the windows on the west side also rise from the ground to the roof. In the afternoon, the sun shines through the perforated aluminum panels to fill the entire space, soft and quiet.
The building is squeezed in the gap between the north and south sides of the building, so it can only choose to open the east-west, and the east wall of the second floor is completely opened to the east with a semi-outdoor terrace, while the third floor has a miniature open-air courtyard on the east side. A large tree growing in the southeast corner becomes a cue for people to get in touch with the outdoors and nature. On the first floor, a small courtyard is created based on the tree trunks, while on the third floor, an overhanging balcony is built under the branches. Through the contact with nature, the building is more vivid and brings pleasure to people.
Founded by Tao Lei in 2011, TAOA has been constantly seeking a new way of architecture which not only coexists with natural environment but could adapt itself to the future. Based on the combination of traditional Chinese culture and modern notion, all projects designed by TAOA including dwelling design, commercial center design and so on embodied our own value that is to create free and authentic space atmosphere in a organic and relaxing way. Such value enables us to perfect every single segment of architectural practice involving project planning, conceptual design and construction detail. Furthermore, we pay attention to the social context of architecture as well as meet clients’ demand.
Tao Lei (Beijing) Architecture Designing Corporation was officially established in 2011, however, which used to be Tao Studio in 2007. TAOA has gained widely reputation of architectural field. Their works have been featured in domestic and international professional media such as ArchDaily, Domus, Architizer, and DINZ, and they've won awards including the GADA, BLT, WAACA, DFA Design for Asia Awards, and World Design Awards. They've also participated in exhibitions like the Venice Architecture Biennale, Harvard China Contemporary Architecture Exhibition, and São Paulo Biennale. Tao Lei was nominated for the Young Architect Award at the China Architecture Media Awards. By Phoenix Media's invitation, TAOA's first book《In and Out》(Modern Architecture in China 70 Series) was published in 2012.