A white feature wall of stacked rectilinear volumes, lit from recessed slots, wrapping a reception desk and a bar with stools — One white wall of pixel volumesDesign: Architecture Georges Hung. Photography: Eugene Chan.

Project details · Interior · Xi’an

Times Centre
Exhibition Centre

A sales centre at the foot of a new tower in Xi’an, stripped of the language of retail — one seamless white wall that holds every function, shaped by light and shadow.

Project: Sales and exhibition centre, Times Centre tower
Location: Times Centre Complex, Xi’an, China
Client: Yongwei Real Estate Co., Ltd., Zhengzhou
Year: 2016
Area: 450 m²
Scope: Concept and scheme design, including furniture, fixtures and equipment
Status: Built
Design: Architecture Georges Hung

A sales centre usually shouts. This one lets a single white wall speak, and light do the rest.

The brief

The developer needed a sales centre at the base of the Times Centre tower in Xi’an, a high-rise office tower of subtly shifting volumes designed by SOM. In 450 m², it had to hold a reception, exhibition and display areas, a café and a bar. Design ran from June to August 2016.

Pencil sketch of the interior: stacked, offset volumes along a long wall, with handwritten notes on volume and displacement — Concept sketch — “more variation in volume differential, not too much displacement”Design: Architecture Georges Hung. Image: Architecture Georges Hung.

The tension

Sales centres tend toward noise: signage, models, brochures, branded displays competing for attention. The tower above is the opposite — abstract, quiet, built from subtly shifting volumes. A conventional fit-out would have broken the link between the building and the place where people first meet it.

Strip away the sales pitch. Let light and shadow do the talking.

The move

I took the tower’s shifting volumes and brought them inside at the scale of a room. Large white “pixel” volumes step and stack along one feature wall, interspersed with recessed lights. Every function — reception, exhibition and display, café and bar — is absorbed into that wall, so the room itself stays open and calm.

The sales centre stops being only a commercial space. It becomes a place to gather, to host events and cultural exchange, and an extension of the public realm at the foot of the tower.

Axonometric of the interior: the feature wall of stacked volumes along one side, lounge seating and café across the open floor — Axonometric — every function folded into one wallDesign: Architecture Georges Hung. Image: Architecture Georges Hung.

How it works

01
One wall, every function
Reception, display, café and bar are carved from a single feature wall.
02
The tower, in pixels
Stepped white volumes echo the shifting forms of the tower above.
03
One material
Corian over a plywood frame — no seams, no joints, one continuous white mass.
04
Light and shadow
Recessed accent lights in the steps give the white wall its depth and richness.
05
More than a sales centre
A social, cultural and event space, open to the public as well as to buyers.
06
Open to the street
Full-height glazing puts the whole room on view from the city outside.

450 m²: of reception, lounge, display and café.
1 wall: holding every function.
1 material: seamless Corian, with no joints.
4 uses: reception, display, café and bar in one form.
3 months: of design, June to August 2016.
2016: built.

The wall

The feature wall is made of Corian panels over a plywood substructure. Corian turns the whole wall into one material: no seams, no joints, one articulated block of white volumes. Pure and simple in form, it takes its richness from the shadows it casts and the light that slips from its recesses.

The feature wall above the reception, its white volumes stepping in and out, slim pendant lights hanging in front — The wall above the receptionDesign: Architecture Georges Hung. Photography: Eugene Chan.

The reception desk stepping out of the white wall beneath pendant lights — The reception, carved from the wall

The bar counter stepping along the wall, with stools and soft light beneath — The bar, part of the same form

Design: Architecture Georges Hung. Photography: Eugene Chan.

Close view of the white counter and wall volumes, glass domes on the counter — Counter and wall in one material

The stepped wall rising above a café table, light washing down its recesses — Light in the recesses

Design: Architecture Georges Hung. Photography: Eugene Chan.

The room

In front of the wall, the floor stays open. Soft seating in grey and blue, café tables and low poufs make a lounge where visitors can sit, talk and stay — closer to a public living room than a showroom.

The lounge: blue and white poufs and armchairs on a timber floor before the white feature wall — The loungeDesign: Architecture Georges Hung. Photography: Eugene Chan.

Floor plan of the sales centre showing the feature wall, lounge and café zones — Floor planDesign: Architecture Georges Hung. Image: Architecture Georges Hung.

Detailed furniture plan with seating groups and the reception — Furniture planDesign: Architecture Georges Hung. Image: Architecture Georges Hung.

What it gave back

The sales centre opened as a calm, open room at the foot of the tower — a place where buyers and the public share the same space, and where the architecture of the building carries through to the first room people enter.

Sometimes the strongest commercial space is the one that sells the least. Here, one white wall and its shadows say enough.

The sales centre at dusk, its glass front lit from within, lounge and white wall visible from the street — At dusk, open to the streetDesign: Architecture Georges Hung. Photography: Eugene Chan.

Panoramic night view of the full glazed frontage, the interior glowing across the width of the building — The full frontage at nightDesign: Architecture Georges Hung. Photography: Eugene Chan.

The brief

The tension

The move

How it works

One wall, every function

The tower, in pixels

One material

Light and shadow

More than a sales centre

Open to the street

The wall

The room

What it gave back