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Photographs:Alexander Ford
Text description provided by the architects. MARU MARU Office is a headquarter office located in the CBD area of Beijing for White Peak, a Scandinavian real estate investment firm based in China.
The spatial planning was first approached from guchi (opening in Japanese), from which resources enter. In this case, it refers to mado guchi (windows openings in Japanese), from which light, air and views enter into the workplace.
Instead of being defeated by the hierarchical system and giving all the light, air and views in a traditional fashion to higher level managers (as shown in diagram below).
The interior spatial typology was studied. And, the relationship between (1)closed room, (2)open room and (3)mado guchi was reconfigured by the introduction of yohaku (blankness in Japanese) at the corner of rooms.
A new relationship of sharing resources across spaces is established and ambiguous boundary is made possible by the introduction of yohaku at the corners (as shown in diagram below).
When the absence of specification of yohaku (blankness) is commonly equated as lacking of function in modern singular thinking, yohaku is often considered as the rich presence of imagination and possibilities in eastern thinking.
