Promenade Workplace of Kano Headquarters

LYCS Architecture

Short description

The project is located in Anji County, Zhejiang Province. Beneath the mist of clean water and green mountains, Anji, which is an eco-country in China, also acts as a major town in China’s furniture manufacturing industry.

How to demonstrate Kano’s capacity for integrating the entire industry chain from design and development to manufacturing, while providing high-quality and inspiring working environment for its employees?

Our design started from the study of the actual needs of the users, and we extracted two core needs of the users: touring and working. Thus the design team came up with the strategy of “Promenade Workplace”, an attempt to combine the circular flow of the Guggenheim Museum in New York with the traditional atrium.

The office area is arranged around a six-storey atrium, in the center of which the design team has set up a six-storey super-sized  spiral staircase, resembling a huge stage. Resembling an extended profile, it passes through the space of reception, conference, sales, design, R&D, training, showroom and the president’s office in turn, sufficiently presenting how the whole headquarters works.

With the two axes of efficient privacy and open communication, the design team has designed a completely private telephone booth, a partially private glass box office area, a semi-open grille box office area, and an open office area that is completely open and encourages communication. The design with different scales and levels of openness provides an inclusive, equitable, flexible, sustainable and healthy workplace for all employees. Whenever good at social communication or not, they all feel comfortable.

Kano workplace proposes a new paradigm of both work and exhibition to the traditional headquarters office model, demonstrating the new concept of “promenade workplace”, where effectively helping Kano stand out in the competitive market.