Snow Peak Beijing Zhongguancun Flagship Store
HONGSHI DESIGN
Agency: HONGSHI DESIGN
Client: Beijing 1958 Natural Culture Co., Ltd
With an overall area of 920 square meters, the first floor includes a coffee bar, clothing retail, and meeting area, while the second floor features product retail, dining, and a terrace. The owner is Snow Peak, a top Japanese outdoor brand that advocates nature. It is hoped that this project can display the sophistication of products and the brand's philosophy of pursuing life with essential natural while respecting the characteristics of the site. Both Beijing Satellite Manufacturing Plant and Snow Peak were founded in 1958, sharing a long history. We aim to incorporate this historical sense into the project, creating an intuitive contrast and collision between the ruggedness of the workshop and the sophistication of the brand's products. We have stripped away various layers of the original space to reveal the wood grain texture from the casting mold of the criss cross beams, retaining the red brick walls and ground paving. Three atriums allow natural warm light to penetrate the interior to mitigate the coldness of the workshop. The first floor juxtaposes the factory's industrial style with Snow Peak's natural style. The brand's LOGO symbolizes North Star, which can guide the direction. Therefore, a starry sky wall that can shine was created. To embody the unpredictability of nature, all star points were manually punched by the designer and construction team. Inspired by campfire wood, 3,000 manually split pinewood strips were built into a 4-meter-high, 6-meter-wide scenic wall, serving both as an exterior decoration and an interior meeting area background, echoing the brand's emphasis on "the feeling of handmade". The factory's staircase and security room have been completely preserved, decorated only with cement square bricks and lighting design. The store's exterior uses rust board elements to echo the project's location, with a foldable coffee window creating an indoor-outdoor interaction. The second-floor terrace features "volcanic rock" as the main material, providing a Mars-like appearance where store products are displayed. The black sand in the outdoor sandpit also evokes imagery of Martian soil. This design approach is based on the shared attribute of exploring unknown nature between the Satellite Manufacturing Plant and Snow Peak. Diverging from the refined feel of traditional retail stores, we aim to combine the rusticity of the old factory with Snow Peak's brand image of revering and exploring nature. This creates direct and interesting juxtapositions between different elements, retaining the old factory's texture while utilizing the historical traces of the space to collide with the exquisite nature of brand products, thereby generating a unique charm of the place to attract and retain customers, to let the space express the store brand's value of "returning to its essential nature".