Practice in City by Know Yourself

  • area / size 4,306 sqft
  • Completed 2020
  • Location Shanghai, China,
  • Mur Mur Lab completed a serene and welcoming environment for the spacious Practice in City by Know Yourself located in Shanghai, China.

    Practice in City is the first “future store” of the psychological consultation public account KnowYourself located on Julu Road, Shanghai.

    Like all the buildings in the old city center, our site is not loose, but very rich. Spatially, it is located on the second and fourth floors of a building ,it is not continuous. The floor-to-ceiling windows on the second floor look like a busy Julu Road, which is a pleasant pedestrian street. The height of the fourth floor is just above the roofs of the surrounding old houses, and there is a clean greenery as far as you can see. The second and fourth floors are connected by a closed staircase.

    Practice in City is operated in separate rooms of different sizes. Three yoga rooms, a VIP zone, and a reception, the space is packed full, leaving only a few gaps. They are both transportation and limited public space. Between the shadow of the tree and the blue, the entrance is an upward staircase. From here, we hope that everyone can walk in unsuspectingly.

    Facing the public space in these gaps, we are very restrained, without adventurous forms, we only proceed from scale and light. This is an invisible emotional streamline-upward, inward, toward the light, suspending daily life and cognitive self.

    The gap and opening between the caves are all media for interaction with people in the emotional stream. We use linear light strips to simulate natural light,let the light fall through the gap where the eye cannot look straight, and provide uniform illumination. The green and light outside the window rushed into the room through the opening.

    Light has no form. When it passes through the building, it becomes a work of art. We love the change of natural light, and gradually feel that there is more stable artificial light in it, like add to one more metaphor about eternity.

    The founder of KY said that a safe room reminded her of “matrix”. We left it to the smallest VIP zone, which is the most direct and simple interpretation of the “cave” intention.

    For the body, the “matrix” is to care and wrap; for the architecture, the “cave” is the most primitive safe shelter. The two are naturally related.

    These are precisely the most important clue to design. With the column as the boundary, the small room is again divided into inside and outside. Step on the upper level, the space inside is shorter, you subconsciously bend down and sit down quickly. A column wrapped in a tree shape, surrounding it or approaching it, is a process of close interaction between space and body. The floor-to-ceiling window is reduced to a square hole, echoing the divided luminous wall. The ever-changing natural light and artificial light are always facing each other.

    As an abstract container, space can contain complex behaviors. It is not precise, but it can be expected. Through observation, this tiny room is being perceived and used in the way we imagined it. It excites us. Architecture is no longer talking about itself, it is entering daily life in an understandable way.

    Design: Mur Mur Lab
    Design Team: Murong Xia, Zhi Li, Qin Zheng, Yuhang Yang, Linxi Huang, Xinliang Li, Hanzhi Gao
    Photography: WDi, Hanzhi