Office · Shanghai · 2024

Celadon on the fiftieth floor

A 1,200 m² office on the fiftieth floor of one of the Bund’s most elegant office buildings. The design question was what, at that height and in that technical environment, could still tie the space to a place.

The brief

A fiftieth-floor office in Shanghai sits at one of the most advanced points of built environment anywhere. Glass wall, services, a view across Pudong and the Huangpu. Nothing can be added to that view.

What is missing is the other direction: something older than the building, that still belongs here.

The answer

A celadon-glazed ceramic surface runs along the reception wall, with gold-lustre ginkgo leaves set into it. The pieces come from Zsolnay’s Just Play series — modular relief ceramic elements whose pattern resolves differently in every installation.

Both elements read two ways. The ginkgo has been a symbol in China for thousands of years — longevity and endurance; the same leaf is a favourite motif of Hungarian Secession. Celadon is an ancient Chinese glaze culture — and Zsolnay knows it too, with its own recipe.

So alongside the technology of the fiftieth floor and the development of Shanghai stands something several thousand years old, made in a manufactory in Pécs.

Two Hungarians in Shanghai

Images of buildings by Károly Gonda and László Hudec hang on the walls. Both were Hungarian architects who shaped the face of interwar Shanghai — Hudec the Park Hotel and the Grand Theatre, Gonda the Cathay Theatre and the Capitol Building.

This is not decoration but the office defining itself: a Hungarian-designed interior in Shanghai taking its place in a century-old line.

Szőnyi, on glass

The third cultural link is a painting. A reproduction of a Danube Bend picture by István Szőnyi — but not a print. It is glass, one of the base materials of twenty-first-century architecture.

The original painting was scanned, and Zoltán Krizsán separated it into layers and carried it onto glass. The layered, geometric resolution refers back to Shanghai art deco — the very language that Gonda and Hudec brought here.

The space

The shared areas are warm in tone: tan leather seating, wool rugs, oak floors, sand-coloured walls. The cellular offices repeat it more quietly, with oak desks and dark green armchairs.

The main meeting room opens to the corridor through a glazed wall, with a rug beneath the table — acoustic as much as decorative. Behind reception, a run of lit niches: the one place where an object can be set out.

Data

Location: Shanghai, China — an office building on the Bund, 50th floor
Year: 2024
Type: Office, full interior design
Area: 1,200 m²
Ceramic: Zsolnay Just Play series, celadon glaze with ginkgo motif
Glass work: Zoltán Krizsán — after a painting by István Szőnyi
Reference: Shanghai buildings by Károly Gonda and László Hudec
Status: Completed

The space

Office reception: white desk, oak-veneered ceiling raft, celadon ceramic panel on the wall — Reception: a white desk, an oak ceiling raft, the ceramic wall behind.

Reception hall with oak floor, the reception desk to the right and a run of lit niches to the left — The run of lit niches behind reception — the one place where an object can be set out.

The main meeting room through glazed doors: a long table with leather chairs, a rug, the façade glazing behind — The main meeting room opens to the corridor through a glazed wall.

The corner of a meeting table in front of the façade glazing, with the Pudong towers beyond — From the fiftieth floor, a striking view over the towers of Pudong.

A cellular office with an oak desk and two dark green armchairs in front of the façade glazing — A cellular office: oak desk, dark green armchairs, sand-coloured wall.

Lounge with tan leather sofas and armchairs, a wool rug, and a view of Shanghai through the façade window — The shared area: tan leather seating, a wool rug, a view over the Huangpu.

Design render: a high table in front of the meeting room, a corridor alongside, building photographs on the walls — The corridor from the meeting area: images of Gonda’s and Hudec’s Shanghai buildings on the walls.

The ceramic

The glass painting

A painting carried onto glass: a Danube Bend landscape with blue sky and clouds, on a sand-coloured wall — A Danube Bend picture by István Szőnyi — carried onto glass, not printed.

Close view of the glass picture’s edge: the offset green and dark layers of the laminate — The edge of the layered glass: the geometric resolution refers back to Shanghai art deco.

Photography: Ren Design · the corridor image is a design render

Ren Design is a Budapest interior architecture studio with work in Europe, the Gulf, South America and Asia. On this project the studio designed the whole interior of the Shanghai office, from concept to construction drawings and the art programme.