In 2021, IDCA was approached by Satok Furniture to design their new showroom for office furniture in a 3-storey commercial shophouse along Jalan Wan Alwi that had been recently renovated by ARKITEKUEH. The project site occupies the last 2 units of the shophouse row, and has a prominent corner position facing the main road as well as Vivacity shopping mall.

Office furniture can be a challenge to present, due to their often functional designs and limited palettes of colour and texture. It might be a common reflex to present office furniture in a similarly matching sleek and modern showroom, but this can often result in bland interiors.

The brief called for 2 showrooms on the ground and 1st floor. Office spaces, meeting rooms, and staff areas would be located on the 2nd floor. A new lift core had already been built.

Our solution was to present Satok’s furniture in an industrial loft setting, with contrasting textures of raw steel and exposed concrete juxtaposed against sleek, modernist volumes.

Our first major gesture was to take advantage of the shophouse’s prominent corner location by lining the full-height glass façade on the 1st and 2nd floors with sliding perforated steel panels with an abstraction of the client’s logo in eye-catching neon yellow, which was clearly visible from the main road. These panels also served to shade the interiors from the strong sun and to reduce glare for the interiors.

The second major gesture was to create a new continuous ground floor plain leading from the external walkway and extending fully into the ground floor showroom. We decided on a tessellated pattern of terracotta tiles in various shapes and hues with grey pebble-wash that blended indoors and outdoors. This connection is further heightened by glazing much of the external walkway walls with full-height glass and steel fins, which further repeat the rhythm of the floor finishes. The lift core, open central staircase and a new mezzanine were clad in oxidized steel panels, creating raw steel “sculptures” floating in the grid.

We also exposed the building’s concrete frame by removing the existing plaster, leaving rough-hewn surfaces with visible chisel marks. The exposed soffits of the RC slabs were left painted in contrast, and we used off-the-shelf steel cable trays throughout to hide unsightly wiring which also double as light fittings.

The 1st floor showroom, accessible by the central staircase, carries the same palette of contrasting earthy tones, raw concrete and whitewash. Different settings for displaying furniture were employed here, including a stepped ‘auditorium’ display platform, which also doubles as audience seating for events, and a raised platform that runs the full length of the façade.

For the 2nd floor, we created a transparent open office using glass walls for directors’ rooms that allowed natural light to permeate throughout. A private meeting room, clad in oxidized steel and timber laminate was sited to be shared with the adjoining shoplot, which houses a construction business owned by the same client. A staff pantry and staff rest areas were added, with all spaces benefiting from natural light and ventilation as required.

PROJECT GALLERY