The project here represents just a small part of the Hong Kong Science Park - building 17W and 19W from the 3rd phase of the masterplan development. We started from the question: how to make a creative working environment? And we got an answer from the dancing ayis and the chess players at the corner of the street - people can see the others dance or play and they stop to join or give advice. They participate to the process and stimulate each other. So, we concluded that open space that is enabling the people to see each other is one of the ways in which we can achieve not only a creative space but a community. Exactly like we create a plaza/square inside the city. Therefore, the space is designed to be as much as possible visually open and clear. People in this incubating center can see what other teams are working on. And this environment stimulates each other’s imagination and gives more motivation for working. The constrains that research hubs have, is that most of the time the work is very specific that only the people working on it know what it is about. Our idea was to break that conservative layout and open the space to facilitate a better cross collaboration between the different startups and even between the three main technology platforms - Healthy Ageing, Smart City and Robotics. To achieve this link - we opened the space vertically by adding a staircase resting on an undulating glass wall that connects the open collaborative spaces of each of the floors. Like this, a direct and fast connection between the different platforms is created.
To maximize the use of the space and to create the right environment, we divided the floor area into different zones- the open office zone, the multi-function zone, the meeting zone and SME office zone. These zones are disposed in a gradual progression to assure a good working environment depending on the type of work one has to do. But feature walls and gathering spots are found on each floor as the backdrop for smaller group interactions or breaks - even in the SME office zone.