The dining area renovation on Deji Plaza PhaseⅠ, 7th floor responds to both functional necessities and humanistic aspirations. Beyond fulfilling fundamental dining, social, and cultural needs, designers identified urban dwellers’ profound yearning for natural connection within high-density environments – a sanctuary for breathing, lingering, and communing with nature.
Project Name: Deji Plaza Phase I, 7th Floor Dining Area
Studio Name: X+Living Architecture and Interior Design
Image credit: SFAP
Indoor Garden Translation
Centered on transforming commercial space into public domain, the redesign creates a breathable, inhabitable three-dimensional garden. Guided by the vision “bringing nature into commercial commons,” designers established an interior oasis through dome reconfiguration, scenographic programming, and garden-inspired circulation.
The secondary atrium replaces conventional ceilings with arched skylights. Steel frameworks trace plant vein-like curves across the vaulted glass, where sunlight casts dancing shadows that mimic greenhouse moss patterns. A spiral staircase connects floors with vine-inspired elegance, functioning simultaneously as vertical pathway and spatial sculpture.
Circulation transcends physical movement to orchestrate spatial perception. Pathways emerge within lush greenery, inviting visitors to slow their pace beneath swaying canopies, experiencing the space through leisurely exploration and sensory engagement.
Architectural Landscape Construction
Botanical arrangements follow architectural stratification principles, weaving spatial rhythm through narrative-driven scale progressions.
Eight-meter banyans and maples anchor visual focal points, their branches artfully avoiding structural elements to form organic spatial partitions. Mid-level jacarandas and traveler’s palms create transparent vertical screens with slender silhouettes. Ground-level begonias and philodendrons interlock with architecture, forming a terraced landscape contour descending from 20cm to 8m.
Balancing structural loads with visual impact, designers combined live and artificial plants to resolve weight limitations while creating depth through varied foliage density. This approach transforms natural growth patterns into deliberate spatial order.
Public Living Theater
Functional upgrades establish an “urban living room,” dissolving conventional mall commercialism through decentralized layouts.
Fixed partitions give way to undulating benches that embrace plant clusters with concave curves while extending convex seating areas. Individually sculpted chairs serve as functional artworks. Restaurant service zones expand into public areas, allowing diners to enjoy meals beneath trees or along pathways.
Scattered garden loungers invite relaxed postures for contemplation, socialization, or daydreaming. Conversations blend with rustling leaves into ambient white noise. As dining, resting, and socializing permeate every corner, commercial attributes recede, replaced by the autonomous vitality of a neighborhood park.
When teacups catch dappled sunlight and time seems to grow along leaf veins, friends raise glasses amidst shifting shadows. Here, they savor not merely cuisine but memorable moments suspended in time. This embodies the most poetic interpretation of “business for good.” With “coexistence with nature” as foundation, designers prioritized poetic resonance over pure efficiency. Thus emerges contemporary commercial space’s spiritual essence: a vertical garden preserving community memories, and a testament to spaces evolving from utility infrastructure into vessels of public emotion.
