
Dongfeng Park 3# Yard, Beijing, China
Beijing China Virtue Architectural Design
This new workspace between the East 4th-5th Ring Road of Beijing City aims to provide for its users with both a space to work in and also relax and feel close to nature. Sitting in the city’s outskirts, near the green belt, the project is a low volume with generous flowing interior spaces wrapped in sweathes of glass that lead the eye to outdoor courtyards and greenery beyond. ‘By placing more attention to designer’s work condition, physical and mental health, the project hopes to build up to be the most popular office for designers,’ say the architects, the local practice Beijing China Virtue Architectural Design. Photography: Shuo Chen and Chun Fang

Urban Valey, Massy, France
ateliers o-s architectes
This office building in Massy, just south of Paris, sits within a business park, forming an intergral part of the area’s built environment. The architects created a form that feels minimalist but also intricate enough to hint at the surrounding landscape, featuring a series of pitched roofs and a striated skin that adds depth and nuance to the, otherwise fairly simple, utilitarian facade. The design makes it eye catching but also functional, as its flexible interior and different sections can be divided up for the use of different clients if needed. ‘The general image of the project is that of a toolbox, a technological and functional tool that marks the dynamism of the city of Massy, with a concern for architectural, urban and landscape quality while offering an evolving technical device,’ say the architects. Photography: Simone Bossi

Tenjin Business Center, Fukuoka, Japan
OMA
This mixed-use office complex by OMA in Japan’s fifth largest urban hub has just reached completion. Led by OMA partner Shohei Shigematsu, the scheme is the studio’s first in town - which is also the architect’s home town. ‘The building program is predominantly workspace, within a given massing that is neither low-rise nor tower, so the design was conceived through hyper-focused interventions that subtly merge and connect human and urban scale, two streets of different character, inside and outside, city and nature. The result is an efficient office block with the most memorable corner—an excavation of the building toward more openness. A Big Bang signifies a starting point, and I hope this gesture will be an invitation for future developments to participate in creating a network of activated intersections and public zones that knit the new district together,’ he says. Photography: Tomoyuki Kusunose

Xiaoshan Innovation Polis · Pioneer Valley, China
UAD
Part of the Hangzhou Xiaoshan Innovation Polis, a business hub on the south bank of Qiantang River, this impressive piece of architecture is a key piece for the wider development as well as a future landmark for the Chinese city. ‘To cater to the needs of young innovators, researchers and entrepreneurs in Xiaoshan Innovation Polis, the design adopts the concept of the ‘Cube’, which signifies the infinite possibilities of entrepreneurship and scientific research and the vitality of the young,’ say the architects. ‘With staggered elegant cubic volumes and artificial lighting at night, the building presents a futuristic, instagrammable image throughout the day at the side of the Hangzhou-Ningbo Expressway, hence becoming an iconic landmark that represents Xiaoshan Innovation Polis.’ Photography: Zhao Qiang

Roche Pharmaceuticals, Germany
Christ & Gantenbein
An ‘industrial palazzo’ has been added to the growing campus of Roche pharmaceuticals in Grenzach-Wyhlen, Germany, near the Swiss border. The building, carefully tuned to balance the generous, no-nonsense attitude and durability of an industrial building and the cutting-edge, sleek feel of contemporary office architecture, is the creation of Christ & Gantenbein. This is the third structure that the Swiss architecture studio, located in nearby Basel, has designed for the healthcare multinational – but it’s one that stands out for its minimalist expression and cool, almost painterly nature. Roche’s multifunctional workspace building follows the architects’ signature approach and aesthetic that blends the use of seamless, scuptural concrete with pared down forms and supreme functionality. The studio has carved a reputation as a deft hand at balancing drama and subtlety, the hardness of concrete with soft, plastic forms. Photography: Walter Mair

Zhen Fund, China
Asap
This ethereal interior belongs to the new offices of the Zhen Fund, a financial company in Beijing. Its authors, New York and Los Angeles-based Adam Sokol Architecture Practice (Asap) were tasked with redesinging the interior of a high rise in the China World Trade Center. The result is a workspace explored through curves and colours. ‘Much of our recent work has explored various types of curves, and so we began to explore how that would impact this design as a solution,’ says Sokol. ‘While seemingly inefficient at first glance, the curving glass conference rooms that became the signature of this project actually accomplished several things: they avoided the monotony of long double-loaded corridors that we all dreaded; they gave the design an immediately bold and visionary quality; lastly there was the happy benefit of the pockets of space created where the rooms meet.’ Photography: Jonathan Leijonhufvud