Shanghai-based design studio Mur Mur Lab has completed a coffee store by using all-white folded panels on the ground floor of a building in Shanghai, China. 

Named UNIBROWN Coffee Store, the 60-square-metre space aims to harmonize emotional experiences with a nature-looking terrain, with white steering places, dividing panels, white fixtures and furnitures and golden lighting. 

The designers described the store as "eyes of time". "Despite several manuscripts, the space in the center for only one person has not changed. It looks like a monument, and it make surrounding objects become meaningful," said the firm. Inside the 1-square-metre room called ‘Moment’, there will be an exhibition about Mur Mur Lab and Unibrown. 

"We will start a discussion of the relationship between coffee, construction and the flowing of the space, and it is also about connection between the ‘time’ and ‘personal identity’."

"Through the folds that looks like the curtain of veil, we often watch the looming crowd, the spread of the terrace and the greenery outside the window. The noise and jolly time belong to the outside world, but the quietness and serenity belongs to inside world, like being on the mountaintop," the firm added.

This is the nature terrain inside the city. The rolling hills define different experience: either sitting or standing, grouping or being alone, where everyone can find the most comfortable posture. 

This is a design that is closely related to the body. With dimensions, form, color, and light as the guide, and the space affects the body's feelings, and then affects emotional experience.

This is a special attempt that Mur Mur Lab explores the concept of "the space towards the nature narrative". Behind the strict geometric relationship, there are associations with the world of nature. It may be a valley; it may be a starlight; it may be a fog. 

"We do not want to associate them with the formal language one by one," added the designers. 

That will only destroy the best imagination. However, when you stay in that space, it is unnecessary to use any language. That is all about the design which closely related to nature. It abstracts from the world of nature, also returns to the experience of nature.

Synaesthesia

Whale Circus created a music for the space. The studio planted a ginkgo tree in the “Valley”. With a cup of warm coffee in the hand, and everything becomes alive. Under the tree, they nestled in the sofa, watching the leaves constantly being blown by the air, listening to the rustling white noise and the wind bell that occasionally reminded me of.

There is still a cluster of green outside the window, and the interior is already golden. The temperature and aroma of the coffee passed to hands and mouth.The senses are connected, communication is intertwined, and together they form a different world.

"Whale Circus" is an artist that Mur Mur Lab collaborate with this time. Music is really a wonderful thing that brings everyday a sense of ceremony. The sound came from the sky, and the hanging small silk thread was accompanied by the wind bell ringing in, the pleasure was just right.

The criteria for Mur Mur Lab select projects are not depends on if it is interesting or not. Gradually, the studio is more concerned about if it is able to take care the sense and feeling between human beings through its design.

All images © WDi

Drawings & models © Mur Mur Lab

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