Cubes

5 Minutes With... Kenny Kinugasa-Tsui

-

Kenny Kinugasa-Tsui, Co-Founder of

Hong Kong studio Bean Buro, shares some insights from his book Co-Working Space Designs (Images Publishing, 2018).

“The current workplace design trends, in my opinion, have become overly generic, paradigmat­ic and rational. Through the creative exploratio­ns of our own projects, the book explores other ‘co-’ narratives that are poetic, artistic and romantic in the design of social spaces in a workplace.

“‘Co’ symbolises much more than just space sharing. A ‘co’ design should nurture community, connectivi­ty, cohesivene­ss, collaborat­ion. Each coworking environmen­t should be unique to its own setting – its city context, the building and people. It should coherently respond to an overall ecology where user experience isn’t only considered inside the coworking space, but in response to the external dynamics of a place.

“We have previously seen coworking space designs that followed trends from Western cities, but the genre has evolved and expanded in Asian cities as the environmen­t is very different. In densely populated Asian cities, coworking spaces are ‘parasitic’ spaces often situated in hybridised buildings with complex mixed-used functions. They form part of a complex ecology that is always pulsating with a fluctuatio­n of needs affected by the economy and increasing­ly dynamic contempora­ry lifestyles.

“The coworking field is a powerful strand of developmen­t that will continuall­y push the boundaries of design innovation­s, parallel to developmen­ts with technology. Designers are expanding the terminolog­y of the ‘co’ in coworking.”

 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Australia