Jingguang Centre Apartments: City within a city, home away from home

Type: Serviced apartments
Location: Beijing
Client: New World Development
Size: 10,000 sqft
Completion: 2016

The Jingguang Centre Apartments make up the 40th to 52nd floors of the Jingguang Centre in Beijing’s Central Business District. Our task and challenge was to renovate the atrium and the public areas on 40th floor (including the lobby, concierge, cafés, bar, private dining space, gym and changing rooms) while the guestrooms remained in operation.

Looking out and down from the 40th floor, you’ll feel like a bird flying over the typical Beijing north/south city grid. “City” was our inspiration and from that, we created our own city within a city.

Greeting the guests at arrival is a tranquil reflecting pool, acting as a visually and aurally calming feature. In order to amplify the sense of height and the magnitude of the city skyline, the pool is surrounded by 12-floors of textural walls that gradually change from pitch black to white, up to the existing rooftop skylight. The drama of the atrium is deliberately disrupted by LED light strips on the textural walls in the abstract form of birds, creating a sense of lightness within chaos. These lights slowly shimmer in accordance to the time of day to echo the glimmering city lights outside.

Next to the reflecting pool, the concierge desk sits underneath a glass canopy. Guests can relax with a drink nearby while waiting to check in.

We created a miniature city grid carpet for each floor that covers the hallways, and every typical lobby has atypical maze like copper pipe pendant lighting.

The lounge and café feature warm walnut veneer. A retro, nostalgic setting is completed with abstracted etched glass panels that represent various forms of the familiar skyline and silhouettes of Hong Kong and Beijing.The concept of “çity” continues into the private dining room with a “city web” carpet with nostalgic glass pattern to reflect the dynamism of a city.

For the guests here, we created a “city” within Beijing city, and a true home away from home.