Project Details
Squint/Opera designed the interiors, user journey and all experiential and media for a sales suite to showcase AIRSIDE, a new mixed-use, commercial development at the site of the former Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong.
AIRSIDE is a 47 story, mixed-use commercial development designed by Groundworks architects and developed by the Nan Fung Group. In 2017 they paid a world record HK$24.6 billion for the plot in the old Kai Tak airport in East Kowloon, Hong Kong – now home to AIRSIDE.
To promote the new project, Nan Fung took out a three year lease on a complete floor plate in the Soho House tower in Central Hong Kong and commissioned Squint to design and build a sales experience.
The experience centre is filled with experiential, immersive media designed by Squint. Designs went far beyond audio and visuals – the team designed the entire interior of the space, including the spatial layout and interior design, for the best possible user journey and experience.
Client
Nan Fung Group
Location
Hong Kong
Sector
Architecture & Built Environment
Collaborators
Groundworks architects
The Brief
We worked closely with the Nan Fung team to create the narrative and effectively tell their story in the context of a sales suite. We partitioned the space into four rooms to create a circular journey along which we could tell the story of this incredible site and building, to encourage tenants to join the space. As a result, in 2023 the first anchor tenant called AIRSIDE home.
Our Response
The sales suite begins with a welcome room, designed to be a serene space to juxtapose the busy streets of Hong Kong.
From here, visitors are invited to travel into the Kai Tak room – where they’re told the history of the neighbourhood from over 100 years ago, hearing and seeing stories of the fishing village.
The third space is the AIRSIDE room, where we tell the story about the iconic building itself. A touchscreen table allows users to navigate a digital 3D model of the architecture and to control the immersive 270° projections on the curved wall in front. Here, large format cinemagraphs transport the visitor into the building of the future, enabling the group of visitors to experience VR, without the goggles.
Squint/Opera created:
- Experiential design
- Spatial design
- Interior layouts
- Creative consultancy
- Tech advisory
- Immersive content creation
The whole project was delivered in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Under strict flight restrictions we proved that with solid collaboration and communication, we could still deliver an exceptional experience over 7000 miles away from our London HQ. We collaborated with architects Groundworks, to bring in local experts to help on the ground and to continue to integrate interior design and audio visual into the overall experience.
“We collaborated closely with the client throughout the project, to define a strong narrative that could help them showcase the Airside building in the most memorable way for their audience. This narrative was not just used top-level; we were able to infuse it down into every single piece of content, from telling the history of the place, to crafting the animations in the immersive cinemagraphs. Here, for instance, every view of the architecture is imbued with small snippets of human stories that make it feel alive, tangible, relatable and even entertaining.” Silvia Tossici, Squint/Opera Creative Director.
