SHENZEN – Assuming an attitude more
reminiscent of a design hotel than the shoe-
string ‘office factory’ of yesteryear, X+Living’s
flamboyant Unova Co-Working Space marks
the coming of age of co-working in China.
With its playful and design-led scheme, the
8,800-m^2 facility, located in the business
hotspot of Shenzen, reflects China’s desire to
transform itself from the factory of the world
into a global centre for creative innova-
tion. It’s an ambition that dates from 2015,
when the Chinese government called for
‘mass entrepreneurship’. An unprecedented
surge in start-ups followed: over six mil-
lion were registered in 2017 alone. Naturally,
the demand for flexible mini-office spaces
boomed along with them.
‘Co-working is extremely popu-
lar in China right now,’ says design office
X+Living’s Li Xiang. The new Unova space,
she says, is occupied mainly by ‘advertising
agencies, art firms, start-ups and freelancers’.
One of its four floors is reserved for larger
companies in search of a more creative
environment. This was the suggestion of the
designers, who pointed out that ‘relatively
mature companies will be helpful to our
brand owners as more stable tenants’.
With many tenants working in the
creative industries that China aims to excel
in, the design of Unova incorporates the
unexpected, including art-world references
and surreally humorous details. ‘We wanted
to use an interesting concept to make a sty-
listic breakthrough,’ says Li Xiang. ‘We used
famous art works, sports equipment and
others elements as design highlights, inte-
grating them into the functional parts of the
space.’ In the washrooms, for example, are
details culled from paintings by Leonardo
da Vinci and Van Gogh; elsewhere, a frying
pan becomes a mirror, and a plunge pool is
transformed into a meeting space.
The quirkiness of the design
expresses the changing aspirations of work-
ers, says Li Xiang: ‘More and more, people
are beginning to value the spiritual satisfac-
tion the office environment can bring to »Unova Co-Working Space reflects
China’s desire to transform itself from
the factory of the world into a global
centre for creative innovation.109