Greenland Intercity Space Station by Yungu Liu and Shuolei Zheng Redefines Corporate Office Design

Exploring How Contemporary Spatial Design and Open Collaboration Create Value for Enterprises Seeking Dynamic, Inspiring Corporate Environments

What happens when an enterprise decides that the physical walls containing its workforce should become a catalyst for innovation rather than simply a container for desks? The question of workspace transformation sits at the heart of one of the most fascinating shifts happening in corporate real estate today. Brands across every industry are discovering that the architecture surrounding their teams shapes everything from collaboration patterns to creative output, from talent attraction to cultural identity.

Consider the strategic challenge facing any forward-thinking enterprise: how do you construct an environment that communicates your brand values, supports diverse work modalities, encourages spontaneous interaction, and still provides the focus spaces necessary for deep work? The answer, as demonstrated by increasingly sophisticated corporate interior projects, lies in treating office design as a strategic investment rather than a facilities expense.

The challenge of creating dynamic workspaces is precisely the territory where the Greenland Intercity Space Station project, created by designers Yungu Liu and Shuolei Zheng for Mantu Interior Architects Design, delivers thoughtful approaches to contemporary corporate spatial thinking. Completed in Nanjing in December 2019, the 5000 square meter office environment earned the Golden A' Design Award in Interior Space, Retail and Exhibition Design in 2021. The recognition arrived because the Greenland Intercity Space Station demonstrates something enterprises increasingly need to understand: the physical workspace has become a competitive advantage that can be designed with the same strategic intentionality applied to product development or marketing campaigns.

What follows explores the specific design strategies, material decisions, and spatial philosophies that make the Greenland Intercity Space Station valuable reading for any enterprise examining its own workplace environments.

The Evolution of Corporate Spatial Thinking

The traditional corporate office followed a predictable formula: rows of workstations, enclosed corner offices for leadership, conference rooms distributed throughout, and perhaps a break area equipped with refrigerators and vending machines. The standardized approach served organizations well during eras when hierarchy defined workflow and individual task completion dominated the workday.

Contemporary enterprises operate in a fundamentally different context. Projects emerge from cross-functional teams. Innovation often sparks during unplanned corridor conversations. The most valuable employees increasingly have options about where and how they work, making the physical environment a tangible expression of organizational culture that influences recruitment and retention.

The Greenland Intercity Space Station project emerged from explicit recognition of shifting workplace dynamics. The design team at Mantu Interior Architects Design approached the endeavor with what they describe as continuous exploration of the future of the industry. Their stated intention was creating a new office model that meets the development of the times. The language of future-oriented design matters because the phrasing reveals a design philosophy oriented toward anticipating workplace evolution rather than merely responding to current conditions.

What makes the Mantu approach particularly relevant for enterprises is the explicit connection between spatial design and organizational outcomes. The designers wanted to create a space where people's minds could be liberated. The statement is not decorative language. Research across organizational psychology, cognitive science, and workplace studies consistently demonstrates that physical environments influence thought patterns, creative capacity, and collaborative behavior. When designers explicitly target mind liberation as an outcome, they are acknowledging that architecture serves strategic purposes beyond shelter and temperature control.

The Nanjing project also represents what its creators call the fifth generation of office design for the development group. The generational framing suggests a systematic evolution of thinking, where each iteration builds upon lessons learned from previous projects. For enterprises considering their own workplace strategies, the evolutionary approach offers a useful model: treating each office project as both an immediate solution and a learning opportunity that informs future decisions.

Open Collaboration as a Design Philosophy

The concept anchoring the Greenland Intercity Space Station project is what the designers term open collaboration. The phrase appears throughout the project documentation, not as marketing language but as an organizing principle that guided specific design decisions.

Open collaboration in spatial terms means something more specific than simply removing walls or creating open floor plans. The designers describe their intention as creating a dynamic and diversified office space that is not tied down. The phrase "not tied down" reveals the philosophical core: Yungu Liu and Shuolei Zheng wanted to eliminate the ways traditional office layouts constrain interaction patterns.

Traditional office configurations tend to dictate who encounters whom during a workday. Your department sits together. You walk the same path to the same meeting room. You encounter the same colleagues in the same elevator bank. The patterns of predictable encounters, while efficient in certain respects, limit the serendipitous interactions that often generate innovative thinking.

The Greenland Intercity Space Station responds to the limitation of constrained encounters through several specific design choices. The lobby space is described as high and spacious, with floors that have no obvious boundaries. The boundary dissolution is architecturally significant. When floors blend visually and functionally, the psychological distance between different parts of an organization shrinks. Someone on one level can see, hear, and easily reach colleagues on adjacent levels.

The staircases in the Greenland Intercity Space Station deserve particular attention. Rather than being tucked into corners or enclosed in fire towers, the circulation paths are interspersed with the building structure. The integration of staircases with architectural elements means that vertical movement becomes visible, part of the spatial experience rather than a hidden utility. When people see colleagues moving between floors, the building feels alive with activity. When the staircase itself becomes architecturally interesting, people may choose to walk rather than wait for elevators, increasing both physical movement and chance encounters.

For enterprises, the open collaboration principle offers a specific question to ask about any workplace project: What interaction patterns does a given design encourage? Every layout makes some conversations more likely and others less likely. The strategic question is whether those probabilities align with your organizational goals.

Multi-Dimensional Spatial Architecture and the Box Approach

Perhaps the most visually distinctive element of the Greenland Intercity Space Station is the treatment of enclosed spaces within the larger open environment. The designers describe their approach as using multi-dimensional box-embedded design combined with contemporary art thinking.

The specific technique involves stacking all independent office spaces with each other in the form of boxes. Visualize the arrangement: within the larger open volume, enclosed spaces appear as discrete geometric forms, positioned at different heights and orientations, creating a three-dimensional composition rather than a floor plan.

The box approach solves a genuine design tension that most enterprises face. Open offices support collaboration and transparency, but knowledge work often requires concentration and privacy. Phone calls, sensitive conversations, and deep focus tasks all benefit from acoustic separation. The typical solution involves either sacrificing openness for private offices or sacrificing privacy for open plans.

The box approach demonstrated in the Greenland Intercity Space Station offers a third path. By treating enclosed spaces as sculptural objects within a larger volume, the design preserves visual openness while providing acoustic and functional privacy where needed. The boxes contain privacy. The spaces between boxes contain interaction.

The designers describe the overall effect as smart and active, riotous with colors. The description points to another benefit of the box approach: the technique enables visual variety. When private spaces exist as discrete forms, individual spaces can be uniquely designed, creating visual interest and wayfinding cues throughout the environment. Different boxes might serve different functions, and their visual distinctiveness helps occupants navigate the space intuitively.

From an enterprise perspective, the box approach demonstrates how design constraints can generate innovation. The tension between openness and privacy is real, and simply choosing one priority over another represents a compromise. The multi-dimensional box concept shows that creative spatial thinking can address competing requirements simultaneously.

The project documentation notes that the overall space looks smart and active. The observation about perceived intelligence is worth considering. Spaces communicate. A static, repetitive environment communicates one set of values. A dynamic, varied environment communicates another. Enterprises should consider what their physical spaces say about their organizational intelligence and creative capacity.

Material and Color Strategy in Corporate Environments

The material palette of the Greenland Intercity Space Station reflects careful thinking about how surfaces influence spatial perception and user experience. The designers employed what they describe as a simple grey color palette, with the addition of wood colors, complemented by light and bright yellow accents.

The tripartite color strategy serves multiple functions. The grey base provides visual calm and professional credibility. Grey does not demand attention. Grey recedes, allowing other elements to become focal points. In a workspace context, the recession of neutral tones supports focus by reducing visual competition.

Wood tones introduce warmth and natural resonance. There is substantial research suggesting that biophilic elements (those that reference natural materials and forms) support human wellbeing in interior environments. Wood achieves the natural connection without requiring actual vegetation, which can be challenging to maintain in office settings. The psychological associations with wood include warmth, authenticity, and longevity.

The yellow accents provide visual punctuation. The designers describe bright colored furniture as embellishing among the neutral background to look relaxed and lively. The yellow accent moments serve wayfinding functions, directing attention to important areas, while also communicating energy and optimism.

Beyond color, the project features what the designers describe as big and straight light color stones applied to show a strong sense of depth. Stone introduces permanence and substantial presence. When combined with clear and bright light colors, the result is described as neat and stylish, setting off a brisk and shortcut design rhythm.

The phrase "brisk and shortcut design rhythm" deserves unpacking. Rhythm in architecture refers to the repetition and variation of visual elements as one moves through space. A brisk rhythm suggests frequent changes, visual events occurring at shorter intervals. Frequent visual variation creates an environment that feels dynamic rather than monotonous.

For enterprises considering material strategies, the Greenland Intercity Space Station demonstrates the value of working across multiple registers simultaneously. The grey provides professional credibility. The wood provides warmth. The yellow provides energy. The stone provides substance. Each material contributes a distinct quality, and the combination produces complexity that no single material could achieve.

Functional Zoning for Modern Work Patterns

The first floor of the Greenland Intercity Space Station adopts what the designers call a combination mode of super reception plus coffee. The combination phrase reveals sophisticated thinking about how contemporary enterprises engage with both visitors and employees.

The reception function serves external-facing needs: greeting clients, managing deliveries, controlling access. The coffee function serves internal community needs: casual conversation, caffeine acquisition, mental breaks. By combining reception and coffee functions, the design creates a zone where internal and external interactions overlap, where the boundary between public and private becomes productively blurred.

The combination approach recognizes that modern enterprises often want to project accessibility and energy to visitors while providing amenity spaces for employees. A traditional separation might place reception at the entrance and coffee facilities deep in employee areas. The combined approach means visitors experience organizational vitality immediately upon arrival, while employees benefit from a public-facing space that feels more significant than a back-of-house break room.

The stepped wooden stairs mentioned in the project documentation serve an additional functional role. The stepped stairs provide more seats for meetings, lectures and events. The multi-use approach to circulation infrastructure transforms what might be purely utilitarian into programmable space.

Stepped seating has become increasingly common in contemporary workplace design, and for good reason. Stepped seating provides flexible capacity. A small gathering might use a few steps. A company-wide meeting might fill the entire staircase. The informality of the setting can reduce hierarchy dynamics, with executives and junior employees occupying similar perches.

For enterprises examining the Greenland Intercity Space Station, the functional zoning decisions offer practical inspiration. Ask what combinations might serve your organization. Could your reception area include maker spaces? Could your cafeteria include library functions? Could your meeting rooms double as meditation spaces? The principle is treating space as a precious resource that should serve multiple purposes wherever possible.

Professionals and organizations interested in contemporary workplace design approaches can explore the award-winning greenland intercity space station design to see how the principles of open collaboration and strategic material use manifest in a completed project that earned recognition from the international design community.

The Enterprise Value of Design Excellence Recognition

When a corporate interior project receives recognition from an established international design competition, several value streams flow to the commissioning organization. Understanding the benefits of recognition helps enterprises appreciate why design investment can yield returns beyond the immediate functional improvements.

The Greenland Intercity Space Station earned a Golden A' Design Award, which the awarding body describes as granted to outstanding and trendsetting creations that reflect the designer's skill and wisdom. The recognition places the project within a curated collection of excellent work, visible to media, other designers, and potential clients worldwide.

For real estate developers and corporate occupiers, design award recognition communicates quality to future tenants, investors, and partners. The award functions as third-party validation, an external voice confirming that the design represents genuine excellence rather than merely competent execution.

The Greenland Intercity Space Station represents what its creators call a new landmark for the fifth generation of the developer's office portfolio. For the development group behind the project, landmark positioning matters enormously. Real estate development operates in competitive markets where differentiation influences pricing power and occupancy rates. A landmark project, especially one with external recognition, supports premium positioning.

Beyond commercial value, design recognition contributes to organizational pride. Employees who work in recognized spaces often report higher satisfaction. There is something meaningful about occupying a space that the broader design community has acknowledged as excellent. The pride of occupying recognized spaces can influence retention, engagement, and the way employees speak about their organization to external contacts.

For enterprises considering design investments, the recognition dimension offers an additional lens for evaluation. Beyond asking whether a design will function well, ask whether a design might achieve recognition. The pursuit of recognition is not about vanity. Recognition brings visibility, credibility, and positioning benefits that compound over time.

Looking Forward: Design as Strategic Infrastructure

The Greenland Intercity Space Station project, completed in late 2019, represented forward thinking about workplace environments. The subsequent years have only accelerated the trends that motivated the project's design. Flexible work arrangements have become standard. Talent competition has intensified. The physical office has evolved from the default location for work into a destination that must justify the commute through the experiences the office enables.

The evolving workplace dynamics make the principles embedded in the Greenland Intercity Space Station increasingly relevant. Open collaboration spaces that encourage interaction. Multi-dimensional approaches that accommodate diverse work modes. Material strategies that communicate organizational values. Functional combinations that maximize spatial utility. The approaches described are not stylistic preferences. They are strategic responses to genuine organizational challenges.

Enterprises across industries are recognizing that workplace design influences outcomes they care about. Recruitment conversations increasingly include office tours. Employee surveys consistently rank workspace quality among factors affecting satisfaction. Real estate decisions are rising to executive committee agendas rather than remaining buried in facilities departments.

The design approaches demonstrated in the Greenland Intercity Space Station offer templates that can be adapted across contexts. The specific formal language (the boxes stacked within open volumes) might not suit every organization. But the underlying thinking, the commitment to enabling collaboration while preserving privacy, to creating visual interest while maintaining functional efficiency, to using materials strategically rather than decoratively: the underlying design principles translate across industries and geographies.

For brands and enterprises examining their own workplace environments, the Greenland Intercity Space Station demonstrates what becomes possible when design thinking is applied with strategic intentionality. The physical container surrounding your organization shapes countless interactions daily. The interactions, accumulated over months and years, significantly influence your culture, your output, and your ability to attract and retain the people who drive your success.

What might your organization accomplish if your physical environment actively supported your strategic ambitions rather than merely housing your operations?