Spawton Architecture's Social Media Department decided that last week would be Elevator Appreciation Week and if you were following our IG feed you will have seen a selection of the projects here at Spawton Architecture featuring lift design. We aimed to tell some of the stories about their design, inspiration or construction. See our IG account at: www.instagram.com/spawtonarchitecture
The lift; a tiny (usually windowless) space, an often unconsidered part of a building design but something we all, particularly in a place like Hong Kong, spend a considerable amount of time inside. A small, condensed element of design, a place where the occupier often stares at, studying the wall to avoid an awkward social interaction. A piece of technology, of machinery that you must touch and engage with if you are to get to your destination.
Original goods lift at Artisan Hub
Artisan Hub lifts
In this blog we feature the lifts from Artisan Hub, to give an insight into our design process and the attention to detail we apply to our projects. An adaptable reuse project we finished in 2016, Artisan Hub is a New World Development building which we found in a poor state of repair having been neglected for years and subdivided into tiny individual units. Our approach on the project was to celebrate the buildings past as an industrial factory building and also to be inspired by found items and finishes as we commenced the work and explored the corridors. We wanted a lift to match the interior design of the building and to be part of the experience so we picked a simple pallet of materials keeping the interior light and fresh but with an industrial feel.
On the roof of the existing building we found and retained a small piece of ad-hoc flooring. One of the old tenants had utilized some old off cuts of white stone and filled the gaps with concrete and from this we took inspiration for our supersized terrazzo floor using off cuts from one of New World's residential projects.
As found ad-hoc floor finish became the inspiration for our supersized terrazzo floors
The terrazzo floor is used in the main lobby and the lift lobbies throughout the building and we ran this finish inside the lift car itself. The handrail and dado is made in hot dip galvanised steel to give the industrial character and a corrugated steel car wall is reminiscent of a simple and cost effective building material but used in a more considered way.
The lift buttons are usually the one thing in a lift that "can't" be changed. The manufacturer has their standard buttons from which you can choose from and they are universal. Sometimes you can pick a font or a colour or maybe the surround but rarely can you design your own buttons.
In the existing lifts we found old fashioned, white plastic buttons and wanted to emulate the design in our new lifts. Usually the modern buttons are touch controlled and no longer have a mechanical action. We persuaded the manufacturer (and the client!) to use an old technology and allow us to affix a separate button on top of the standard button.
Original button panel
Initially our plan was to use a plastic button similar to the existing one that we found. Our plan was to have them hand carved by a majong tile maker to celebrate this traditional craft which can still be found in some small shops around Kowloon. We sourced a suitable white plastic from a sign maker near our office and he hand made the blank discs. These blanks we took to the majong tile carver and in our best Cantonese tried to explain what we wanted and why we were doing it! The buttons were carved and painted but the result was not quite what we, or the client were looking for.
Experimenting: plastic lift buttons carved by majong tile maker
Carving majong tiles
Back at the drawing board we researched alternative ideas. First the material, it had to be something that would carve more easily than the plastic to allow the characters to be perfect under scrutiny. We decided that stone may be an option and trawled the chop making stalls in Ma Wan Lane, Sheung Wan. After many rejections (and confused faces) we found a stone carver willing to take up the challenge and a stone which would be visually suitable and translucent when illuminated from the rear. Next we had to decide upon the font; we wanted to use Chinese characters and our Project Manager, Henry told us of a story which perfectly fitted our needs.
A local graphic designer who lived near our site was digitizing the Beiwei Kaishu style of calligraphy of a famous sign-writer whose work was prevalent on shop signs and neon lights across Hong Kong in the 1950s and 60s. He wanted to preserve the disappearing art one character at a time. Read more about the story here:
We purchased the characters we needed, a traditional font used in financial or commercial situations rather than the everyday characters used for numerals generally, and our chop maker got to work.
Hand carved stone buttons; font by Yeung Ka, carving by Kingstone Engraving and Printing
The stone illuminates when the button is pressed
Concept to installation. These lift buttons were a labour of love.
Outside the lift car we turned our attention to the floor indicators. Our design was to be a tribute to the dying Hong Kong craft of neon. We developed a simple graphic representing the section of the building, each floor a simple line of neon which would illuminate to show where the lift was located. The lift lobby being a refuge and accommodating a fire fighting lift meant there were strict restrictions on materials we could use and neon was not one of them! We had to design a fire rated enclosure to separate the neon from the lobby and we chose Georgian wired glass to serve as the fire resistant glazing.
The font of the floor numbers was based on the stenciled floor numbers found in the escape stairs throughout the building.
Bringing the story full circle we come back to our original goods lift found at the beginning of the projects (see the image at the start of this post). Our client had indulged our designers whim from the outset of the project; we had photographed, labeled, cataloged and stored a number of items that we had found in the original building. We had packaged and retained furniture, signs, gates, ladders, pieces of flooring and other such junk - oh, and the lift car of the old goods lift!
We decided to up-cycle the wall and ceiling panels of the old goods lift into as-found art pieces and display them in the main lift lobby of the building. Together with their “museum tag” the panels are displayed opposite the new lifts.
Up-cycled goods lift panels
We at Spawton Architecture always try to design with a narrative in mind. A storytelling device for the building user to discover, to give ourselves an inspiration and a reason for what we do and to create a unique end product which resonates with its site and history. See the rest of Artisan Hub on our website: http://www.spawton.com/artisan-hub