How do you create a brand space for one of the largest automotive and engineering companies that responds to the urban condition of Beijing and expresses a commitment to sustainability?
To create Hyundai’s Beijing Motorstudio, we turned a former factory building in Beijing’s 798 Art District into a living ecology of interrelated parts — from passive air purification, vegetation and geothermal heating and cooling to exhibitions, programming, and a café. The adaptive reuse of the space focuses on clean, comfortable communal spaces. Dynamic data visualization of the building’s clean, low-impact energy consumption communicates the ways architecture and design impact our environment and quality of life. An outdoor art commission and garden brand the Motorstudio and create a de facto neighborhood gathering space.
For its launch, 2x4 organized and designed the inaugural exhibition, “Social Mobility: Envisioning Bodies in Motion.” Comprising thirty-three works at the intersection of art, design, and imagination, the exhibition explores new conceptions of mobility and the visualization of movement beyond conventional modes of representation. Spanning the global, regional, urban, and individual, it is intended to leave visitors inspired, with a heightened consciousness of the problems and possibilities of how we move.
