Interior design: Haikou Gaoxingli Insun Cinema and Coffee Bar, China

‘Footprints fade, waves embrace’, is the legend provided by the Hong Kong-based architecture studio One Plus Partnership Ltd. on its website to define the concept and headline the interior design to which we are dedicating these lines. It is the Haikou Gaoxingli Insun Cinema and Coffee Bar, located in Haikou, in the north of the island of Hainan, in southern China. To find more information about this space, we must go to the digital publication Architizer, in which we find an extensive statement about it by the heads of the architectural studio.

‘We wanted to create something related to the ocean’, they begin by saying, since the South China Sea surrounds the island of Hainan. This is how they justify the curves that are the protagonists of the interior design of the cinema and the bar, since, let’s remember, ‘the waves embrace’. As for the material that is ubiquitously used, almost exclusively bricks, they state that ‘they are made from the sand which lay on the beach’. So, with these premises in mind, the architects created a design that arranges the bricks precisely so that the overlapping waves they simulate can be seen ‘from any angle’.

Regarding the atmosphere the architects have created with their design, they say that the bricks are ‘rough on the surface, but the atmosphere is softer than you imagine’. We have found other suggestive statements, which fly with a poetic air from the contained emotion that runs through this space: ‘the bricks are carefully rearranged like the books of a midnight library’; ‘anyone could smell happiness as if it was a thought’; ‘on the floor you can see a bubbly mascot (…), with actions of him floating, dancing and skipping’; ‘the colours resemble kids with pastels that paint around in chairs and pillars that keep the areas together like a cage’.

In any case, beyond these inspired raptures that the interior design of the Haikou Gaoxingli Insun Cinema and Coffee Bar incites in its creators, it also catches our attention. That’s why we’re bringing it to you. Yes, that’s right, we are very positively impressed by how, through the simple, yet original arrangement of bricks, the interior design of this place evokes the crests of the churning and boiling waves of the ocean. At the same time, the contemplation of the spaces is vaguely reminiscent of the muqarnas we are so accustomed to in our geography. Finally, the lighting inside the bricks, on the columns, the floor and the ceiling, seduces us decisively as a detail as inspired as the rest of this inspirational place. Enjoy the gallery of images!