Prefix Design Creates a Fashionable Office of its Own in Chengdu, China

2022 IIDA Winner for Small Corporate Office

Once a store on the ground floor of an office building, the now bright and sophisticated Prefix Design studio shows off the prowess of the firm, founded by Liao Shuheng in 2020 to tackle commercial, residential, and branding commissions. To increase the 1,076-square-foot space’s usable floor area, Shuheng and team added a mezzanine, made possible by the 17-foot-high ceiling, while still coming in under the this category’s project limit of 1,000 square meters (roughly 10,500 square feet).

Upstairs is the workplace, but the fashionable downstairs—furnished with a Mario Bellini Camaleonda sofa and a cocktail table by Hangzhou-based Tells Studio, its base influenced by Jeff Koons’s Balloon Dog sculpture—is the calling card for meetings, thanks to its stylish East-West setting. Handmade square red bricks provide warmth and texture inside and out, while the new door-and-window configuration allows for abundant daylight “to make people feel happy,” Shuheng states. The formula is indeed working: Prefix has many projects underway, including a hotel, a café, and even a car wash.

Prefix Design Office: zhou guanling; liao shuheng; zhang yadian; yang chengcheng