MATSU flagship showroom was located on Zaojiabang Rd, Xuhui District, Shanghai. It was originally set up in 2010,  7 years ago. This time, Andreas Thomczyk, one of the co-founders of anySCALE, and person-in-charge of Shanghai project cooperated to design this flagship showroom. The showroom features both German preciseness and new era innovation spirit, reflecting "spring" vitality. 

Moving away from the traditional and restrictive, the reforms aim at balancing flexible shared environments with private spaces. The central challenge was to break free of the spatial limitations imposed by the many pillars and excessive partitioning. To produce an illusion of an airy, generous space, we wrapped semi-transparent polycarbonate around each wall and niche, lending a fluid and mysterious aesthetic to the area.

The whole showroom is predominated by gray color. The wall, the floor and the ceiling use delicate gray color, while the carpet is in poppy color and poppy pattern, forming a sharp contrast. The showroom displays MATSU’s innovative furniture on shelves that represents the future of design for working spaces. This is not just a typical showroom, you can also have communication, meeting and talks here, just to name a few, even an fashion event. 

Q & A ｜With Andreas Thomczyk

M：MATSU

A：Andreas Thomczyk   

M： As the designer of the whole showroom, which part do you like best and why you like it most?

A:   I like the contrast of decent grey color tones for wall, floor and ceilings with the poppy colored rugs and tatoos. We have designed this contrast representive to a persons personality: Decent, elegant but also agile, fresh and striking. It is a combination of qualities i can also see within Matsu's product portfolio.

M： As you said, gray is the predominant color, and together with poppy color and graffiti pattern, it forms a sharp contrast. Can you introduce why you chose graffiti and cartoon patterns? 

A:  When i was a child cartoons were about to become more and more popular. Pop-art has widely used elements from cartoons. During the process of our worlds digitalisation our day to day communication has become shorter and shorter. If you compare of how we reduce complex sentences to a few characters when messaging it always reminds me to cartoons. I like the way cartoons illustrate stories by simple words and poppy simplified drawings. Reduction of complexity to the possible minimum focus on the essence: "BANG... here we are. Our new show room is opened..."

M： How to break the limits of construction structure?

A:   The space is very much defined by the structure of the building. The structure is not generous nor regular but composed by many pillars and walls and therefore hardly creates a single generous space. In other word it is a challenge to make the space look consistent and grand. We therefore have proposed a consistent backdrop made out of semitransparent polycarbonate which is wrapped almost around each single piece of wall and each single niche. The uniform material in almost all areas let the structure become less disruptive.