CIFI Sales Center Chongqing by Ippolito Fleitz Group

The new sales centre for real estate developer CIFI in Chongqing is more than just an elegant sales space for new-build apartments - it is a symbol of customer desires and an important communication tool for CIFI...

Architect: Ippolito Fleitz Group
Client: CIFI Group Ltd.
Location: Chongqing, China
Year: 2019
Size: 1,700 sq.m.
Team: Ruth Calimlim, Wei Gao, Peiyu Ho, Peter Ippolito, Jose Miso, David Tong, Yu Yan
Photography: Highlite Images (Spencer Huang)

From the architect: Millennials are China’s most affluent demographic. They are young, wealthy and lifestyle-oriented. Yet they also long to experience nature and to live a sophisticated, artistic lifestyle that transports them away from the world of the fast-paced mega city. So the new sales centre for real estate developer CIFI in Chongqing is more than just an elegant sales space for new-build apartments – it is a symbol of customer desires and an important communication tool for CIFI.

The iconic building represents a living concept in harmony with nature and with a sense of gracious spaciousness. Which is why the sales centre is more than just a sales machine; it invites interested parties to enjoy a relaxing and informative visit. Once the real estate sales phase is over, the building can be repurposed as a restaurant or club house.

Chongqing in southwest China has a population of over 30 million, making it one of the largest metropolises in the world. On the outskirts of this mega city, in a wooded and mountainous region, stands the striking CIFI Sales Center – an exceptional meeting place that, viewed from the outside, already resembles an art gallery. Inside the fully glazed building, furniture and works of art function as exhibits: Reflecting the surrounding landscape in their form, structure and surface quality, they foster a dialogue between nature and art. The customer’s desires and aspirations are deliberately targeted here. To underscore the gallery-like character of the space, we have used a colour spectrum of finely graduated white and grey tones.

Thanks to its translucent glass façades, the two-storey sales building merges with the surrounding landscape to form a harmonious whole. This establishes a connection to nature, which encourages a continuous dialogue between inside and outside, between man and nature. Thus visitors are reminded that the new residential area is closely connected to nature – a bucolic refuge beyond Chongqing. The alignment of the glass façades and the generously sized panes produce a spacious and generous spatial effect: 1,700 m2 of inside-outside flow on the horizontal plane.

The sales centre not only opens into nature, it also opens toward the customer – in the form of an intuitive customer journey over two floors. On touring each floor, visitors are not able to see everything at once – this is a deliberate ploy, as it reveals the CIFI residential world to them much more intensively. On the lower floor, everything is about brand and place, while the upper floor introduces the construction project itself, its architecture and design.

The various components of the offering – nature, culture and project – are illuminated from different perspectives and presented in the best light, also using multimedia. Thus the customer journey opens up new perspectives to visitors in a dual sense – introducing them to an architecture with a view and to a whole new way of living.

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