KEEP PATCHING
We aim to make a modest effort
Unlimited updates
Embracing tomorrow’s lifestyle
—default
Wutopia Lab was commissioned by the digital fashion brand ifanr to design the Popped Orange – Future Society House, located in Guangzhou’s T.I.T Creative Park. Completed and opened in September 2022, this vertical micro-social complex features the “Light Tower” as its centerpiece and uses “Sugar” as a metaphor. Developed by ifanr in collaboration with Wutopia Lab through an open design experiment called Keep Patching, this project revitalizes urban community and lifestyle spaces.
Serving as a community testing ground, the complex explores flexible uses including coffee shops, bars, exhibitions, theaters, and sightseeing. It also marks the first Guangzhou model of Wutopia Lab’s urban micro-space revitalization plan initiated in 2015.
The Ambition of Two Creators
Wilson, founder of ifanr, views life as a continuous process of patching—where not everything needs to be overturned and restarted. For him, patching is not just repair but a tool to build tomorrow’s lifestyle. This philosophy of self-updating inspired the value proposition of ifanr: Keep Patching (infinite updating), and led to the creation of the “Patch_in LAB community experiment” spanning five domains: People, Art, Tech, City, and Howto (Tools).
Wilson’s focus is on exploring smarter, more efficient, sustainable, aesthetic, equal, and inclusive ways of living. He believes community experiments not only explore future life but embody the lifestyle of tomorrow.
Yu Ting, founder of Wutopia Lab from Shanghai, believes that new paradigms of complex systems can break architectural stagnation rooted in classical mechanics. Yu approaches each project as a complex system of hyperlinked elements. Architecture, in his view, is not mere objects but events intimately connected with diverse identities, lives, thoughts, and virtual spaces.
Though coming from different backgrounds, Wilson and Yu shared a vision and decided to collaborate on the Future House project.
Open Design Does Not Mean Taking Risks
The Future Society House lies adjacent to the T.I.T Creative Park, transformed from the former Guangzhou Textile Machinery Factory site. On the other side, it faces the soon-to-be-completed Guangzhou Science and Technology Museum and Art Museum. Positioned at this boundary, the Future House acts as an orange patch in the ongoing urban renewal: bridging the past and future, blending online and offline experiences.
Japanese community designer Akira Yamazaki once said, “The goal is not to design an island visited once by a million people, but to create an island where 10,000 people return 100 times.” Inspired by this, Yamazaki created the abstract elliptical island called White Garden within the diverse TIT park. At its core stands the cube-shaped Future House, symbolizing a sugar cube.
This initial concept was intentionally left open for experimentation, with simple rules allowing flexibility, tolerance, and the accommodation of diverse opinions and minor emotions. This openness enables the creation of events beyond the designer’s foresight, making the Future House an ongoing design experiment — a complex system combining fixed parts and growing extensions to form a sustainable and evolving whole.
Future Society House: Three Layers
First Layer – Ground Floor
Sunset Room: The central island-shaped circular bar on the first floor serves as the social heart of the space. Seating is arranged freely around the bar, accommodating about 60 people indoors. When the folding doors open, the coffee space and White Garden merge into one, transforming into a party venue for up to 180 guests. This flexibility supports diverse usage scenarios.
TALLLK Café and Sunset Club
Wilson once questioned if there were too many orange circles indoors. Shanghailander’s reply was, “Exactly.” The varying shades of orange resemble the warm light at sunset, embedded within the walls. These orange circles and semicircles in the Popped Orange space reflect and illuminate the atmosphere, evoking relaxation, joy, and tenderness at dusk, aligning with the “Sunset Club” concept of Future Society.
Sunset represents the transition from day to night. As darkness falls, the coffee bar transforms into the “Goddess Amusement Hall Bar.” Gentle lighting filters through the wine cabinet, blending the ambiance with the essence of the space.
The first floor hosts daily operations including TALLLK Café, Black Host hand-brewed coffee, and Spirit Line liquor. Special collaborations and flash mobs enable dynamic business experiments. Additionally, ifanr’s “Sugar Factory” launched the ReMake.Space “Desktop Plan,” merging living scenes with desktop peripherals.
Second Layer – Middle Floor
The middle layer features an orange cube floating above the White Garden, symbolizing ifanr’s product philosophy: “A good product is a candy.” The Future Society House is this vibrant orange candy within the T.I.T Creative Park.
Air Show – Tiantai Art Museum: The second floor is designed to be flexible and versatile, without fixed partitions. Below 3 meters height, white exhibition walls create a clean backdrop, while the original concrete above remains. Movable sunlight panels divide the space for activities. Natural light pours in through elongated strip windows, square skylights, and glass doors, enhancing the ambiance.
The first event during the trial operation was the “Shot on iPhone Street Topography · Image Exhibition,” co-organized by ifanr and Apple. Focusing on street artisans, it “prints” urban images at risk of disappearing. The space promises more exciting events and surprises with every visit.
The second floor operates as the Air Show rooftop art museum, designed to easily transform into a live house, shared workspace, performance venue, or party space.
Third Layer – Rooftop
Secret Roof: The rooftop is a garden and a secret party paradise. With unobstructed skies, visitors can observe the moon’s trajectory at night, giving rise to the “Moon Camp.” Wutopia Lab designed two access paths to the roof, allowing flexible management of entrances and exits during events.
Port and Sky Connection: From the rooftop, the west side overlooks the brick walls of the old factory buildings in T.I.T Creative Park, while the east side offers views of the under-construction Guangzhou Science and Technology Museum and the completed Guangzhou Art Museum. Positioned between old industrial heritage and new technological life, this rooftop provides a unique panoramic view of Guangzhou and beyond. It’s less a secret location and more a moment in time within the city’s evolving history.
Visitors can feel the wind’s speed and glimpse landmarks such as Guangzhou Tower nearby.
The rooftop functions daily as the Moon Camp. Special events include the Port, an engaging and ceremonial space that can transform into a dance floor, terrace camp, or barbecue area.
Life Is a Journey of Constant Patching
Open design requires continuous adaptation during the design process, adjusting to on-site conditions without altering the original framework—this process is called patching.
The Minaret
Wilson suggested that the outdoor steel staircase should be artistic. Wutopia Lab crafted the orange main body of the Future Society House using steel, sun panels, and white elements, with the staircase serving as a light tower. The 11.27-meter-tall light tower is designed to be lightweight and independent, not attached to the main building structure.
Structural engineer Lao Hu installed a 300mm×300mm independent steel column to support the staircase.
The semi-transparent light tower functions as vertical circulation for the three-story Future Society House and doubles as an outdoor 3D park or exhibition gallery. The staircase spirals around the steel column, featuring cantilevered resting platforms in four directions without support points. This complex spatial structure requires considerable torsional stiffness.
Lao Hu used 3D modeling to analyze stresses and designed steel steps welded inside ladder beams to act as structural components, resulting in a lightweight yet strong design. Visitors can climb the tower after visiting the exhibition hall and rooftop, enjoying panoramic views of Guangzhou landmarks including Guangzhou Tower, Chigang Tower, T.I.T Water Tower, and the nearby museums and gardens.
White Garden
Wutopia Lab designed an elliptical white garden on the ground floor, borderless and preserving existing trees. The goal was to transform the originally sloped, chaotic site into a pure, clean space. Precision was key, ensuring the ellipse’s accuracy and clarifying scattered boundaries.
The layout was determined by centering the ellipse and evenly distributing 24 center angles of 15° each. Composite positioning methods—using angles, arc lengths, and distances—ensured accurate site layout and data correction.
Tree positions and soil elevations were surveyed to maintain the garden’s harmony. Detailed designs like gap-style drainage ditches, concealed linear light strips, and hidden water outlets under landscape bridges ensured the garden’s purity and prevented interference with the landscape aesthetics.
The floor uses whitewashed stone, while the stage floor is made of redwashed stone. After consideration, Wilson and Atu convinced the team to abandon sky-blue stone as a sunken floor. A white crescent-shaped pool defines the interior and exterior garden boundaries. Visitors cross an arch bridge to an inner square with curved seating, entering ifanr’s “ifland if universe.” Circular elements around trees and entrances resemble planets in a miniature universe.
On weekdays, visitors can enjoy a lemon cold extract under the trees in solitude, or attend outdoor concerts with friends after work. Weekends bring a variety of community activities such as markets, talk shows, yoga, and swing dance. This vibrant venue is the site of engaging human events. When interior curtains close, the garden becomes a spectator stand.
IFANR’s diverse operating model breaks industry boundaries. KEEP PATCHING means this garden will continuously grow, update, and remain “unfinished.”
Lighting
Future Society House operates a rich community scene, switching between weekday coffee mode and late-night bar mode with a single click using Lighting.patch. The landscape lighting features two color temperatures: warm and cold. The orange building blocks are warmed by 3000K floodlights, while 4000K cold light washes over the translucent sunlight panels on the light tower, creating a dance of light and shadow.
Indoor lighting balances commercial display and community life. It softly outlines original structural lines for a natural tone. Track lights highlight the bar counter like theater spotlights, enhancing the performance experience as customers watch baristas and bartenders at work. Three-dimensional lighting in booth areas creates rhythmic shadows, while seating near windows maintains moderate brightness to blend with the outside, preserving comfort and atmosphere.
Driven by IFANR’s pioneering spirit in shaping future communities, the lighting integrates architecture, landscape, operations, and symbolism to create vibrant and dynamic light and shadow experiences.
Popped Orange
Wilson shared a live photo of the Future House’s white facade, leading to a sudden change of mind: switching the facade color to orange, inspired by the ifanr logo. While white is common, orange demands boldness and calm confidence. After adjustments, a vibrant Popped Orange emerged, standing out against the gray industrial ruins.
Striped Roof
Due to the pandemic, the team couldn’t visit the site frequently, slowing updates but allowing refinement. Noticing that the orange facade ended at the roof parapet, with the roof and parapet interior white, Wilson conceived an idea to honor the demolished Anaya Sea Soul House.
He designed an orange geometric pattern for the roof, formed by skylight booths, entrances, and outdoor bar counters, creating a striking fifth facade that completes the Popped Orange visual theme.
East Elevation
Photos revealed protruding wall pillars and downspouts on the east facade facing the Science Museum, disrupting the original design’s bare wall concept. Rather than restoring the light wall, Atu designed a grille-like texture to visually conceal columns and downspouts, adding decorative detail to the facade.
Adhesive Man: HELLO, I’m Patch
ifanr believes that beyond traditional media like graphics, text, and video, forms such as architecture, salons, courses, art exhibitions, and cafes are also media. Embracing multiculturalism and bold media exploration led to the creation of the “Adhesive Man” — a symbol outlined with adhesive tape and patches, visually embodying the patch concept proposed by ifanr.
Since the Future House is the home of the Adhesive Man, a large figure is displayed on the facade as a statement.
Mutual Understanding and Respect Are Fundamental
An unequal relationship, where one party dominates or the other stubbornly resists, is unhealthy. Although Wilson is an architecture enthusiast, he respects Yu’s expertise. Yu, despite his reputation, remains open to Wilson’s fresh ideas beyond architecture.
This mutual respect and trust inspired creativity that exceeded expectations. This collaborative dynamic ensures that the open design approach carries no undue risk.
Completion Is Just the Beginning
Popped Orange/Future House, as a vibrant community, will bring together like-minded souls, sparking fresh ideas and inspiration continuously. The day of completion marked the start of even more exciting developments.
Wutopia Lab, in collaboration with ifanr’s Sugar Factory, released a limited-edition hard candy charging head inspired by the Future House’s visual identity. This peripheral product exemplifies how architecture will extend beyond physical spaces to subtly influence our daily lives.
Architecture is a powerful tool
Helping us create
Everyday miracles
—Wutopia Lab
Project Drawings
△ Building Generation Diagram
△ Exhibition Hall Changes
△ West Elevation View
△ East Elevation View
△ North Elevation View
△ South Elevation View
△ Section Diagram
△ Section Diagram
△ Folding Door Schematic
Project Information
Project Name: Popped Orange / Future House
Design Company: Wutopia Lab (Architecture, Interior, Landscape)
Lead Architect: Yu Ting (Shanghailander)
Project Architect: Li Hao (Atu)
Design Team: Wang Zhizheng, Jiang Xinping (Intern)
Lighting Consultants: Zhang Chenlu, Wei Shiyu, Du Yuxuan
Deepening Company: Shanghai Sanyi Architectural Design Co., Ltd
Architecture Major: Zhu Yumei, Yang Jia
Structural Major: Hu Wenxiao
Mechanical and Electrical Majors: Shi Jiaying, Mao Yun, Mao Yaqian, Zou Yuheng
Interior Design: Yu Bing, Shen Rui, Shao Bin
Landscape Design: Wang Can, Guo Yuqi
Photography by Wu Siming / ifanr
Video: Wu Siming
(Uncredited photos are all by Wu Siming for ifanr)
Construction Unit: ifanr
Construction Contractor: Heyuan Yuchengju Decoration Co., Ltd
Landscape Contractor: Zhuhai Yuyuan Landscape Engineering Co., Ltd
Project Location: T.I.T Creative Park, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China
Building Area: 177.8 square meters
Design Period: December 2021 – January 2022
Completion Date: August 2022
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