Matrix Design

The design inverts the conventional relationship between administrative control and spatial productivity.

For our Shanghai Headquarters, rather than confining our project teams to hermetically sealed interiors, we introduced a continuous indoor-outdoor framework dedicated to restorative movement. The plan transitions from a ground-floor sports court to an elevated rooftop sanctuary punctuated by gravel paths, flexible seating matrices, and living pine elements.

This integration of unstructured social zones functions as a crucial cognitive baseline, ensuring high-intensity design workflows are balanced by immediate physical relief.

_project: Matrix Design Shanghai Headquarters
_design: Matrix Design
_location: Shanghai, China

We refused to treat sustainability as a cosmetic afterthought. Partnering with material pioneers NANOxARCH, the team developed a closed-loop sourcing system that embedded 8 primary classes of upcycled materials across 3,361 square meters of spatial volume during the initial drafting stages.

Verified metrics from Carbonstop confirm that this early intervention slashed embodied carbon by 7.18% and kept 15 tons of industrial waste active within the workspace economy.

_project: Matrix Design Shanghai Headquarters
_design: Matrix Design
_location: Shanghai, China

The layout functions as an architectural system, not a collection of rooms.

For our Shanghai Headquarters, we utilized a continuous array of high-density dark timber grilles to establish a strong structural cadence. Rather than allocating fixed square footage to standard meeting rooms, the plan opens into a massive, stepped communal forum that serves as an open-source experimental zone.

This tiered infrastructure continuously adapts—acting as an intimate focus area in the morning, a spontaneous collaborative lounge at noon, and a global digital design forum by evening. It is an architecture designed to host evolution.

_project: Matrix Design Shanghai Headquarters
_design: Matrix Design
_location: Shanghai, China

The design inverts the conventional relationship between operational efficiency and environmental exposure.

For the debut workshop of our commercial design brand, JOS, we discarded the heavy partitioning of standard office layouts to create a workspace that active layers indoor micro-architecture with outdoor ecosystems. The team introduced high-texture sandblasted walls and curated sample displays into the main circulation path, while integrating a continuous deep balcony populated by live olive and pine trees to function as a natural cognitive buffer zone.

This cross-boundary landscape intervention allows our project teams to step out of high-intensity digital modeling and instantly reset their sensory focus under open sunlight, returning to the drafting table with unburdened clarity.

_project: Matrix Design Shanghai Headquarters
_design: Matrix Design
_location: Shanghai, China

The design inverts the conventional relationship between operational scaling and spatial permanency.

For the main operational floor of our Shanghai Headquarters, we shifted away from structural partitioning to introduce an open campus infrastructure. Instead of fixed furniture specs, the space relies on an atomic component system paired with intelligent lighting modes that switch instantly via digital protocols. The work zones transition fluently—flanked by filtered daylight on one side and an outdoor terrace with living greenery on the other, balancing deep psychological safety with high organizational pulse.

_project: Matrix Design Shanghai Headquarters
_design: Matrix Design
_location: Shanghai, China

The design inverts the conventional relationship between computational logic and emotional texture.

While the primary conference suite pays homage to Carlo Scarpa's classic geometric layering through a striking dual-ring feature, its underlying ex*****on is entirely forward-looking. The intricate grain sequences, acoustic panel density, and lighting alignments were developed through a digital workflow that mapped behavioral data against material properties. This integration of tech and craft allowed our team to eliminate manual guesswork, focusing our energy on the sensory precision of the physical space.

_project: Matrix Design
_location: Shanghai, China

The design inverts the conventional relationship between operational efficiency and architectural warmth.

For our Shanghai Headquarters, situated at the historic intersection of Yangpu’s local neighborhood and the North Bund development, the challenge was to establish a highly digitized, future-proof work environment without losing human scaling. We chose to lean back—stripping away corporate branding and exposing the authentic texture of dark wood grilles and heavily veined, backlit stone.

The layout functions as an open-source laboratory. Behind the calm, gallery-like surfaces are spatial micro-zones optimized for seamless cross-border technical workflows, enabling our global teams to collaborate without physical constraints.

_project: Matrix Design Shanghai Headquarters
_design: Matrix Design
_location: Shanghai, China

For years, urban renewal was synonymous with ‘facade lifting’. This project in Ho Chi Minh City inversed that logic.

Phu My Hung CR2 presented complex ‘non-standard’ constraints and uncontrolled costs. Matrix Design believed design should not be a limited aesthetic exercise, but a scalable product operating system.

We developed a 'Design Manual' that dissected the non-standard reality into precise, prefabricated modules. High-precision factory prefabrication and rapid on-site assembly controlled quality and environmental impact. By combining BIM technology with an essentialist approach, we built dwelling 'certainty' for global nomadic elites.

_project: Phu My Hung CR2
_design: Matrix Design
_location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

The standard brief for a serviced apartment guest room is: make it clean, make it neutral, make it inoffensive.

CR2 started from a different question. For an expatriate executive on a three-week assignment, what does it actually mean for a room to work? Not aesthetically — functionally. We identified four baseline conditions: sound, light, ventilation, power. Everything else is secondary.

The ceiling integration detail came out of that logic. Lighting and ventilation behind the same continuous plane isn't a style decision — it's what happens when you take acoustic and air quality seriously enough to hide the evidence. The storage system was built to ergonomic tolerances and embedded into the module standard, so the dimensions don't vary across the six floor plan types in the building. Factory prefabrication handled the precision; on-site assembly handled the speed. BIM coordination across Shanghai and Ho Chi Minh City meant the concealed works — where most retrofit quality problems originate — could be monitored in real time.

The room doesn't ask anything of the person living in it. That's the brief we actually solved.

_project: Phu My Hung CR2 Serviced Apartment
_design: Matrix Design
_location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

The conventional approach to a serviced apartment retrofit is to neutralize. Strip out what's dated, install what's current, deliver something that offends no one.
CR2 went the other direction. The brick geometry of the existing structure — a product of tropical construction logic and fifteen years of weathering — was kept as the primary surface material in the lobby. Not preserved as a feature, but used as a foundation. Warm timber panels were introduced against it, not to soften it, but to give the masonry something to resolve against.

BIM coordination across the Shanghai–Ho Chi Minh City supply chain allowed our team to monitor concealed works in real time — which, on a retrofit with non-standard existing conditions, is the difference between a design intent and a built outcome. The ceiling integration detail, which puts lighting and ventilation behind a single continuous plane, required factory-level prefabrication. It held.

_project: Phu My Hung CR2 Serviced Apartment
_design: Matrix Design
_location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam