The site is located within the campus, housed in an old yet charming exposed concrete building. The owner is a local brand with a 25-year history — "Pear Café", whose brand image exudes sunlight and greenery. During the design process, we faced multiple challenges, including the conflict between the raw concrete texture and the brand's colors, the contradiction between the spatial scale's detachment and the brand's friendliness, the constraints of a large area with a limited budget, and the need to maintain and eventually return the old building. To address these challenges, we embraced the concepts of "Pear, Pear Tree, and Pear Blossom" to skillfully balance the tension between "motion and stillness" and "movable and immovable" elements in the space.
The pear tree symbolizes "stillness". We emphasized minimalistic decoration and lightweight design to preserve the original character of the exposed concrete, showing respect for the building's authentic texture. The design language is restrained, avoiding excessive interventions. A snow-white pear tree serves as the visual focal point, extending the vertical sightlines and balancing the space's height and depth, while also linking horizontally with ceiling ornaments. The pear blossom represents "motion". Without causing damage to the original flooring, we introduced modular movable furniture inspired by petal shapes. These units can be flexibly rearranged to support dining for 2 to 8 people, offering various combinations such as long tables, square tables, and round tables, injecting a playful spirit into the otherwise cold environment. Coupled with movable designer screens, the space can transition between open and private settings, accommodating different scenarios like casual dining, large-scale lectures, central plaza arrangements, and intimate gatherings. The pear serves as a harmonizing element. We designed a scattered green point system on the ceiling with varying heights to balance the scale of the high space