- Project: Spanish GOJE Slate Exhibition Hall
- Architect: Topway Space Design
- Location: China, Guangdong
- Year: 2022
- Area: 1000 m2
- Photography: Ou Yangyun
The Spanish GOJE Slate Exhibition Hall, designed by Topway Space Design, transforms the conventional material showroom into an immersive gallery of geometry, shadow, and reflection. Completed in 2022 in Guangdong, China, the 1,000 m² space redefines how natural slate can be experienced—not as static product samples, but as living elements shaping poetic architecture.
Geometry as Concept: Slash Cuts and Diamonds
The design abandons orthogonal norms. Instead, it draws from the dynamics of oblique lines—forms that signify both stability and instability, much like the Leaning Tower of Pisa versus the pyramids of Egypt.
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The lobby reinterprets slate through diamond-cut geometries, evoking facets of a precious stone.
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Slanted walls and ceilings create a sense of motion and instability, balanced by carefully orchestrated light.
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Space feels like a three-dimensional collage of fragments and memory, more art gallery than showroom.
This geometric language makes every corner unpredictable, offering new perspectives and reflections with each step.
Borrowing Light: A Sacred Atrium
The building originally admitted light only from its west façade. Topway restructured it by:
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Carving a three-story atrium into the east corner.
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Introducing an inverted triangular skylight with mirrored slopes to refract sunlight twice.
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Creating a dramatic “divine light” effect, transforming beams into sacred elements that animate the entire hall.
This choreography of light and shadow transforms the space into an existential journey, from darkness and compression to revelation and release.
From Darkness to Contemplation
Visitors move through spaces that alternate between shadow and illumination. Natural light becomes an architectural material, establishing a rhythm of time within the hall.
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Diagonal wooden ceilings blur spatial boundaries.
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Cement slate surfaces create warmth against cooler light.
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Seasonal sunlight shifts emotional tones—from winter cold to summer warmth—embedding time itself into the architecture.
The result is an experience that encourages introspection and emotional connection, where architecture becomes a mirror for memory and meaning.
Fantasy Gallery: Technology and Texture
Beyond the narrow oblique corridor lies the fantasy gallery, a multi-functional space for roadshows and art salons.
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Dark volcanic-textured slate pairs with metallic walls.
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An LED screen expands space into infinity, stimulating imagination and blurring real and virtual.
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The ceiling continues the diamond-cut motif, enveloping visitors in angular drama.
Here, slate is not just building material but an active medium of storytelling and technology.
Courtyard and Poetic Tranquility
Transitioning outdoors, the design reveals an open-air courtyard with a slate pathway and tea pavilion. This space contrasts the intensity of the galleries with a serene, almost monastic calm.
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Natural light, slate textures, and simple garden elements evoke Eastern poetic traditions.
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Circulation follows the principle of “every step reveals a scenic view”, offering surprises at each turn.
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The courtyard becomes a place for tea, reflection, and dialogue with nature.
Beyond a Showroom
By layering geometric deconstruction, light manipulation, and spatial narrative, the project transforms the exhibition hall into:
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A scene experience,
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An art gallery,
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A social space for contemplation and exchange.
Slate becomes more than a product—it is reinterpreted as a material of memory, poetry, and human experience.
Why This Project Matters
The Spanish GOJE Slate Exhibition Hall by Topway Space Design challenges the role of the showroom in contemporary architecture. It shows that material spaces can transcend commerce to become artful, contemplative environments, where visitors engage with light, geometry, and emotion as much as with the products themselves.
Floor Plan
