With a 12,000 sq.m. area, it is the brand’s largest and is located on the site of a former factory in Jiading district. As well as building a new and iconic facade, Kokaistudios’ renovation extended to creating welcoming, functional interiors for the facility’s ground floor public space. Dynamic, open, and with a strong focus on hospitality, the interiors are in keeping with a design template developed for NIO by Kokaistudios last year and debuted at NIO House in Jinan. In Shanghai, these elements combine to transform a previously unremarkable industrial site into an eye-catching brand beacon, all the while delivering on NIO’s user-first concept.
The former factory’s building comprises three linked volumes. The first houses offices, while the second two combine a reception, waiting for area, and lounge to become a site of imagined ceremony: this is where visitors become initiated into the NIO brand, becoming users of not only NIO’s electric vehicles but also its broader lifestyle concept. Behind these connected buildings is an expansive warehouse, which now serves as a car delivery area.
The most striking element of the renovation is a bright silver facade. A system of vertical aluminum profile louvers follows the curved ‘bridges’ that connect the three buildings, resulting in an undulating exterior and unified flow that appears to move with the viewer. Effectively an open screen masking the linked volumes behind, it affords plentiful natural light into both the office and visitor area. Highly visible from the street, the facade transforms the building into a local landmark while resonating with NIO’s brand identity of purity and elegance.
Further modification to the buildings’ exterior includes smart boxed window frames. Realized in just seven months, the NIO Delivery Center has fast become a landmark in the Jiading district thanks to its distinctive facade. Not only is it highly visible from the street, but it also evokes the sleek lines and smooth movement of the electric vehicles themselves. The interiors are reflective of NIO’s brand principles of pure, human, progressive and sophisticated by way of instruments including a muted palette, nature-inspired materials, multimedia displays, and a palpable focus on comfort. Above all, this is a place of transition: on passing through its various and distinct areas customers emerge as NIO users. Their initiation begins at a welcoming and open reception complete with lifestyle products and a family-oriented play area, before continuing through a dynamic brand experience passageway, and into a spacious hospitality lounge. This carefully planned, on-brand journey culminates in users collecting their vehicles and driving away with a great experience.