Sò Studio Turns a 38 m² Back-of-House Block in Qinhuangdao into a Corner Concept Store

Thirty-eight square metres is barely enough for a studio apartment. Sò Studio, led by Liu Mengjie, Wu Yifan and Pan Yupeng, has fitted a full retail concept into that footprint for the D+dd multi-brand store in Qinhuangdao. The building sits at the corner of a community square, surrounded by an auditorium, residential blocks and structures from several different decades. It started life as a back-of-house support space, the kind of building a neighbourhood walks past without noticing.

The interest here is not the size but the attitude. Sò Studio does not try to disguise a service shed as a boutique. It accepts the plain box and makes a small number of precise moves: a curved steel canopy, a projecting box window, a clad column and a kit of timber frames. Together they turn a leftover building into a piece of the square's social life. We think it is a useful lesson in how much a renovation can do with very little.

A Pavilion on the Square

Seen at blue hour, the store reads less like a shop and more like a lantern. The pale rendered volume stands apart from the brick apartment blocks around it, and its glazed front glows across the paving. Because the square is busy with pedestrians and neighbours, this visibility matters. The building has to announce itself without shouting, and the white render against dark brick does exactly that.

The box window is the smartest gesture on the elevation. It pushes out of the wall like a framed picture, offering a single lit vignette to people crossing the square. In a building this small, one well-placed opening does more work than a full glass storefront.

The Canopy as Threshold

The curved metal canopy, held by tension rods, is the project's main architectural flourish. It shelters the glazed entrance and a wood-and-stone bench, giving the corner somewhere to pause before you step inside. That bench is a generous detail. It gives part of the shopfront back to the square as seating, which suits a neighbourhood where people linger outdoors.

The illuminated script sign stays small and handwritten in feel. Paired with the thin steel canopy, it keeps the shopfront at a domestic scale that matches the surrounding housing.

A Desk at the Window

Seen from inside, the box window becomes a deep seat or desk with a lamp, a glass pendant and a few books. It looks onto a paved courtyard and a concrete volume beyond. This is where the project feels least like retail. The setting suggests a reading nook in someone's flat rather than a sales counter, and we read that as deliberate.

Low evening sun washes the white wall beside the opening, so the window works as a light instrument as well as a frame. For a concept store selling a lifestyle as much as products, staging the interior as a lived-in room is a sharp commercial choice.

Column, Beam and the Glazed Corner

A speckled stone-clad column below a boxed beam anchors the interior. In many renovations an awkward structural element like this gets hidden or painted out. Here it becomes the room's main object, set against the glazed corner where bare winter trees fill the view.

The display table follows the same logic, with a stone base, a timber frame and a glass top. Stone appears at the points that carry weight, visually or literally, which gives a tiny room a clear hierarchy.

Timber Frames and Glass Cases

Vertical timber posts, portal frames and glass-shelved cabinets make up a consistent furniture kit. The frames divide the room into display bays without closing it off, so light from the window wall still reaches the back. Glass shelving holds single objects, such as a cap or a book, giving each item space.

This restraint is necessary in 38 square metres. A conventional fit-out of solid shelving would make the space feel crowded. The open timber frames instead keep the room readable as one volume.

Colour Overhead, Carpet Underfoot

A yellow ceiling plane and recess, paired with a dark carpet inset in the floor, mark out zones without any walls. It is a cheap and effective method: colour and texture define where you stop, browse or try something on. The yellow also warms the light, offsetting the cool tones of stone and glass.

Garments Against Brick

Clothing hangs against a pale brick-tiled wall, with garment rails built into timber posts and benches. Sunlight stripes the strip-tiled floor. The brick nods to the residential blocks outside, so the interior and the square share a material language. A white shirt on a brick wall, lit by low sun, sells the brand more effectively than any signage.

Plans and Drawings

The plans show how tightly the angular corner footprint sits against a neighbouring stair core. The coloured plan maps the programme clearly: a central daybed, a yellow corner zone, fitting rooms and a long timber shelf. The axonometrics explain the curved paved edge and the tensioned canopy ties. The sections and elevations record the original flat-roofed brick volume, so you can measure how little was added to change its character.

Why This Project Matters

Chinese cities hold thousands of small service buildings tucked into residential estates, mostly ignored. D+dd shows how one can become a neighbourhood asset rather than a demolition candidate. Sò Studio kept the existing box and spent its effort on the threshold, the window and one structural column. That is where the public experiences the building.

For retail design in particular, the project is a reminder that atmosphere does not need square metres. A desk at a window, a bench under a canopy and a column treated as an object give this tiny store more presence on its square than many larger shops achieve. We would like to see more estates treat their leftover buildings this way.

D+dd Friendship Bay Store by Sò Studio (lead architects Liu Mengjie, Wu Yifan and Pan Yupeng), Qinhuangdao, China. Area: 38 m². Completed 2025. Photography by Minjie Wang.

About the Studio

Share Your Own Work on uni.xyz

If projects like this are the kind of work you want to make, uni.xyz is a place to publish your own, find collaborators, and enter design competitions.