Hafary Gallery

In the new Hafary Gallery, the client sought us to elevate and re-imagine ways to engage customers through an immersive experience, one that is informative and impressionable.
As a spectacle, The Gallery enchants one’s imaginations by taking them on a dream-like journey, a series of curated experiential spaces with elements of surrealism. Each area within the Gallery is designed with unique stylistic approach, creating differentiated experiences for customers at every turn, ranging from enigmatic spaces to those found in our everyday lives, i.e. living or bathrooms. Though individually distinct, spaces are coherently themed, where change of style and materials to hint at spatial transitions can only be subtlety felt as one traipses from one zone to the next.

Envisioned as a city of tiles, The Plaza is at the heart – a gathering space and centre of public life, where customers are encouraged to pause, make conversations and contemplate on the array of materials. Meanwhile the Villa boasts the use of long and thin strips of tiles to create a flirtatious screen with interplay of light and shadow hinting the space beyond. The Entrance Pavilion on the other hand challenges the typical use of tiles – creating layered screens, ceiling planes and furniture using a single type of tile. 

More than just mere surface coverings, the project thus adopts an experimental motif to define showroom spaces through tiles in a refreshing way, providing a new expression on the versatility of tiles. Part of the design challenge was thus to maintain experiential excitement through the predominant expression of a singular material, which required delving deep into the nuances of various collections of tiles. Unlike conventional showrooms that often showcase a plethora of collections, limited tiles were judiciously shortlisted to be showcased to reduce visual clutter with an emphasis of drawing one’s attention to the selected tile’s unique trait within a specific zone. This eventually meant convincing the clients that less is more whilst finding a perfect balance between creating spaces and exhibiting tiles. The showroom thus transcends monetary transactions, evolving to be one of unexpected sensorial stimulation, an easily accessible architectural engagement to the community on the tectonics of tile finishes.