Onmyoji Offline Entertainment and Exhibit Space

Onmyoji, NetEase's flagship in-house game, has been downloaded more than 200 million times since its launch. With this store, NetEase and E Studio made their first venture into a physical, offline home for the game.

The Onmyoji theme store sits in TIT Creative Park next to Canton Tower, hidden from the bustle of the city under the shade of flame trees. The project covered both the renovation of the existing building and its interior. The aim was a space full of possibility: an offline experience built around the game, combining a café, a bar, merchandise retail and exhibitions of the game's culture, truly connecting the game with young people's everyday lives and offering players richer entertainment and social experiences.

A Barrier of Light: Installation, Material and Lighting

A barrier marks out a territory through ritual; it is a form of terrain sealing, first used by onmyōji to protect sacred ground.

The building is a split-level structure open on all four sides. Its façades were reclad in polycarbonate panels with lighting, turning it into a huge luminous body that stands apart from its surroundings, like a barrier of light cast by an onmyōji. Controlled lighting makes the barrier breathe and shift colour, and ties into the game's play and themes so that visitors can interact with the building. The barrier becomes the meeting point between the real world and the world of the game.

To keep the building light and quick to build, a timber frame system was combined with translucent polycarbonate panels. The timber supports the building's skin and leaves gaps between the façade layers, a spacing that strengthens its rhythm.

Courtyard of the Onmyōji

The courtyard combines the idea of a sigil with a karesansui dry garden, laid out as a seal circle. Its plan unfolds from a great ripple of a water drop and climbs with the terrain, planted with flowers and greenery that change with the seasons.

Stumble into the onmyōji's quiet courtyard, where the spirits gather and the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons passes by.

Ground-floor Café and Bar

The café and bar occupy the ground floor. By day, the shadows of the surrounding trees fall on the translucent polycarbonate panels, bringing light and the poetry of nature inside. A solid block of granite is set into the space as the bar counter, and the timber structure looks especially soft in natural light. The store is a café by day and, with a change of lighting, becomes a bar at night.

Third-floor VIP Area

The themed events change regularly, so the layout is flexible. Taking the game's Ōeyama storyline as its theme, the area layers and replays fragments of scenes on translucent fibre mesh. Staggered round private rooms form the circulation around them, and their lighting switches between rival factions to show the conflict.

Through everyday settings offline, the game can reach players of different tastes, circles and kinds. For dedicated players it is a place to gather and unwind together; for the wider public it is a relaxed space for discovering the world of the hundred demons.

Translucent polycarbonate panels: dappled tree shadows and refracted green.

Client
NetEase Games

Location
TIT Creative Park, Guangzhou

Area
385 m²

Completion Date
2019.09

Design Firm
E Studio

Lead Designer
Fan, Junjian
Zhou, Xuanzhuo

Photographer
Zhang, Chao