Platinum A' Design Award Winner 2024
Li Xiang's Meland Club Indoor Playground operates as a sophisticated spatial narrative encoding childhood wonder through the archetypal symbolism of mechanical animation and metamorphic transformation. The central wind-up key motif functions as a powerful threshold symbol, traditionally representing the capacity to bring inanimate objects to life, to animate the imagination, and to unlock hidden potential within seemingly static forms. This key suspended at the composition's apex establishes the entire environment as a space of activated possibility where ordinary limitations yield to imaginative transformation. The perforated ceiling panels arranged in radial symmetry evoke mandala configurations associated with cosmic wholeness and psychological centering, their geometric precision balanced against organic leaf-like forms suggesting the reconciliation of natural and mechanical orders. The chromatic opposition between protective blue framing and warm coral accents encodes the psychological safety required for creative exploration, blue traditionally associated with trust, stability, and protective enclosure while coral and red activate energy, curiosity, and forward movement. The winged central figure combines avian symbolism of freedom and aspiration with mechanical precision suggesting that imagination operates through structured play rather than mere chaos. The tripartite archway arrangement references traditional architectural symbolism of passage and threshold, the mirror surfaces within creating infinite regression that symbolically represents unlimited imaginative potential extending beyond visible boundaries. The striped reception counter employs rhythmic repetition associated with musical and temporal ordering, suggesting that entry into this realm follows structured ritual. Text inscribed at the threshold functions as incantation or spell, words that transform ordinary passage into meaningful transition from everyday reality into the extraordinary realm of play.
Meland Club combines five major themes of Insects, Oceans, Land, Sky, and Jungle, to create a Wondrous Museum of Nature, full of futuristic mechanical aesthetics. Architectural logic, art installations, mechanical technological aesthetics, philosophy, and popular science education are unprecedentedly integrated into an exquisite, complex creative scheme, constructing a comprehensive indoor parent-child theme park encompassing family amusement, art appreciation, aesthetic education, popular science, and creative enlightenment, a fantasy universe transcending yet tangible to reality.