BWL Taichung | Bean Buro

“The design embodies BWL’s ethos of well-being and community, while also engaging with the cultural rhythms of Taiwan. It is an architecture of subtle gestures, inviting exploration and delight.”

— Kenny Kinugasa-Tsui, co-founder of Bean Buro

“Each project is an opportunity to refine the brand’s identity, to weave local cultural nuances into a consistent narrative of wellness and community.”

— Lorène Faure, co-founder of Bean Buro

The Brief: A Dual-Purpose Destination

We were commissioned by our long-term client BWL, with whom we have been cultivating a rich design language across Asia. The latest regional centre in Taichung, Taiwan, occupies two expansive floors of a city-centre commercial building, totalling approximately 11,300 square feet. One level is dedicated to customers — a vibrant hub for product discovery, wellness consultations, and communal events. The other level houses BWL’s employees, offering a contemporary workplace with generous collaborative areas. This duality — customer and employee, public and private — forms the foundation of the project.

The Narrative: A Local Dialogue with Nature

The story of BWL is always grounded in nature and humanistic values, reflecting the company’s identity as a healthcare pioneer. For each regional centre, we craft a design narrative that honours both the brand’s DNA and subtle local influences. In Taichung, our inspiration was drawn from the vertical rhythms and rounded forms of traditional Taiwanese temple columns. These architectural motifs informed our fluted joinery, sculptural display walls, and vertical elements that heighten the perception of space within the building’s modest ceiling heights.

As with a Chinese garden, the spatial experience unfolds as a meandering journey. Customers are guided intuitively through spaces via a wavy brass floor inlay and a matching ceiling light strip — a poetic thread that recalls pathways winding through landscaped courtyards. The design becomes not merely a setting, but an experience of discovery.

The Process: Research, Craft, and Collaboration

As overseas designers based in Hong Kong, we placed great importance on close collaboration with local consultants, contractors, and suppliers. Materials were sourced with care for environmental standards, favouring low-VOC finishes and recyclable components. We worked hand-in-hand with joinery craftsmen to refine bespoke fluted panels and sculptural elements, ensuring both functionality and refinement.

Our process involved immersive research into customer behaviour — how visitors explore, linger, and interact. This informed everything from the positioning of the showroom displays to the inclusion of a dedicated children’s corner. Through countless iterations, we shaped an environment that balances retail inspiration with wellness consultation and community-building.

The Solution: Spatial Composition and Flow

At the heart of the customer floor is a sculptural display table inspired by mountainous landscapes, flanked by vertical fluted walls. Behind this lies a pivoting gridded partition that reveals a generous event hall, further divisible into two smaller rooms for flexibility.

The customer lounge unfurls along the perimeter windows, offering panoramic city views. Integrated into this social setting are an Instagrammable corner with oversized product sculptures, a kid-friendly area for families, and a wellness consultation suite. The journey begins at the lift lobby, where a circular indoor garden with an artificial skylight greets visitors with freshness and calm.

The workplace floor adopts a more neutral palette and open-plan composition, with a central pantry as the social anchor. Breakout areas punctuate the space, offering flexibility for collaboration and focus.

The Materials: Softness with Strength

The palette is intentionally soft, evoking BWL’s identity through sandy beige finishes and light timber floors. Gentle greens and blush pinks energise the event areas, while metallic trims lend a refined strength to the sculptural elements. Fluted joinery, mesh displays, and pivoting partitions articulate the interplay between solidity and transparency, intimacy and openness.

Sustainability, Environment, and Well-Being: A Holistic Vision

Sustainability is at the core of the project, aligning with BWL’s values as a healthcare brand that champions responsible living. Our design strategies prioritised reducing environmental impact from the earliest stages of planning through to construction.

We collaborated closely with local contractors to minimise demolition waste and adopt efficient joinery methods, ensuring materials were cut and assembled with reduced off-cuts. Finishes were carefully specified to favour low-VOC paints, FSC-certified timbers, and recyclable components wherever possible. The project also relied on locally sourced materials and suppliers to lower transportation-related carbon emissions and to support the regional economy.

Environmental systems were designed with efficiency in mind: the ventilation system is highly energy-efficient, ensuring optimal indoor air quality while minimising energy consumption. In areas with natural daylight, we deliberately reduced artificial lighting reliance, while in deeper floor areas, we introduced artificial skylights to create uplifting ambiences without overburdening the energy load. Retail lighting was designed with precision to highlight products while avoiding excessive glare or energy waste.

Acoustic design was equally vital in supporting well-being. In the event hall, operable partitions and absorbent finishes mitigate sound transfer between programmes, while in the customer lounge, a café-like environment was softened with acoustic flooring and panelling to allow multiple conversations to coexist comfortably.

Biophilia was a defining element: from the indoor circular garden at the lift lobby to planters inspired by Chinese gardens across both floors, greenery introduces a sense of calm, improves air quality, and reinforces the ethos of wellness. Collectively, these environmental, acoustic, and lighting strategies elevate the user experience beyond aesthetics, ensuring that the centre nurtures health and human connection as much as it delights visually.

The Challenge: Consistency with Local Soul

Designing for an international brand across multiple geographies requires a delicate balance: maintaining coherence while embedding authentic local references. For Taichung, this meant interpreting Taiwanese temple forms in a contemporary vocabulary, while also elevating hospitality-inspired detailing across joinery, seating, and customer touchpoints.

The challenge was not repetition, but evolution — each centre must improve upon the last. Through thoughtful detailing and integration of environmental strategies, this project represents a more sophisticated hospitality-driven approach for BWL’s growing network.

Bean Buro team: Lorène Faure, Kenny Kinugasa-Tsui, Geng Tian, Joanne Lee, Phoebe Yeung

Bean Buro local representative: Zoe Yang

Client: BWL

Main contractor: ENJOYIDESIGN CO., LTD.

Location: Taichung, Taiwan

Photography: Moooten Studio