A mangrove ecosystem metaphor organizes every design decision across three storeys of corporate workspace.
Financial institutions rarely look to coastal wetlands for design inspiration. Yet Lorene Faure and Kenny Kinugasa Tsui of Bean Buro did exactly that when designing Mangrove Garden, a 54,000 square foot workspace for a global financial firm in Hong Kong. The result earned a Silver A' Design Award in Interior Space and Exhibition Design in 2025. What makes Mangrove Garden remarkable extends beyond its tropical flora and organic forms. The mangrove ecosystem serves as an organizing principle that connects material selection, spatial configuration, color strategy, and art integration into a coherent whole. Each of the three floors features a central hub inspired by mangrove gardens, where branching structures and living vegetation create gathering spaces that encourage spontaneous collaboration. For brands seeking to transform their workplaces, Mangrove Garden demonstrates something profound: a strong conceptual foundation can unify countless individual design decisions.
The mechanisms behind Mangrove Garden reveal practical lessons for any organization considering workspace transformation. Bean Buro expanded their client's signature red into a diverse complementary palette, allowing brand coherence to emerge through spatial experience. Repurposed furnishings and bio-based finishes demonstrate that sustainability and aesthetic ambition reinforce each other naturally. Site-specific art from local Hong Kong artists creates cultural resonance that builds genuine connection to place. The central hubs on each floor provide structured informality, offering varied seating arrangements that accommodate quick conversations and extended collaborative sessions equally well. Research involving employee interviews, workshops, and visual analytics informed spatial decisions, connecting design outcomes to documented organizational needs. Organizations operating across multiple floors or locations can learn from Bean Buro's approach: consistent design language builds cohesion while allowing each space to develop its own character.
Mangrove Garden offers a lesson that extends beyond biophilic design. When a single conceptual metaphor organizes material choices, spatial arrangements, color palettes, and cultural engagement, workplaces transform into environments that feel genuinely alive. Brands preparing workspace initiatives might ask themselves: what ecosystem, what organizing logic, what core concept could unify your countless decisions into something genuinely coherent?
