Shanghai studio Neri&Hu has converted a former missile factory in Beijing to create a car repair garage and offices with an industrial-style metal staircase, mesh cages and painted brickwork.

Inside The Garage, a mechanics workshop catering to Beijing's some 7 million vehicles is flanked by offices and a cafe.

Neri&Hu wanted to preserve as much of the original building as possible, while creating a new interior that recaptures the "allure and magic" once associated with with the car industry.

To do this, architects Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu juxtaposed an industrial palette of metalwork and grey paintwork with refined walnut timber and brushed bronze elements that recalls the craftsmanship of antique cars.

Their aim was to challenge the "vulgar typology"of the car garage, to "inject a sense of warmth into an industrial context, and to portray the seductive side of the ubiquitous modern machine".
Three of the building's existing grey brick walls remain intact, while a new exposed black-steel structure extends the building on its western side to create a new floor.

Here, offices, cafe and car lift are placed in separate steel and mesh modular boxes, intended to reference industrial storage facilities. A new staircase with black metal panelling connects the three floors of the volume.

"The project as a whole is conceived as a workshop space, partly raw and partly refined, it is activated throughout with the energy and spirit of the ind...