Studio
A studio rooted in Hong Kong, spanning architecture, interior design, visualisation, web and branding.
A small studio, happiest when given a building the time it asks for.
Pixel Plays began with drawings of buildings that did not yet exist. Looking closely at light, material and weather taught us how much a place depends on small decisions, and we have kept looking ever since.
Today architects, interior designers, web developers and data analysts work together, across Hong Kong and Shanghai. None of them leads. Each is asked to listen to the others, and to the site.
We would rather a work be right than be noticed. If it is quiet, well made and loved by the people who live in it, we are content.
Four ways of looking at the same place
- 01Architects
- 02Interior designers
- 03Web developers
- 04Data analysts
Ren Yang Tan
Founding Partner & Creative Director
Ren has spent a good part of his life learning to live in other people’s cities. Hong Kong, Auckland, Munich, Copenhagen, London, Shanghai: each taught him a different kind of quiet, and a different meaning of the word home.
Somewhere between them he developed an eye for design, how a door can mean an entrance to one, but an exit to another: how morning light crosses a table, how timber or stone holds on to warmth, physically and emotionally.
The training came the way it often does, by standing close to giants in the design world. First in Tokyo with Sou Fujimoto, then in Copenhagen, London and Shanghai with Bjarke Ingels Group, AIM and Neri&Hu, and in Luxury hotels, boutique retail where design feels effortless.
In 2024 he opened Pixel Plays, a small place to do the work with substance: slowly, piece by piece, until it feels as though it had always been there.