10 Years with Warner Music
Creative Workplaces Evolved
Over the past ten years, Bean Buro has had the privilege of partnering with Warner Music Group to design a family of workspaces across Asia that bring music, people, and places together. What began with an early APAC headquarters in Hong Kong has grown into a long-term collaboration spanning Beijing, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.
From the outset, the ambition was to move away from conventional corporate offices and instead create narrative-driven environments that support both everyday work and the creative life of the music industry. As Warner Music's teams and regional footprint expanded, we evolved the design language together, refining a brand identity while ensuring each project remains rooted in its local context.
A consistent design DNA
Across Asia, the Warner Music workplaces share a core set of spatial principles. Visitors and staff always arrive in the heart of the space – a social front-of-house that combines café-style seating, views out to the city, and a performance stage rather than a formal reception desk. This multifunctional hub serves as a venue for events, impromptu performances and everyday informal working, dissolving the boundary between artists, guests, and employees.
Most locations integrate dedicated artist rooms tucked behind the stage, enabling performers to prepare and step directly into the spotlight, while professional music rooms and studios are provided where needed. Meeting rooms are conceived as comfortable living-room-like spaces, and stringent acoustic strategies allow a mix of activities – from live sets to focused work – to happen concurrently within open-plan environments.
Over time, the design language has grown to actively involve local artists and artisans. Each office blends Warner Music's global brand identity with local materials, colour palettes, and commissioned artworks, ensuring the series is never a cookie-cutter rollout but a body of work where the core concept is consistent and each project responds sensitively to its location.
Growing the vision together
Every new project has been an opportunity to push the consistent DNA a step further. In Beijing, Warner Music's largest APAC workplace tests how an office can feel like a "creative clubhouse", combining performance, lounge-like collaboration areas and flexible work settings within a single fluid environment. Singapore explores how that same DNA can frame an iconic urban landscape, opening the front-of-house directly onto Marina Bay and using warm materials to keep the space human-scaled and welcoming.
In Taiwan, the story turns towards cultural echo, weaving global brand identity together with local heritage, tree-lined views and a strong emphasis on well-being and sustainability. Together, these projects demonstrate how a consistent framework can adapt to different scales, building typologies and cultural contexts, always tuned to the needs of local teams and visiting artists.
Acoustic expertise for music-filled workplaces
Designing for a music company has required us to develop specialist acoustic knowledge over the decade, treating sound management as a fundamental design driver rather than a technical afterthought. The challenge has been consistent: creating sociable open-plan environments that host live performances, DJ sets, music sampling sessions, recording and day-to-day conversations, while still providing quiet spaces for focused work – all within the same property.
Our solutions have evolved across projects, combining fully isolated professional recording studios and music rooms with sophisticated acoustic layering integrated throughout the architecture. We use sculpted 3D acoustic ceiling and wall panels, absorptive joinery details, inverted fluting on timber surfaces, high-performance acoustic separation in partitions, and carefully tuned material combinations to control reverberation and prevent sound spill between zones.
Front-of-house performance areas coexist with enclosed meeting rooms and phone booths featuring specialist acoustic seals, while open collaboration zones employ diffused ceiling treatments and fabric-wrapped panels that maintain spatial generosity without acoustic fatigue. Each new Warner Music office has allowed us to test, refine and advance these strategies in dialogue with acoustic consultants, ensuring that energetic musical activities and concentrated work can happen simultaneously with clarity and comfort.
Collaborating with artists and local culture
Artist collaborations have been central to the Warner Music story from the earliest projects. In each city, we have partnered with local creative talents to produce murals, installations, graphic elements and bespoke artworks that anchor the workplace and give each office its distinct character.
Hong Kong's post-industrial Kowloon Bay office features a large-scale mural by Japanese artist TAKA; Jakarta's "Canvas of Sound" showcases TEMPA's layered mixed-media artwork wrapping structural columns; Singapore displays Tobyato's bold graphics in the foyer; and Manila integrates a custom mural by Titsay that establishes the colour palette for the entire space. These collaborations range from performance-stage backdrops and feature walls to more subtle interventions within joinery, ceilings, and circulation routes.
This approach ensures Warner Music maintains a recognisably consistent international design language across Asia while each office clearly belongs to its city. Local materials, colour references and spatial responses – from reflecting riverside contexts in Beijing and Marina Bay in Singapore, to echoing Taiwan's urban greenery and Jakarta's art scene – create workplaces that feel both global and deeply contextual.
