A conceptual contemporary live-work space for a creative professional collector: live-work-collect studio.
Our first project was to design a live-work-collect studio for collectors, which is a conceptual contemporary live-work space.
When I was first approached for this project, I spent a long time considering which collector would be the ideal client, a collector who would be familiar with Chinese art and at the same time have an understanding of Western culture, in order to create a space that would be different from the one I had traditionally been aware of. In the end, I chose Urysik as my client. He is familiar with and enjoys Chinese art and wants to document the development of art in modern Chinese history, so his collection reflects the development points of modern Chinese life and art. He likes to collect sculptures, realistic paintings and installations, and has a room in his gallery dedicated to representative art installations from the East.
Considering the richness and age of Urysik’s collection, I wanted to design a studio with a lot of storage and exhibition functions, but also a multifunctional space for him. I did a lot of research on local Chinese spatial forms and found that the spatial form of the Chinese cave is very functional in terms of storage and the honeycomb-like nature of the room is ideal for people to visit and view the artwork. The spatial concept of the cave is that when you enter an occupant’s home, you can follow the connecting paths through all the houses in the area, i.e. ‘one village is one family’.
figure 1-Chinese Cave figure 2-Cave House
Inspired by cave, I wanted to find a building whose shape suited the shape of the kiln, and HOTO FUDO did this perfectly. It is made from soft geometry, which will not arise from the figures like quadrangles and circles.Using a polygonal grid structure, the design team analysed issues such as the consistency of the shell with the building amplitude and the efficiency of the rainwater diversion.Looking from the outside, the restaurant looks as if it were built into a cave.
To increase the storage space, I not only arranged multifunctional furniture, but also created a lot of storage space on the walls. I have used columns to form circular passageways and have made them into multiple storage spaces with hidden boxes for clothes and artwork. The dividing wall in the bedroom has space for a bed so that it can be retracted from the wall to save space during the day.
Inspiration
figure5-renovated fire seed collecting terrac figure6-acoustic installation
Finally，I learned how to design a preliminary interior space，to do more research and make concept more clear, and I became familiar with how to work on a design project myself and how to enrich it with practice and thought. But it became clear to me that I still had a lot to learn and a lot to learn.