Mister Lu approached Interior design studio, RooMoo, with the desire to design a villa inhabited for a family of two children, with a western design style. This villa is located in Pukou, Rosewood garden, in Nanjing, China. It is surrounded by a nice garden and a swimming pool. RooMoo replied by using a French style with a few Chinese touch, combining noble and rough material.
RooMoo studied the energy flow of the villa, the environment, and the orientation of the villa, integrating traditional Chinese Feng Shui elements with European culture. In order to offer the most comfortable and enjoyable layout.
For doing so, RooMoo created a double parallels circulation flow into the space, which is particular to the French layout.
We created one corridor close to the south facade side and the two living rooms. The second corridor was located in between the living rooms and the north side of the rest of the house.
Corridors are often seen as a waste of a place. However, we take up the challenge to demonstrate that it participates to provide a better space environment. For the simple reason, that the point of entrance of one space doesn’t have to be the same exit. It offers a sense of flow and freedom to the body to turn around a space that provides a sense of well-being.
Once, all the doors in those corridors are open, it allows to enlarge the space with interesting perspectives of arches and offering nice scenery all along the corridor facing the garden.
Once the doors are closed, it creates some privacy for Cinema or study functions.
All corridors are designed with arches made of dark oak and grey oak to emphasize the rhythm of the passage. It also connects the entire house by this consistent architecture detail and this customizes solid oak floor.
In China, they have a system of laws considered to govern spatial arrangement, which we call Fengshui. It is an unfavourable effect to enter into a space and to see through directly to the end. So we took into account the feng shui laws and we design a glass partition between the main entrance and the main living room.
The partition stands here as a wooden tripod for painting. As a metaphor, the orange glass is the painting, while the wood frame is the wooden tripod. The artwork is here the natural sunshine passing through the glass into the space. Creating this natural artwork provided by the sunlight into our white walls. The detail of the structure is using a leather belt to attach the glass to the wood frame.
The three functions: dining room, main living room, and second living room were implanted on the first floor facing the south garden. As it was important for us to allow everyone, in every public space, to be able to enjoy the outdoors and to offer beautiful green scenery with direct light.
Quiet activities, such as bedrooms were located upstairs with a number of 5 bedrooms in total. While the loud activities were located in the basement. The low light for nocturne activities such as cinema, bar or wine cellar is well met. While the gym and a small salon for the game were located close to windows.
The western style was brought by using details and material. The most obvious element is certainly the traditional French wall molding, used in Haussmannian apartments in Paris. We construe this language with a modern look.
Every door handle, wallpapers, mosaic pattern, and carpet have been customized for this project. All functional doors, such as kitchen, storage, or toilet doors are hidden doors. It allows being a bit playful, to use secret doors to hide certain functions. While the main entrance, bedroom doors, and bathroom doors were highlighted by nice finish, detail, and customize doorknobs.
The main entrance offers a nice floor marrying a wood floor pattern with white marble.
It remains to speak about colors and artistic touch. To bring a warm feeling into every space of the house, warm orange and beige leather were selected.
The first living room uses a warm yellow, similar to a warm sunset, marrying orange, gold, and yellow colors, into the pillows and soft decoration. While the second living room uses a dark blue, such as a nice blue sky in the evening before nighttime. The idea was to create a calm retreat atmosphere for study time. Dark blue is found on the painted ceiling and in the soft decoration. The dark blue graphic pattern printed on the white leather inside the second living room is also designed by RooMoo.
The kitchen uses a salmon color into the walls. While the ceiling use wood and wood sticks to create an inner visible roof structure. It also can be seen as a nod in the Chinese roof structure. we wanted to create a warmer traditional feeling above the dining table.
The daughter’s bedroom and bathroom are using a gradient of pink to yellow. Wallpapers were also customized inside each children’s bedroom accompanied by a unique mosaic design draw for each children’s bathroom.
The son’s bedroom and bathroom are using a nice turquoise color into the wall/ceiling painting and mosaic.
The main bedroom and bathroom of the parents get a customized carpet and curtain with a golden touch. The dressing and bathroom have also a warm orange glass to contrast with the white upholstery leather on the walls.