The project located at roof level of an old public house in the center of Shanghai, where the traffic is convenient. The existing condition before renovation was not too bad, but the old interior space and layout does not match the need of young people today. Our client is a young couple. Both of them are photographers, and they were looking for life in quality and romance, so we need to do a whole new renovation.

The existing adobe wall divided the plan asymmetrically into weird shapes, which is a big disadvantage for furniture layout. The narrow corridor towards the entrance separate the house into two space in south and north direction, while wasting a lot of space unused. At the same time, the partition walls further separate the space into several inconvenient small room that isolated from each other.

Our clients love to invite friends to their house, however, they also need enough space to work. A big and active space is needed in significance. Fortunately, it didn’t take too much time to reach the consensus with our clients: we planned living room on the south side of the house instead of the bedroom. (Bedroom usually face south)

We break down the south side of the wall along the corridor, open up the space of walkway, and create a complete space for living room on south. This allows the sunlight to fill in the living room and kitchen, where the daily activities mostly take place.
The asymmetrical plan is still difficult for us to handle the details, so we decided to use customized furniture to fix the plan. Through the long table along the window, the Trapezoid of low cabinet along the walkway, and the kitchen countertop make the existing plan become clean and parallel in space.

The non-parallel living room space was corrected by the edges of 3 sets of furniture, which make the space more clean and complete. The long table along the window with different depth along the existing wall structure offers various functions of need.

After opened up the living room, the wall of walkway become another background of the living room. The normal indirect lighting and customized wooden shutter air outlet enhance the integrity of the space.
The bedroom keep the simplicity in its design with customized wardrobe that satisfied the storage need. The nature texture of wood grain and the gap fetch up the details.