UNDER ONE ROOF

NAME: FOTILE STYLE BEIJING
LOCATION: BEIJING
AREA: 3000 SQUARE METERS
YEAR OF COMPLETION: 2016
MATERIALS: RECYCLED BAMBOO, WARM GREY STONES, TILES AND WALNUT.

Fotile Style Beijing is the second project undertaken by Lv Yongzhong at the invitation of the brand after Fotile Style Shanghai on Taojiang Road was completed five years ago. This time the deliverables cover site selection, façade reconstruction, interior design and the furnishings. Mr. Lv compares the Shanghai showroom to a modern space serving fine wine, and the Beijing counterpart a study marked with good taste where you’d sip at a cuppa. He wishes the latter to be the brand’s parlor in the capital city. Above the entrance is a long sweep of circa 3-meter-wide roof running 50 meters along the entire front, giving everyone beneath the warm impression of a common shelter like home.

The choice of materials is with reserve. The interiors are plastered with recycled bamboo and warm grey stones that set a warmish tone. Varied grain patterns are put together in varying ways so as to enrich the spatial interfaces. The vertical bamboo grilles seen covering major walls are not simple lineups of stripes, but the composition of them in an order choreographed, with proportional regulation of subtle rise and fall and proper lighting, to produce the heaving and rolling visual effect of diminutive mountain ranges.

Another area where plain appearance belies exacting accuracy is the concave into walls as display areas. As intended, it leaves the deepest impression like a tall oriental pagoda does in its locality.

The last place worthy of mention is a single-person bathroom hidden in the VIP kitchen area on the third floor. This thirty-square-meter space has a beautiful name literally translated as “the rain harkening room”. Its masonry flooring and beaded curtain, both of which feature in the designer’s memory as THE backyard, would perhaps send the romantic minds to the world of a mesmerizing Chinese ink painting, in which gauzy mists pervade over dim hills and river valleys…