High-end project pays tribute to traditional garden culture

Designed by T.K. Chu Design, Villa Homespun Philosophy is a high-end project of China Railway Construction Real Estate.

The project is only six meters away from the Humble Administrator’s Garden in Suzhou, a World Heritage Site featuring miniature landscapes and abundant waterscapes.

GALLERY  

Based on such a context, the architecture of Villa Homespun Philosophy responds to the history and culture of Suzhou with a garden-like villa with two floors aboveground and underground, respectively.

Accordingly, T.K. Chu Design their vision pays tribute to the Chinese traditional garden culture within the interior design of Villa Homespun Philosophy. The sinuous curves of the inner space mean to create a dreamscape, reminding us of the pace of nature and the poetic spirit of gardens.

At the entrance, a shallow pool echoes the pond view of the courtyard and also the large-scale waterscape of the Humble Administrator’s Garden. Above the pool floats a piece of modern-version Taihu stone created jointly by T.K. Chu Design and Feng Liu. The artwork is dedicated to expressing the iconic Chinese garden forms and styles with modern materials and sensibility. Surrounded by French windows, the interior and exterior of the ground floor are transparent and related.

The overall tone of the interior space is white, the typical colour of Suzhou. The misty rain was blended into the colour scheme of the indoor space. At the same time, the bright colours of some furniture and decorations were used to vitalize the whole space. As the symbol of the Humble Administrator’s Garden, water was abstracted as a sort of design prototype. The stainless-steel corrugated plates, and water-shaped ceilings, furniture and decorations bring out a shimmering effect mimicking water flow and movement.

Through design renovation, two sunken courtyards were created, lighting up the two-floor underground space. In the private gallery on the 1st basement level, the stone-shaped chairs made of brass are opposite the mountain-shaped sofa and wallpaper, composing a three-dimensional landscape painting together with the display cabinets.

From a cloud-shaped indoor balcony of the private gallery, residents can see an entertainment room on the 2nd basement floor. A deer-shaped sculpture was placed between the waterfall-like lamp and the plant wall, so as to create a feeling of the wild. Furthermore, the clouds, mountains, stone, forests, deer-shaped sculpture and other garden-oriented elements were well-arranged to form a miniature world so that residents could acquire the living aesthetics of enjoying nature without leaving their home.

The design methodology has been nurtured by traditional Chinese gardens, in which concrete and abstract generate from each other by miniaturizing natural landscapes into private gardens by metaphor—inspiring associations with similar forms.

Mr. Chu has been engaged in the design industry for more than 40 years and founded his personal studio for 35 years. With the profound aesthetics and spatial thinking, he came up with the “Neo Art Deco”, a style innovation, which combines decorative elements with contemporary design, and keeps updating it to adapt to the rapidly changing aesthetic trends. As an interior architect, he is good at restructuring the circulation of the space, optimizing space function, and perfecting architecture with interior design methods. He brings art pieces to space and shapes arty forms in space. He brings this skill and vision to this new project.

Images by Di Zhu via T.K. CHU Design

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