Dwellings | Huizhou: Where Square Turns to Circle

FotileStyle's first Greater Bay Area showroom opened in Huizhou: 430 square metres, designed by BDSD Boundless Design, with Lin Wenke and Sun Zhengyuan as design directors. Inside is a sample of contemporary apartment living, and the curved sofa, coffee table and red armchair in the sunken lounge, as well as the tea-room chairs, all come from Dak Haan.

The showroom sits on a corner of a building-materials mall, with streets on two sides. The designers distilled the spatial character of Lingnan arcade buildings into minimal cut volumes and restrained lines. The entrance is set back; a plant leans at an angle, and between the columns the interior is half hidden, half shown.

At the end of the corridor, the old idea of "round heaven, square earth" becomes a phrase: the square is there for the sake of a poetic circle. A round opening in the wall frames a tree and stones. Visitors slow down here, and after this narrowing, open into an imagined home.

Inside is a lived-in scene where living room and kitchen merge. A curved fireplace softens the hard angles, its flames reflected in cabinet doors finished like misty snow-capped mountains; the sofas are arranged around the fire, so you sit facing it.

The kitchen floor is kept dark, while timber beams line the ceiling around a large light film, setting off the cabinets' rosy "evening-cloud red". Cooking at the island, you look up to green on every side: through the window opposite, beside the cabinets, in the inner hall and beyond the door.

Further in, the space opens out. By sinking the floor, the designers gained ceiling height and the proportions of a villa. Three round openings in the ceiling answer a cluster of large petal pendants, light falling slowly from them. Beneath them, a curved white Youou Sofa wraps half way round the rug, with a marble-topped Linlin Round Coffee Table at its centre.

In front of a full wall of shelves stands a red Meigui Lounge Chair 2.0. The rose chair, meigui yi, is a classic of Chinese furniture: square in form, with a low back nearly level with its arms, so it never blocks a window or rises above a table edge. Dak Haan's Meigui series, a 2022 design by Zhou Anbin, keeps that square, enduring form and reshapes it with contemporary taste and materials. Here, you sit down, take a book from the shelves, and look up into the light of the petal pendants.

Between light and dark, a vermilion stair leaps out. Its half-round landing hangs like a crescent moon, stepping up and down, tempting people to stop, lean and look out. Beneath it, moss and stones make a small landscape, and a green wall climbs the full height alongside.

Behind a hidden door flush with the living-room cabinetry is a dark-toned tea room, with a tea cabinet and an electric tea table, set with Qingfeng Chairs. Make a pot of tea, close the door, and the showroom outside feels far away.

The "Hidden Flower" bedroom takes its idea from the quiet moment when a flower is half open. Wall panels curl slightly like petals, and soft, low-saturation warm tones fill the room.