Dwellings | Huizhou: A Window at LTOO

On a street corner in central Huizhou stands the LTOO Whole-Home Customization Showroom. Founded in 1998, LTOO makes systems furniture to measure: kitchens, wardrobes, doors and wall panelling. The new 300-square-metre showroom was designed by BDSD Boundless Design, with Lin Wenke and Sun Zhengyuan as design directors. The lounge sofa and the tables and chairs in the tea room and study are all Dak Haan pieces.

Boundless Design wanted to show a way of living now: chatting on the sofa with a coffee, turning to play with the cat in its house, stepping into the dressing room where skis hang on the wall.

Facing a row of shops, the facade uses simple geometric volumes and one continuous band of horizontal windows to sit quietly in the street, while the corner is given emphasis and three adjoining shopfronts are treated as a single whole.

The original shell could be seen end to end from the door. The designers added an entrance wall to form a separate lobby. Its L-shaped screen borrows from Le Corbusier's window grids and was assembled on site with mortise-and-tenon joints; light and sight lines are cut and filtered here, and every step shows something different.

The stair was moved beneath the tall window. A white half-wall runs from the entrance and hides the foot of the steps, so the whole stair seems to grow out of the floor. People passing on the street can see its outline from outside.

On the ground floor, the lounge, the kitchen display and the dressing room are fully open to one another, which the designers describe as answering the spirit of Le Corbusier's "free plan". At the centre of the lounge are a pale Yongzhu Sofa and a wide green rug. The Yongzhu is modular, its cushions arranged into a ring to fit the space, with a black Gudun Side Table in the middle for a coffee or a book.

Visitors sit down here with a coffee to talk, wait or do business; with the green rug and the pale timber, this becomes the most relaxed corner of the building.

By the window, a built-in seat connects to the cat house under the stair. The cat threads through the cabinets, jumps and naps, people watch from the window seat, and storage becomes a scene from daily life.

Upstairs is the open materials area. Daylight enters through the horizontal window and draws out the texture and colour of each sample board. At the long table are Dak Haan Weizhi Chairs. Weizhi turns on the phrase "to know the taste"; designing it in 2022, Zhang Shiqi took its frame from the classic forms of mid-century furniture, a solid-wood frame landing at an angle and the arm carried in one line down to the back leg. Clients sit, spread swatches across the table and compare them one by one.

The best-lit corner is kept for the tea room. The planting by the window is like a miniature landscape painting, and a sliding art door of pieced veneer can close the room for privacy or open it to the window over the void. At its centre is a dark Yanxia Table, set with Xuanwu Chairs and Weizhi Chairs.

In the study, every device is hidden and the door becomes part of the wall. In the middle is a black Xuxing Table, with a Qingfeng Chair and a Hong Chair beside it; the Hong Chair bends two smooth lengths of curved wood into its back, like a rainbow through cloud. It suits one person concentrating on work, or two sitting across from each other to talk.

The upper floor handles reception, meetings and project work, yet daylight is invited in as far as possible, softening the commercial feel. In the end, a showroom has to make people want to sit down and stay a while.