Dwellings | A Seat by the Water, Ronggui

In a showroom for a made-to-measure interiors brand, the cabinetry, the doors and the walls already have a great deal to say. The question left for the furniture was how to make people stop here without taking the room's voice away. The answer we gave ourselves: don't compete for the room's attention; simply hold the way people come to rest.

This is Macio's 1,000-square-metre whole-home showroom in Ronggui, Shunde. The architecture and interiors are by BDSD; the client and builder is SHAL.

Ronggui is Shunde's water country. Creeks wind between old houses that stand shoulder to shoulder along the banks; their reflections lie on the water, and the days seem to drift along with the current.

When Lin Wenke designed this showroom, the first thing he did was invite Ronggui's water inside: boat oars made into a dividing screen, and a jutting platform for looking out over the water, like the riverside edge of a house in the water towns. When he first told us these ideas, our furniture was still only an outline.

So we walked Ronggui, more than once. This June we went to see the dragon boats on the creeks around the Dragon Boat Festival, looked up at the arcades along the old streets, and at the Zhonglongcheng incense works watched tray after tray of coiled incense laid out on drying nets, slowly drying in the sun.

Dragon boats, arcades, coiled incense: nothing could be more familiar to the people of Ronggui. From the first sketches the direction was clear. The hard part was bringing them into furniture and lighting without letting them become symbols stuck on the surface, taking something literal and gathering it into a form that is simple, easy to read, and legible wherever it goes. For that, we developed several new pieces for this showroom alone. Of them, our founder says:

"These pieces we made for Ronggui and for Ronggui alone. They carry what is singular in this city's memory."

— Zhou Anbin, founder of Dak Haan

When comfort and form disagree, we let comfort go first. Qingzhou's seat height is 40 cm, and its broad, deep seat leaves room to sit cross-legged, to half recline, or to spend an afternoon talking with friends. Furniture shouldn't arrange your life for you; it should leave room for whatever state you're in. What we wanted was ease with support, not softness that lets you sink.

In front of the sofa stand two Chuanliu Coffee Tables, named for the meeting of rivers. One has a top of deep-green natural marble, the other dark solid wood: one stone, one timber, like two tributaries joining here.

The tea room holds the Yanxia Long Table 2.0. The Yanxia collection comes from the upswept eaves of classical Chinese buildings: we stripped away the ornate carving and kept only the stepped, overlapping lines of the eaves' structure, gathered into a clean table. Boiling water, reading, a long conversation: it doesn't need to say much.

Around it are Weizhi Chairs; the checked Weizhi Lounge Chair in the entrance hall belongs to the same family. Weizhi turns around the phrase "to know the taste": a chair to keep you company over meals and tea.

With Yanxia, what we care about more is the relationship with nature that lies behind the eaves. As Dak Haan's founder puts it:

"When a traditional Chinese building carries its eaves outwards, what it really wants is to be close to nature, to merge with it."

— Zhou Anbin, founder of Dak Haan

The living room is a complete home. In the double-height space, an off-white Guanlan Sofa encloses it low, in an L.

Guanlan was born for this room. It takes its cue from Ronggui's waterside architecture, houses that grow with the lie of the land and live alongside the rivers and the green, "people in the water, the water in the view". Along Ronggui's creeks, many houses sit astride the waterway itself, on columns below that are thick in some places, slender in others. So Guanlan's base is thick and slender, too; its pale armrests are there to lean on, and sitting on it feels like watching the water from the bank.

We didn't copy any single eave or window lattice. Instead we translated the way a building "holds" itself above the water into the way the sofa's legs carry its seat. Setting out from Ronggui and returning to Ronggui: this is what we mean by local. First truly understand a place, then turn that understanding into structure.

Above Guanlan hangs the living room's incense-coil light. Developed by Dak Haan together with Lin Wenke, it takes its form from Ronggui's coiled incense, cut open layer by layer, like ripples spreading across water.

It looks simple; it was anything but easy to make. The design went through four or five rounds and was settled only two or three months before opening. In sampling we tested colour again and again, a little darker or a little lighter, whether to give it a touch of aged, vintage finish; for the size of the light and the thickness of each ring, we first laser-cut paper models to judge proportion and measure.

Along the way we thought about giving up and simply buying a light off the shelf. But every piece of furniture here was an original design, and this light shouldn't be the exception. So we saw it through.

Once installed, it answered us in a way we hadn't foreseen. We had deliberately left it only a few fixing points, so when doors open and close, or a breeze comes in, it trembles slightly, and its light and shadow fall on the cabinetry like ripples crossing a lake. Movement and stillness, both in a single light.

In front of the sofa, the Yifang Coffee Table gathers the staggered layout of a Chinese courtyard into a few square boxes. The blocks step forward and back and stack over one another like rolling rooftops, leaving the gaps and changes in height to light and shadow.

Opposite, two Xiaoyuan Lounge Chairs take their name from Xiaoyuan Xincun, the neighbourhood where their designer grew up. The old furniture that kept people company after meals in its streets and lanes is carried into contemporary proportions, still warm from a generation's real lives.

Under the spiral staircase there is one more Xiaoyuan, alone, facing the gravel and the daylight.

Beside the Guanlan Sofa, at the foot of the spiral staircase, stands a round Xiake Table. Its top comes from the broad brim of a wandering swordsman's bamboo hat; its single central column, from the falling line of a long robe. Before you go upstairs, it is a place to sit down for a moment.

Around it are Hong Chairs, two lengths of bent wood curved into an arc, like a rainbow among the clouds.

In the bedroom, Qingzhou appears once more. Like the sofa in the entrance hall, the Qingzhou Bed and the Qingzhou Bench at its foot were made for this room. The sofa downstairs receives guests; this bed and bench are kept for rest. The bed carries on the shape of a moored boat, and its floating structure lightens the whole.

From the shared living room to the privacy of sleep, the same boat goes from welcoming and seeing off to lying moored at rest.

In the dressing room beside the walk-in wardrobe, a Mumu Bench serves as the vanity stool. It comes from the idea that "two trees make a wood": a single length of timber split in two, then put back together. Knots, growth rings, checks and the shadows of the tree are all kept. We are glad to accept wood as it is, and let it grow old slowly alongside the people who use it.

The long table in the family dining room was also developed for this project: the Langzhu Dining Table. Its legs are paired columns standing side by side, taken from the arcades of Ronggui's old streets. On those streets, the colonnades shelter passers-by from wind and rain, and leave neighbours a stretch of pavement to stop and chat. We drew that steady order into the legs, so a family meal has a centre to lean on.

Walking Ronggui's old streets in June, we stood under the arcades with Lin Wenke and talked it through, facing the columns themselves.

Around the table are Xuanwu Chairs, here in the upholstered version. Xuanwu takes solid wood for its bones and fabric for its flesh, like the shell of a tortoise. A family meal often runs long; the chair has to keep people comfortable before the table can keep them there.

Can 50% of the usual state and craft deliver 100% of the experience of use?

Outside the front of the building, and in the working areas upstairs, you'll find Half-Hundred%. The one by the door wears outdoor fabric, so the same piece can live outside with confidence, standing up to sun and rain.

Half-Hundred% is the piece we most hope people will recognise at first sight. Look first at its form and proportion, then at how its materials come together, and only then at its story.

In the years of energy shortages and the pandemic, factories ran on rationed power, shipping stalled, and half-finished furniture piled up in every corner of the workshops. Visiting factories, we began to ask ourselves the question above, with aesthetic needs counted in as well. The Half-Hundred% collection explores the relationship between that 50% and 100%.

Upstairs are the sample area, the craft area and the meeting area, where visitors leaf through samples and talk through their plans. Here we placed the Zhizhu Chair. It takes the backrest of a traditional bamboo chair and makes it again in metal, wood and leather; hidden in its name is the saying "contentment brings happiness". Sitting in a Zhizhu Chair, turning over sample after sample, time can slow down a little.

Between conversations, a Half-Hundred% sofa sits with a Yanxia Coffee Table. The table carries on the eave lines of the Yanxia collection and answers the Yanxia Long Table 2.0 in the tea room: a cup of tea downstairs, a conversation upstairs.

Twenty pieces, from 2020 to 2026, by Zhou Anbin and Zhang Shiqi, one of them a collaboration with 301 Design. The new pieces came for this ground; the older ones found their place here. They were never meant as a set, yet they know one another.

We have always believed a home need not be filled with furniture. Between furniture and people there should be a certain distance: room enough to admire it, and the wish to come closer.

In any room, furniture is easily tempted to play the lead. We would rather it be the quiet one: proportions that stand the test of time, a seat that holds up to long sitting, a form in no hurry to win the first glance.

All Dak Haan design wants is to be honestly itself. In a space that belongs to someone else, that honesty means knowing when to step back, just far enough to leave people a place to stop.

The showroom is open to the public, on the ground floor of Block 60, Guizhou Avenue Central, Shunde District, Foshan. Dak haan yam cha, as we say in Cantonese: when you're free, come for tea. There's no rush. Come and sit a while in Shunde.