China Modern. Sharon Leece
Particularly in cosmopolitan urban areas, centuries-old ideas are being reworked and reworked and reintepreted to look fresh, interesting, and totally of the moment. The new Chinese aesthetic has come at age with glamor style, and panache.
Pretty in Pink
Sizzling colors spice up
a hip eatery
As night falls over Beijing, queues of taxis discharge their passengers along the tree-lined avenues and side streets of the Sanlitun embassy district. This is the city's liveliest and most compact nightlife zone, with countless bars, restaurants and cafes, ranging from the cool to the artsy to the really rather tacky. It is here that fashion-conscious Beijingers, expatriates, and overseas visitors congregate to drink, dine, dance, and people-watch into the early hours of the morning.
Recently arrived on the scene is the Pink Loft, an opulent restaurant with an extravagant palette of pink, gold, and dashes of turquoise. The cavernous space takes up three levels of an old factory building on Sanlitun South Street. A central atrium rises three floors and is inset with glass floors supported by turquoise metal frames. Thus diners who have a head for heights can eat looking down on a huge glittering chandelier suspended above a lily pond far below.
Designed and part-owned by Beijing-based artist, Lin Tianmiao, the Pink Loft is such a significant departure from her usual style-serene white-string wrapped objects and black-and-white photography-that it is hard to believe it has been designed by the same person. Yet Lin's foray into restaurant design has proved exuberant and entertaining: its use of lush silks, shiny gold drapes, and hand-beaded curtains produces a kitsch atmosphere that successfully mixes chinoiserie-style with bordello chic.
Detail of the fluorescent industrial piping offset by a baroque gilt banister.
A shocking palette of pink and gold is on the menu at The Pink Loft. At the entrance, an oversized crystal chandelier hangs low over a lily pond.
Throughout the huge, three-storey interior, the interplay of lush silks, intricate beadwork, and brightly hued paintwork have helped turn a former industrial building into a vivid eatery.
Glass floors allow diners to look down through a central atrium to the pond below. Vibrant pink silk cushions add modern glamor to the space.
Artist Lin Tianmiao, designer of the space, retained the building's original heating pipes, painting them bright pink and adding blue down lighting.
Lush colorways are carried through to the details: sparkling glassware; hand-beaded glass curtains tied with thick gold braid; and cushions printed with Chinese characters.
Magnificent Ming
Imperial grandeur restored
A Ming dynasty courtyard house in the center of Beijing is home to American-Chinese lawyer and art dealer Handel Lee. Built around 1610 for the nephew of a powerful and wicked eunuch called Wei Zhong Xian, the house came into Lee's possession in 1995.
Living in historical properties such as this is becoming increasingly popular, even as entire neighborhoods of courtyard houses are being demolished. However, the realities of making them habitable are not for the faint-hearted. Usually in advanced stages of disrepair, these old buildings lack even basic heating, plumbing, and electrical systems.
It was no different for Lee, who took a year and a half to renovate the tumbledown structure. He managed to retain the original front and the middle portions of the house but had to rebuild the back section as it had suffered extensive water damage. To turn what was a series of dark and drafty houses into an airy, open living space, he tore down internal walls to let in more light and installed a vaulted glass ceiling over a small courtyard between the living room building (to the fore) and the bedroom building (behind). This created a naturally-lit lounge area that links the two spaces.
The next challenge was to furnish the interior. Lee says, "I didn't want to use Chinese furniture as I find that too predictable. But the house needed its interior design to have a relationship with the past." So he used a combination of modern furniture, antique collectibles and an extensive collection of contemporary Chinese art to fill the atmospheric space. "It goes well with the house," Lee explains. "It's the contrast that makes it interesting."
Accessories include antique collectibles, such as ceramic figurines and a Khymer head.
Handel Lee's courtyard house, which dates back to the Ming dynasty, comprises three buildings, separated by courtyards and walkways. An informal lounge area lies between the main living room (left) and bedroom (right). This space was originally a small rear courtyard that Lee glassed in to create more living space. Latticed timber windows, which would originally have faced onto a courtyard, provide privacy without sacrificing light.
The main living room features the original beams. Modern furniture and art contrast with the traditional architecture and include a hand-carved red lacquer dining table and chairs and a painting by Wang Jianwei. Hanging from the ceiling is a mobile by American artist Paul Hopkins (see right).
A pair of traditional red lacquer doors marks the entrance to the house. Above the pair of chairs by Shao Fan is a painting on paper by Lu Qing.
Kaleidoscope Color
Exuberant glass art fills
every inch of space
The eye-popping glass interior of TMSK restaurant in Xintiandi aims to evoke a strong sense of contemporary Chinese culture by drawing on the country's rich history. Its creators are Taiwanese glass artists Chang Yi and his wife Loretta Yang Hui-shan, former film director and movie star respectively.
TMSK is an acronym of Tou Ming Si Kao, which roughly translates as Crystal Mind. "We were bored by minimalism," explains Chang Yi. "It is too safe. We thought, as Chinese, what is the most gorgeous moment in our history? We believe it was the Tang dynasty and so we collected lots of colorful references and decided to interpret it our way."
The interplay between light and shade anchors the restaurant's design, which mixes lush colored glass with gold leaf backdrops. "We thought what a dramatic effect it would have if we put the gold leaf in the background and allowed light to flicker off it," says Chang Yi.
The project took 26 months' design work and involved an extraordinary commitment to detail. The result is that everything in the restaurant, from the interior design to the furniture and tableware, was made by Liuligongfang glass craftsmen in their own studio. There is a huge ground floor bar made of