This is the design work of Neri&Hu and the original building is an old townhouse located in a lane in Shanghai. The magical lane houses, which were once the dominant fabric that made urban Shanghai the intoxicating place that it was in the 1930s, are now slowly being demolished, taken over by high-density developments all over the city. Neri&Hu was commissioned to reconstruct a dilapidated lane house left with almost nothing except its glorious shell in the historic and artistic Tianzifang area in Shanghai, and the mission was to transform it into three separate apartment units.
Neri&Hu added spatial interest through new insertions and skylights to accentuate the architectural integrity of such a typology, contemporizing it for today’s lifestyle.
The original facade has been stripped of its decorative elements over the past 60 years, and the large floor-to-ceiling windows have been inserted into the front facade to improve the quality of light in each living room, while the black facade makes the building ‘disappear’ at the entrance to the alley. The old, non-conforming wooden staircase has been replaced by a new steel staircase, which also serves as a link between the three different levels.
I am a fan of the idea of adding a modern element to an old building. The challenge is to retain the traditional character of the building while bringing it up to date, which is a difficult balance to find. Coincidentally, the interior design studio I worked for before was located opposite this building, but I have to say that the two are on a completely different level. The previous firm’s design was simply a complete refurbishment of the interior parts, without keeping any of the classic elements of the old lane, and the end result, although not lame, was just a very ordinary private house with no sense of design to speak of. I often look at the building through the window from the office of the studio. In its color scheme and choice of materials, it can be said to blend in with the rest of the buildings in Tianzifang, yet it is clearly different from the neighboring houses, a paradoxically independent presence that forms a very harmonious residential area with the neighborhood.
The interior design of the building uses the colors and some of the materials of the original building to decorate the areas while using materials such as concrete to enhance the overall feeling of aging. In a way, it has inspired my approach to this series of renovation projects.