Decorating + Renovation

Reflections of China

Centuries-Old Traditions Inform a Light-Filled residence Outside Beijing

View Slideshow

The high, stark, windowless walls surrounding a Beijing-area house offer few clues to the treasure within. "When most people approach from the narrow roadway and see those walls, they assume the interior is dark and narrow," says architect and interior designer Wang Ta-Chun, of Matsuoka Wang Architects. "But when they enter the house, they're surprised at how bright and big it feels."

About an hour by car from the Forbidden City, the residence is part of King's Villa, a 56-house development near the foothills of Xi Shan, or West Mountain. It was inspired by the traditional Beijing siheyuan, which first appeared in China almost 2,000 years ago. Once the ultimate symbol of wealth, the siheyuan, a multifamily residence, is designed with a central courtyard enclosed by four buildings. A tall, unadorned exterior wall surrounds the entire compound, while the courtyard, often embellished with a garden and decking, serves as a family meeting place. Now facing a rash of razings in Beijing's rapidly modernizing cityscape, the siheyuan is considered a template for most Chinese architectural styles.

As with much traditional Chinese design, feng shui dictated the layout. "In Beijing, according to feng shui, the house always needs to face south," explains Wang, who studied architecture at Columbia University and is now based in Taipei. "The living room and, even more importantly, the master bedroom need to be in the south part of the house. And most of the windows open up to the courtyard." Wang, who considers himself a modernist, points out that modernist architects and ancient siheyuan builders had a common goal: to maximize natural light. "The light reflecting from the courtyard throughout the interior was the major consideration for this project," he elaborates. "For the interior design, we've used that light in some really interesting ways."

The dining room is the most dramatic example. A tall rectangular glass box with 26-foot-high windows on three sides, it juts into the courtyard almost like a peninsula, edged by a shallow pool. During the day, sunlight reflecting off the white exterior wall and sparkling from the pool's water creates magical shadows across the table and chairs. At night the room is lit up like a giant lantern.

The house's traditional layout and Western-inspired lines provided both challenges and opportunities for experiment. "We wanted the interior to be what we call luxurious modern but highlighted with Chinese elements," Wang says. "So we used local materials like silk, han-bai-yu white stone and coconut shell from Hainan Island in southern China. The han-bai-yu stone, used in the flooring, is the same white stone used for the carved white lions at the Forbidden City—it's a very traditional stone." Its appealing reflective quality—the polished surface mirrors the rich chocolate-brown sandalwood detailing throughout—was a requirement for many of the materials Wang selected.

Elsewhere, elegant decorative pillows with a lustrous sheen are carefully placed on chairs and sofas. And on a living room wall, Wang hung enormous panels of stretched gray silk. Since walls at the front of a siheyuan-style house contain no windows, this silk, with its luxurious shimmer, draws light into the room like a window.

In China several generations often live together, so siheyuan-style houses are designed with master bedrooms for both parents and grandparents. "Because of China's one-child policy, houses usually have only one child's room," Wang notes. For the parents' master bedroom—on the second floor—he designed doors and a closet inlaid with finely cut coconut shells formed by hand into mosaic-like panels, an idea he derived from Balinese coconut-shell-inlaid trays and small tables. "Although it works well in this house, it's actually difficult to use this material in Beijing," he admits, explaining that the weather in Beijing is much drier than on tropical Hainan Island, "so the pieces must be aired and dried after shipment."

Throughout the interiors, bursts of color accent a muted palette of brown, cream and white. Wang used rich Chinese red, shades of purple and splashes of lapis lazuli, a common combination in Chinese décor. The bold red painting in the living room was made by a university art student using Wang's computer-generated image. Red vases brighten the basement-level spa and family room. A blue ceramic centerpiece on the dining table references water but is also reminiscent of the emperor's rich blue-painted walls within the Forbidden City. An experimental blend of taste and style, the house Wang Ta-Chun has created is a comfortable contemporary vision guided by centuries-old tradition.

Around the Web