Zen Living

By Marina Correa

Photography: Kyle Yu; courtesy the architects

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Standing out for impeccable all-white interiors, and amazing textures, a clubhouse in Zhengzhou China, designed by Japanese-based Noiz Architects, is a cocoon of calm and tranquility in comparison to the chaotic world outside…

“We decided to make the interiors as colourless as possible, to remove the sense of weight and ‘business’ of the outside,” say the architects. However, within this all-white palette, they’ve played around with an assortment of materials and surfaces to evoke different expressions.

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The unusual triangular shape of the existing floor plan proved to be a restraint while distributing rooms within a standard grid-geometry, so the architects created a new, free-form plan to accommodate changes. For instance, the main hall doubles up as the reception and has been designed with a double-height atrium fitted with a spectacular crystal drop LED chandelier that mimics a starry sky. The impact of the colour-changing crystal LEDs can be felt strongly as the whitewashed interiors absorb different hues and turn surrealistic.

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Colour is introduced minimally through artworks displayed in only a few rooms throughout the 1,700 sq. mt. space. The icing on the cake comes in the form of fabulous use of textures – be it the variety of textured wallpapers or the glass table with its base like miniature trees or a long, curved ridged bench or wall patterns.

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Intriguingly, the use of historic and contemporary 2-D and 3-D graphical images imprinted on the doors, referenced from Eastern and Western cultures, makes them a talking point for all who visit.

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Overall, the project’s unique design proves Noiz’s (coined from ‘noise’, which used when new forms of music took birth; a constant reminder to produce ingenious work) strong commitment to creative design solutions.