Co-Direction Design, a studio based in Shenzhen, China, created a Pottery and Colored Glaze Workshop in Boshan, a renowned town of ceramics and colored glaze for over a thousand years. Many old villages in this town, such as Guyao Village, inherited ingenious craftsmanship as well as the spirit for striving for excellence, and created various exquisite artworks. 

Based on these favorable natural and cultural conditions in Boshan, the client decided to construct an "elder-care town" beside Yuwang Mountain, a destination for old people to enjoy life. 

With the thought of inheriting the local traditional culture and pursuing the essence of design, the design team conceived to restructure the space and integrate historical and cultural elements into it, aiming to reach a balance between the contemporary and the traditional.

The front desk is made of a massive granite stone, which is in harmony with the space atmosphere. The foyer was designed with a symmetrical layout, conveying oriental aesthetics of order. The wired glass screens in this area are placed with a certain distance from each other, which exude dim and soft lights and form the contrast of massiveness and lightness with the architecture.

The ceiling was designed with curved and strip-shaped structures, which shows the structural aesthetics of traditional Chinese architecture and adds a sense of formality to the space. Lights fall on the tiered glazed bricks, generating soft glitter like jades and pearls, and indicating the rich local cultural context.

Large area of white walls and gray hollow bricks echo each other, which endows the space with unique textures, blurs boundaries within it and facilitates the interaction of lights and shadows.

The whole space is filled with exquisite architectural elements. Walking through it, one can deeply feel the collision between modern design language and traditional aesthetics as well as the inheritance of Chinese culture.

Traditional cave-house for pottery making

First floor plan

Second floor plan

Project facts:

Interior design: Co-Direction Design

Soft decoration: Co-Direction Aesthetics

Project area: 810 sqm

Main materials: wood veneer, wired-glass, glazed brick, gray brick, brushed stainless steel, textured paint

Completion time: August 2018

Project location: No.6, Yaojiayu Village, Boshan District, Zibo City, Shandong Province, China

All images © Jing Xufeng

> via Co-Direction Design