A Collector’s Mansion

Hangzhou-based designer Bob Chen was tasked with designing the home of his close friend, and the pair relied on understanding and intuition to create a voluminous repository for antiques and objets collected over the years

It was a simple wooden basket that sparked this homeowner’s obsession with antiques a decade ago. Now, having amassed a thousand-strong collection, he required a repository to house and display his favourites, settling on this 500-square-metre mansion in west Hangzhou and calling on his long-time friend Bob Chen of Hangzhou-based Bob Chen Design Office to design this personal project.

According to Chen, ‘A home is a comprehensive expression of the inhabitants’ life, emotions and way of thinking.’ So when he was asked to design the three-storey home — a project he says ‘felt like documenting a story together’ — there were two things he had to consider: how to integrate his client’s vast collection of antiques and objets from different eras and locations into a contemporary aesthetic, and the how to fit this aesthetic with the client’s personal style.

A neutral colour palette and natural materials were selected to represent the clients’ calm, relaxed lifestyle. In the living room, a five-and-a-half-metre log sourced from Indonesia has been turned into a custom TV cabinet, while four pieces of blue stone from the Netherlands combine with round brushed brass legs to become a coffee table. Here, furniture includes an oversized sofa, plush velvet single-seaters, a round marble table and a Pierre Jeanneret-designed armchair. The vases, ceramic bowls and countless Chinese teapots in the ground-floor ‘collection room’ feel more like entering an antique gallery, and the nearby tearoom, designed for the client’s wife, sits upon a raised wooden platform with a hollow space in the middle designed for comfortable seating at the table. Timber-clad walls, cabinets and shelving units enhance the sense of warmth in the space, while a floor-to-ceiling window frames a view of the courtyard outside and floods the space with natural light.

The sprawling property includes an office, a storage room, a tearoom, a laundry room, a study, a walk-in cloakroom, bedrooms and a guest room, living and dining areas and bathrooms, each making for a unique backdrop for the client’s collections. And according to Chen, what draws all of these items together is their ‘durability and timeless beauty,’ qualities that now permeate the entire home.

Text / Nicole Chim
Images / Wen Office