Private club, Shanghai Ezra Court | NONG STUDIO

The private club is inspired by the long and romantic history of Xinkang Garden, which originally established in 1916 that mainly comprised of green Spanish-style garden house, and in order to celebrate the coronation of King George VI in 1937, it was renamed Jubilee Court. We attempts to integrate the Art Deco, Art Nouveau and Viennese Secession style in the space to create a collision with the Shanghai-style culture in modern approaches. In the meantime, the renovation and refurbishment have been conducted while preserving the interior decoration and pattern of the original building as much as possible.

The entrance narrates the beginning of the story: straight-run stairs directly to the second floor when the door opens. We keep the original door frame and decoration of staircase, as well as the primitive floor terrazzo and wood structure. Black, white and gold as its main colors has been adopted inside, inspired by the bold application of plants motif and geometric pattern by the Viennese Secession Movement. France handmade wallpaper brand, de Gournay, has been applied, as well as artists from Southern France were invited to spend half a year reproducing the Art Nouveau bronze crystal chandelier originally designed by Victor Horta in the 1900s, highlighting the Shanghai aesthetics amid the integration between the ancient and present.

The second-floor space is functionally divided into the living room, study, tea lounge, bathroom and two Spanish-style balconies.

In the living room, we retains the original marble fireplace, parquet teak flooring and plaster moldings, and use black oak and brass  door casing and decoration. Every piece of furniture in the living room plays a distinct role with other furniture to orchestrate a sitcom, comprising of the fully handmade Art Deco carpet that we designed, the Italian classic Lady chair made of malachite green velvet, the Art Deco classic tapestry made in the 1920s, the 312 Willow Trone-Armchair designed by the Viennese Secession master Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the wine cabinet made in the Art Nouveau and fully handmade plaster chandelier designed by the French artist Philippe Anthonioz. An unconstrained collision of old and new, ancient and preset can be found here.

The tea lounge space unfold itself in a mix and match approach instead of more traditional Chinese tearoom. A gold work of Chinese painting by a Chinese artist --- Moheng --- highlight the entire space, as well as rose red old Art Deco carpet of the 1920s and the Qing-style mahogany official hat armchairs, giving rise to a dialog between East and west.

Two bathrooms is inspired by old Shanghai materials and elements – fully hand-polished terrazzo floor and basins, as well as tailor-made cement  tiles and bespoke kitchen white glazed tiles. 

In his Urban Exoticism in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature, Heinrich Fruehauf said that “Shanghai is a city full of exotic oddities so different from other places in China. She can be considered as a laboratory of cultures to experiment whether an entirely new Chinese civilization is possible”. In this work, we hope to create a container of cultures that can carry with it entirely new Shanghai-style aesthetics in contemporary approach.