Formerly known as Beijing textile warehouse, a factory with red-brick walls and pitch roof built in the 1960s has been transformed into a new showroom for a young domestic furniture brand, ZIIN. Atelier tao+c sought to balance the relation between existing site with the new function, exhibition and sale, background and objects by placing two intersecting square frameworks, which were rotated 45 degrees to detached from the original four walls, and formed independent nested buildings in a building.
photo credit © Wen Studio
At the entrance to Ting Tangyu Village, along the main route into and out of the village, is a traditional courtyard. Like many others in the village, it consists of a late Qing Dynasty residence, a courtyard, a tree, and a kitchen added in the 1990s. Here, atelier tao+c has inserted a light-footprint shed serving as a gathering place with dual purposes: a resting stop for tourists and a meeting spot for villagers to casual chat when entering or leaving the village, and allows local residents and tourist to come across and communicate.
Along the outline of the courtyard, which the oblique shape demarcated by the riverside road, village paths, and the shared wall with the neighbor, the architects inspired a single-column passage wraps around the perimeter and cut out a rectangular courtyard parallel to the shared wall and at a 5° angle to the main house.The establishment of the passages clarified the site’s boundaries and created an intermediate threshold between the road and the main house, filtering out the noise, allowing the river breeze to pass through.
The tourist lobby adopts a passive preservation approach, to use but not to occupy the space, insert but not renovate. Without erasing its traces, the aging timber structure and weathered surfaces, remains untouched in its gradual decay.
In this rural renovation project, the architects hope to maintain the awareness of being an outsider, comes in gently, speaks softly. With temporary and reversible interventions which seek a balance between rewriting and preservation, and reserves the possibility for future transformations.
The Twin Lane-Houses is located in Shanghai, comprising two merged lane houses surrounded by buildings from various eras. The layout retains typical Shanghai new-type lilong housing features—divided into front and rear sections, the ceilings of the back spaces are lower than those at the front, causing the levels of the house to be split. The old lane houses were abandoned as the conventional lifestyles of lilong gradually recede.
The central load-bearing wall showed cross-floor cracks. Thus, a framework of steel columns was integrated. Within this framework, the steel columns and beams combine with the original brick walls and timber rafters, forming a new load-bearing system. The juxtaposition of materials and structures, such as the installation-like bathrooms, staircases and rafters, creates a unique complexity in the house. Ordinary joints and details lend the renovation a commonplace demeanor, while the facade design remains restrained under specific constraints, maintaining existing connections with the community.
On a snow field of Aranya Chongli in northern China, atelier tao+c conceived the new naive bookstore as a luminous space in the midst of ice and snow, seamlessly integrated with the surrounding landscape, climate and nature.
Between the concrete columns of the original building, a new grid of the steel and wood frameworks were placed in and interwoven with existing structure, building a new spatial sequence without restrict boundaries. The wooden frame was raised accordingly in the double height area to form a pitched roof with circular openings, reframing views for one’s exploration. There is no partition wall erected in the interior. Corresponding to the changing heights and sunlight, the bookshelves and seats are allocated along the grids to define the circulation and to form book area, café, and seating area from north to south with gradually changing ambience.
The bookshelves, made of fiberglass with rounded edge, are lightweight and translucent and have been fixed to stainless steel brackets. As the sunlight moves, penetrated, and filtered by the texture of the fiberglass material, softens the hard light and cast soft shadows, the honey color light oscillates and flows in the space.
The light birch and fiberglass complement the snowy landscape, making the previously gray concrete space more exquisite and brighter, like warm mist rising from the snow.
With the length of 730 meters and width of 5 meters merely, Lixi Road is not straight forward. Within this narrow street, historical residence, aged community houses together with new office buildings have been placed in a zigzag line and formed several twisted street corners, where the evolvement of city street is traceable.
Situated on the ground floor of a three-story office building, at the narrowest corner of Lixi Road, the south façade alongside the street has formed a slightly curved elevation.
The once edited facade has been retained as a pre-existing element, retreated to the original wall with a transparent glass screen retouched in a slightly twist, establishing an intermediate threshold to the road.
Natural lights are allowed to pass through continuous glass screens to the inside, creating a concave mirror effect and lighting up the whole space. The transparent and dual elevations that retained community memories has connected the street to the interior. The absorption of street view is further intensified by introducing daylights and weather to the inside, evoking one’s resonance with urban life.
Capsule Hotel and Bookstore in Village Qinglongwu is located in the deep forests of Tonglu in Zhejiang province. It was an old house of wood structure and mud walls, covering an area of 232 sqm and a height of 7.2 meters. Atelier tao+c redesigned and regenerated this old building by inserting a capsule hotel that can accommodate 20 people, a community bookstore and library.
The architects made restrained openings on the exterior wall to maintain the original simplicity of the building. The original floors and partition walls were removed, opened the ground floor for library, placed two independent “floating” structure above the open spaces, which will be used separately for male and female guests. Each of the male and female “buildings” is equipped with ten capsule rooms and one bathroom. The modular capsule rooms are hidden and enclosed by bookshelves, giving more privacy to the accommodation area. At the same time, the staggering floor slabs formed a few “double-height” spaces in the accommodation areas,it is also where people’s point of sight is above the floor height.
Given the amazing natural landscape at the east end of the building, the architect cut the whole gable wall on this side and embedded a transparent structure of wooden frames and corrugated polycarbonate panels, introducing the green of the mountains and forests into the interior. At twilight, the whole building is illuminated by the light from the indoor, and the building itself becomes a light house, offering a slice of warmth to the calmness of the night.
photo credit © Su Shengliang
BlueBottle Coffee, designed by atelier tao+c, is situated in a specific area of the West Bund that was once home to the Shanghai Cement Factory (1920-2009), with the east side overlooking a shipyard, a historical remnant of the former site.
The project is defined by two distinctive “canvases”, inviting the riverbank scenery into the interior space. These “canvases” are supported by slanted timber columns, creating a shelter-like space that divide the rectangular space into two distinct yet fluid zones, evoking a sense of openness and warmth.
The coffee bar, constructed from prefabricated concrete blocks, pays homage to the site’s industrial legacy.
Extending the design narrative to the outdoor stools, crafted from a single module, are strategically placed to face the shipyard. This arrangement allows visitors to enjoy their coffee while taking in the bustling freight activity along the Huangpu River.
Built in 1936, Magy Apartment was a historical residential building on Wulumuqi Road in Shanghai. The client rented a small studio on the upper floor, eager to have “a comfortable interior that one would feel poised even being confined for a few months”.
The sense of solitude and seclusion evoke us the typology of a monk’s cell, of which its spatial organization freed from any social bonds such as family, blurring the boundary between public and private
With a new “cupboard “system inserted to form several corners, functioning as living room, bedroom and dining area, each space is independent yet continuous. The insertions are made of green humid resistant MDF boards, of which a singular element has been evolved into bookshelves, desks, bed, closet, cabinets, platforms, and ceilings, creating a new interior with these familiar and functional objects.
For the exhibition – “The Clash Of Ideas” curated by Violet Wang and 卷宗Wallpaper＊ Venue: Power Station of Art
No. 1381-1 Yuyuan Road, stands set back 30 meters from the bustling main street, leaving a modest forecourt that separates it from the urban hustle. Through meticulous observations of the urban interface and detailed investigations of the building’s inherent qualities, Atelier tao+c has reimagined a community-oriented renovation of Element’s store.
Given the challenging economic climate, the design avoids radical transformation to the structure, opting instead for a budget-conscious, “self-renewing” regeneration.
The design pays homage to “curated chaos.” Rejecting the sterility of gallery-like spaces, a store in a community should embraces the vibrant disorder of a well-stocked bazaar. It integrated multiple display methods, racks overflowing with clothes amplify energy without cluttering the space, but adding vitality and diversity.
Around the buildings, houses and shops are intermingled; A jumble of laundry hangers, air conditioners and awnings protruding like architectural parasites, epitomizes Shanghai’s idiosyncratic streetscape. The façade intervention responds to this urban collage. A steel exoskeleton climbs the exterior from the ground floor to the third floor, integrating doors, windows, and signage mounts, allowing maximum daylight and views. It supports awnings and a café counter, while functioning as a scaffold for seasonal banners—a contemporary nod to neighboring laundry poles, forms a recognizable facade feature, which blends into the residential buildings and reflects each other.
Located on the ground floor of an old garden house, it’s a U-shape room with a full-faceted semi-circular window facing the back garden.
The 42sqm room was once the ballroom of the house and then a couple lived in it for decades, eventually moved out. How to revive an original single function room to meet new need of living is a problem faced by many vacant rooms as such.
The architect inserted a huge composite piece of furniture or a micro “furniturisation” architecture into the room. The rich interface formed by the interweaving of concrete blocks absorbs the surface and plane of daily life into complex structures, thereby obtaining a looser space for activities. A 42 sqm room results with a living room in 11 sqm, kitchen and dining room in 20 sqm, a bathroom in 4 sqm, a foyer with wardrobe in 5 qm, a bedroom in 15 sqm and a study in 4 sqm.
In this project, the function of walls and floors was replaced by furniture, which became a reduced kind architectural miniature.
photo credit © Tian Fangfang
On ground floor of a 1930’s old house in Shanghai, atelier tao+c transformed the former residential space into a boutique retail space for SPMA.
The renovation is not only about refurbishing the surface, also involves a series of strategy to intervene into the space based on the internal structure and the characteristics of the building itself. The architect inserted volumes and components made of various new material into the house without touching the existing walls, combining the texture layers of the old building to expose the narrative between the clothing and architectural space.
In the process of renovate the old house with the new texture, the construction marks and substructures were revealed. Just like the exposed stitching, lining and stitching on clothes, the methods of building repairs and the new insertion are directly displayed.
The owner of the bookstore and the designer reached a common understanding that the bookstore should not only be a storage room for books, but also should be a place for people to involving in , collecting social memories, and absorbing knowledge.
Every bookshelf, seat, and lamp in the Common Reader Bookstore are specifically designed for each book and conform to human’s reading behaviors. The unconventional oblique angles on the bookshelves cater to the reader‘s gesture of grasping and putting down books; The different seats pander to provide diverse ways for readers to sit down and stay. Atelier tao+c seized the opportunity to probe into human’s reading behaviors, as that the designer planned to curate an immersed experience for readers to re-concentrate on reading. The strategy is to reduce unnecessary objects, except for bookshelves, display tables, seats, reading lights, and curtains, there are no other elements standing in the room. The dark-tone woods lined with bright green were introduced to evoke people’s memories of the old-time libraries, strengthen the clam ambiance that encourages readers to stay in, to sit down, read, and write.
It’s an internal reading room for a team, a shared study room among a group of friends. A third space between public and private, living and working.
On the ground floor of a 1980s house, there are two vacant rooms enclosed by load-bearing brick walls and next to a glasshouse in the courtyard. Atelier tao+c converted those three separated rooms into a united place where accommodates a dozen people to read together at the same time and suitable to hold small lectures within.
In the I.S.S Normandy Apartments designed by the Hungarian-Slovak architect László Hudec. Atelier TAO+C was commissioned to renovate a small flat on the top floor of the building. Different from the conventional organization of a home which celebrate a living room and bedroom as the main space in China, the proposal calls for the perception of space that break the usual patterns of domesticity – study room as the engine place of everyday life. React to the diagonal line of the bookshelves and the envelope of building, a small elevated attic along the corner was introduced to break down the homogenous space of a flat level. There are many levels of reading spaces and the corners of meditating, and layers of seeing and to be seen. Surrounded by the bookshelves, a space inhabited with serenity by books, object and men was inscribed.
photo credit © Shen Zhonghai, Santiago Barrio
The project was to remodel a 1930s’ lane house. The design team dealt with a discreet surgical approach, cutting a slim opening in the center of house, reminds one of the typical narrow light shaft in those small southern traditional houses. Carefully preserving and exposing parts of the wooden structure, balancing the relation between old and new. The project evokes a sense of southern Chinese vernacular dwelling with modern architectural language.
Instead of adding more space, the architects took an opposite approach- cutting a slim opening from ground floor to roof between the split and the main floors in the middle of the east side bay.By implanting such a light shaft, allows the celebration of air and light and also interweaves the split floors, enriches the spatial experience of domesticity.
Located in a banal shopping mall in Zhengzhou, In this project, Atelier tao+c boldly applied washed granolithic plaster as the main material for interior walls and floors. A greyscale palette of two materials – the washed granolithic plaster juxtaposed with brushed stainless steel, one is rough and dull while the other is sterile and reflective, which formed an austere monochrome space for this two-stories men-wear select shop.
Reusing this once-popular yet forgotten material, the architects seek to evoke memories of the most dynamic and creative era and city to convey a more “local” sense of the street. Responding to the owners’ request to feature domestic fashion brands in the space and promote local young designers.
On the ground floor of an anonymous 80s housing, We rent a small residence and transformed it into a studio to accommodate the new function of living and working. With the growth of the studio, we rent two rooms next to former one step by step, by eliminating the walls in between the backyards, result in an elongated backyard with two glass boxes with slim frames to connect three isolated working spaces.
we seek to make light touch and adjustments with humble materials, to maintain flexibility of interior space and grow along with the pattern of neighborhood, to shed light on the spatial strangeness found within mundane housing typologies. The process of making, take form from inside and grow to the fabric of building, suggested a mode of dwelling and working in tune with the modern condition of changeability and transparency.
photo credit © Su Shengliang, Chen Hao, Zhu Hai
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Atelier tao+c
Founding year: 2016 Co-founders: Tao Liu，Chunyan Cai Work contents: Architectural design / Interior design / Furniture design Address: 3f, No.11 Zhenning Road, Shanghai, 200050 China
Founded in 2016, Atelier tao+c is an architectural studio based in Shanghai. Our works ranging across diverse scales —from a piece of furniture to a streetscape, from the interior of small urban apartments to the renovation of old rural houses, and from small shops on the street to youth communities.
In recent years, the studio has focused on the adaptive reuse of pre-existing buildings, creating a series of small-scale public spaces within factories, warehouses, villages, and markets throughout Beijing and Zhejiang, including Dishbooks Bookstore in the old urban area of Wenzhou, the factory converted into a sports field and staff cafeteria in Beijing, and the tourist center in Longyou Village.
At the same time, It continues to involved in transformation designs in Shanghai’s historic neighborhoods, with a series of projects located on Lixi Road, Julu Road, Tianping Road, Anfu Road, Wulumuqi Road, subtly reshaping streetscape through small interventions.
Begins by being somewhere, and begins means to observe and sense what is already there, and what should remain untouched—embracing conditions that are present and ready to be utilized. As a result, our projects often recede inward,allowing space to grow organically from within and transcend boundaries between interior and exterior, forging connections in the overlooked gaps between architecture and interiors. Through direct,local materials and familiar construction techniques, we express craftsmanship and attention to detail with depth.
The outcome is characterized by fundamental forms, clear proportions, and unexpected sectional variations. The practice seeks to explore the beauty of everyday life, pick up the evocative clues, rediscovering values hidden in simplicity and allow life to unfold to us all its complexities.
With the intention of making a lighting as an architectural element rather than an ornament, Atelier tao+c reduced the lamp to a minimal form – a linear light glowing inside a crystal glass tube. The led light is concealed in a delicate black metal strip which pierces through the cylindrical section. The elegant line and simple shape might reminisce one of an elongated lantern – an ancient Asian illumination in Asia or an enlarged electron tube, evoking a sense of both traditional and contemporary.
11-3 Zhenning Road Shanghai 200050
