HA House

As the morning sunlight filters through the window, it gently caresses a sleeping face, accompanied by the mellow jazz melodies from the living room, softly awakening the dreamer and subtly ushering in a beautiful day. Stepping slowly into the space, the deep brown wood grain imbues the space with a serene and warm ambiance. Leaning against a rattan chair in the dining area, one savors the aroma of coffee and casually admires the collections on the shelves, as time seems to slow down, evoking the free-spirited romantic atmosphere of the 1960s.

Designer Alfie Huang, who once traveled to Europe, shares that the diverse architectural styles and spatial applications in Spain deeply inspired his design concepts. In this well-lit home, traces of various styles can be found, as he hopes to incorporate the appearances he encountered during his travels into his own living space. For Alfie Huang, art serves as a medium to convey his personal life philosophies and attitudes. Despite having different favorite artists and musical genres—he likes Disco and Jazz, while his wife prefers House—this diversity enriches the space with unique personalities. “How to balance the visual equilibrium between the space and the artwork?” thus became a crucial theme for this project. Ultimately, the paintings on the walls and the furniture became the soul of the overall layout, with the wall space left suitably blank amidst vibrant colors, waiting for infinite future possibilities to unfold.

During the initial discussions, the design team carefully analyzed the couple’s lifestyle and thoughtfully reconfigured the layout and circulation. Considering the couple’s love for life and the time they spend in the living room, they decided to remove an original partition to expand the public area as much as possible. The semi-open kitchen at the bottom extends the spatial scale, with an arched entrance on one side subtly delineating the area, while the other side combines reeded glass and woodwork, elegantly inviting sunlight in and creating a sense of discreet privacy. When friends and family gather around the playful round steel table, they can easily grab drinks from the mini bar nearby and connect effortlessly with the host cooking in the kitchen. The living room lacks a television, replaced instead by an audio system perched on an antique sideboard, allowing the music-loving couple to fully immerse themselves in their own time, while items placed on floating shelves inadvertently leave traces of the inhabitants’ lives, recording each meaningful memory.

Mid-century modernism and Bauhaus style serve as the common language for Alfie Huang and his partner, with the soft furnishings and lighting scattered throughout the space carrying their respective growth journeys, highlighted by pure geometric lines that underscore their exquisite craftsmanship and efficiently meet the functional needs of each area. Although the house enjoys excellent natural lighting, making it bright and transparent even without artificial light, the rounded wall lamp above the dining table is still a notable feature. Influenced by the works of Spanish painters Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso, vibrant colors cheerfully adorn various areas of the interior. The grass-green sofa chair from Germany's Knoll, paired with the poster on the back wall, evokes the space back to the 1960s, while the bright mustard yellow tiles in the kitchen and the bright orange grout in the master bathroom, contrasting with the white tiles, fill the home with a joyful and cheerful atmosphere.

For a designer, translating emotional concepts into tangible spaces through rational vocabulary is both an art and a mission. For STRAIGHT Design, which primarily focuses on commercial space design, tailoring residential spaces requires constant communication with the clients to understand their daily lives and reflect their thoughts and ideas in the details. Especially with this project, where director Alfie Huang personally participated in the entire design process, it allowed for an in-depth understanding of oneself from different perspectives during the conceptualization and discussion stages.