DAQIANLOFT | XIAOOU OFFICE

"I dwell among the world of men, yet no clamor of horse and chariot reaches me."

A bustling cultural and creative park, converted from an old flour mill, nevertheless gives rise to that very stillness — born of the interplay of materials, light, circulation, and scale. It is not withdrawal, but serenity preserved within the everyday. Tao Yuanming gives the answer: "When the mind dwells afar, the place grows quiet of itself."

DAQIANLOFT — upon the bones of industrial heritage, it reaches for the soul of Eastern aesthetics.

The Pavilion Takes Residence
—    DAQIANLOFT Phase I

The rawness of the flour mill meets the suppleness of Eastern attire: concrete against ramie, the curved silo against the circular cash-coin motif, aged brick against new pattern, textured floor against mellow timber. Tension arises from contrast, and the space itself becomes a legible work.

What the brand required was not surface area, but a structure capable of holding a realm. Garments are no longer the sole object on display: light, material, and circulation together compose the experience. Thus the pavilion — a space to enter, to linger, to gaze afar — where architecture, motif, and garment complete a narrative of continuity and renewal.

In traditional Chinese architecture, the pavilion is a place to ascend and gaze afar. Inserted into the interior, it preserves the archetypes of entry and layering, weaving the garden principles of a winding path to seclusion and shifting views at every step into the visitor circulation. It becomes the visual and structural core, the axis around which sightlines contract and expand.

The curve becomes the mother tongue of the space: there are no right angles — the bar counter, garment rails, and staircase all resolve in arcs. Within, scale and light embrace in wordless restraint, and restraint becomes negative space: liubai, the Eastern art of leaving blank.

The Weight of Heritage: Structural Constraints of the Existing Fabric
 

A forest of columns marches across the space, its capitals beyond removal. The immovable is made ornamental: the column grid becomes warp and weft, weaving the functional program into the plan, while the remnants are reimagined in the language of classical Chinese column capitals.

Natural materials retaining their raw texture converse with man-made ones engineered to emulate coarseness. Black is laid as the ground — deep, never loud — with a pale coffee hue drawn from the sun-bleached tones of rattan, bamboo, and ramie. The mortise-and-tenon joint receives its contemporary translation: its interlocking logic survives as a visual motif while load passes to welded steel, and the que-ti sparrow brace, stripped to its essence, lands at the junction of beam and column.

Arrival as Narrative: The Entry Sequence and Facade Strategy
 

Arrival is not achieved in a single step. A stone-slab path leads the way, the cash-coin screen wall stands to the side, and an auspicious beast holding a ring in its mouth marks the threshold. After dusk, the screen wall glows, and recessed uplights awaken tier by tier while the old mill wall holds its shadows. Light falls through the lattice window onto the aged slabs — not bright, not far, keeping one pace of shadow before it.

Along the exterior wall, planting rises in staggered tiers — spring buds, summer shade, autumn fruit, winter bareness — as time stages the building's four seasons. The old slabs retain their wear marks as deliberate imperfections, and the benches beside the entrance are reserved for no one: shop, street, and residence bleed into one another. The world moves forward. Here, it steps back.

The flanking screen walls repeat the motif across the facade, filtering daylight into dappled shadow that drifts with the sun; the entrance door is crowned by a beast-and-ring knocker, utility, ritual, and blessing in a single object. Light is its ink, the floor its paper — the pattern is finished only by light.

Square Meets Circle: Nested Rings and the Cash-Coin Imagery
 

Columns establish the square; interlocking rings weave within; circulation unfolds along the arcs. The square sets boundary and order, the circle carries flow and inward focus, and the two bleed into the Eastern aesthetic realm of the pavilion. The inner ring is the pavilion, the outer ring display and wandering; the central stair is round without and square within, echoing the cash coin. The palette is set in pale cream and black, as garment materials — ramie and waxed cord — become spatial finishes. The silo's arc, the coin's arc, the stair's arc: industrial heritage and Eastern motif in dialogue across half a century.

The Pavilion Within: Anchoring the Rising Form
 

On the second floor, the pavilion rises from the slab on four load-bearing columns. Full-height sliding lattices, custom-woven with intangible-heritage bamboo, open and close at will — dividing without enclosing, letting light and sightlines breathe. The stair spirals around the columns, black textured timber extending with each tread, while the cash-coin motif traced in LED strips serves as safety marker and memory anchor. The handrail adopts waxed cord, a staple of garment making: fabric enters the construction itself and becomes the grain of the architecture.

Material Narrative: Heritage Craft Made Spatial
 

Fabric clads the walls; craftsmanship carries the bones. Ramie's warp and weft weave time itself, and woven bamboo casts sparse shadows. Intangible heritage is no plaque in a vitrine: here it is put to work and carried forward.

Large stretches of the facade are clad in ramie pieced from linen of different eras and origins, each tone and weight with its own provenance; where the weft is withdrawn and the warp remains, the wall faintly shows through — the cloth leaving itself a breath of space. Sichuan intangible-heritage bamboo weaving forms the pavilion partition, fully openable: woven shut, it is a wall, sifting light; drawn open, it is a frame, the view becoming facade. Rough-textured warm-taupe plaster grounds the walls, where traditional window grilles and the cash-coin motif are reworked through layered stenciling into a patterned texture unique to DAQIANLOFT — faintly emerging and receding, never overpowering.

The Pavilion's Hidden Realm: The Corridor as a Ritual of Discovery
 

The stair is a threshold and a choreographed ascent: a waxed-cord handrail runs alongside, crabapple-pattern step lights unfold a continuous motif underfoot, and warm timber treads edged in black steel plate float within the dark. Warm "green-shade" light pours from overhead, shifting visitors from public browsing to the intimacy of the upper floor.

The VIP area settles into deeper, enveloping warm tones, its bamboo-woven fitting-room door admitting light but not sight; it serves not only for fitting, but as a salon for receiving. Ascend, then gaze afar: the ground floor is for walking and looking, the upper floor for sitting and lingering. A window opens, and from this height the treetops draw near, their leaves stirring as if whispering.

Light Held Still: The Light Well, Tree Shadows, and Temporality
 

The ceiling evokes the tianjing, a courtyard light well layered with summer green shade. Like a sundial, the space keeps time: pools of light climb from the carved-timber bar up the warp and weft of the ramie-clad columns, binding the two floors. Green shade spills in as though treetops had reached indoors, while the well converges upward, lifting away the weight of the ceiling.

Tectonic Vocabulary: The Structural Translation of Traditional Chinese Architecture
 

The expansion joint between column and ceiling is recast as a luminous detail, a concealed LED strip washing light downward so structure becomes the origin of light. The mortise-and-tenon joint survives visually while welded steel bears the load; the railing draws on the que-ti sparrow brace, and the column capital is reimagined as a ludou bearing block. Hanging racks are welded to the framing with pre-embedded hardware.

The Grammar of Unfurling
—DAQIANLOFT Phase II
 

Phase II grows out of the brand's functional needs: from jing — realm — into ye — vocation. The ground-floor bar extends the brand's social world into the physical; the livestream studio, photo studio, and upper-floor office anchor content production and operations. The vaulted ceiling drops low at the sides, wrapping the space like a wine cellar, and the warmth of teak, the reserve of brass, the depth of piano lacquer, and the glow of orange-toned stone reflect one another in indirect light. As day turns to night, the body slips unawares from the rhythm of the street into the rhythm of the space — a state calibrated by light, material, and scale in concert.

Arched Tiles as Bone: Overlapping Layers and Integrated Concealed Lighting
 

The ceiling takes the vault of a wine cellar: tiles spread wing-like in two staggered layers, the structural arching downward in a matrix, the lighting arching upward and nested beneath, light refracting between curved and flat surfaces. Orange long-format bricks lay a warm floor base, bridged at transitions by micro-crystalline stone. Deep-brown teak veneer lines the walls, its seams studded with timber strips and brass fasteners like nail heads on leather; the bar sets cloud-veined orange onyx against piano lacquer, capped in brass. The light sources withdraw behind objects — tile lights like stars, wall sconces like torches — yet it is light that recalibrates time.

Between Threshold and Forecourt: Streetscape and the Architecture of Arrival
 

The planting scheme stays fruit-tree-led: the exterior display from the original shop is relocated to the bar's outer wall, joining new greenery to form the street frontage. The gate reprises the screen wall's cash-coin motif and beast-and-ring knocker, its opening mechanism now remote-controlled, balancing formal language with day-to-day operation.

Measures of Time: The Individual Breaks Free of Functionalism
 

A tribute to the 1970s retro-office aesthetic of the CRUSH Collection 2024 early-autumn campaign. Warm-orange veneer, mustard-yellow furniture, and aged olive-green carpet are drawn from the era's warm earth tones, a deliberate turn away from the cold-white industrial look. One continuous integrated workbench carries on the American modular office logic of the 1970s and 80s — open plan, partitions dissolved — while the mushroom glass floor lamp and the fixed cylinder chair speak the rounded organic curves of the period.

Concealed Light, Revealed Form
 

When the Cash-Coin Becomes Light: Backlit Screen Walls and the Chiaroscuro of Old and New
 

The flanking metal cash-coin screens are backlit from within: light hides behind the grille, diffusing through the perforations until the motif itself glows — a luminous night facade. Behind them, the old mill's concrete silos receive no artificial light, left in their somber industrial truth. One luminous, one in shadow: warmth and weight answer each other as old and new complete their dialogue in light.

Within and Beyond the Frame: Light Spilling Through Glazing and the Layers of the Street
 

Full-height glazing crops the interior like a picture frame: warm light spills out, and the mezzanine, stair, and colonnade compose a painting within. Recessed uplights wash the foliage while the treetops recede into shadow, settling building, greenery, and street into three layers of depth. No harsh streetlamps intrude; the stillness of the night is kept whole.

Concealed Light, Constructed Realm: The Interior Lighting System
 

Anti-glare recessed downlights carry an even ambient base, while concealed LED strips at the column tops turn structural members into luminous surfaces. Aimed track spots trace the garments in layered light and shadow, and lights embedded in the spiral stair treads serve both safe passage and ritual. In Phase II, the bar is independently zoned: wall sconces cup the beam like torches, and the cabinet shelves uplight through glass bottles.

Day and Night in Dialogue: Light as Medium
 

By day, natural light pours through the glazing and cash-coin shadows drift with the sun; LED strips fade gently along banquette and ceiling, so day and night hand over without the jolt of a switch. A consistent warm-white 4000K holds throughout, indirect light carrying the base and accent light layered on top. Light never meets the eye head-on; it appears only on the surfaces it touches — the folds of ramie, the relief of plaster, the grain of old timber. As day and night turn, the motif leads two lives: cast as shadow by sunlight, glowing on its own after dark.

Epilogue
 

The industrial bones are not clad away; the Eastern realm does not hang on symbols. Concrete against ramie, old brick against cash-coin, dark flooring against warm-taupe walls, light against dark — each stands its ground yet defines the other.

"Precision over carelessness, scarcity over clutter." Every edge detail is sampled again and again; the final expression rests in restraint and negative space. It makes no clamor, yet at every turn there is something worth seeing; it offers no explanation, yet every detail has its provenance. Old and new, hard and soft, circle and square grow from one skeleton and live by one another.

As the door swings shut behind you, the beast-and-ring knocker settles gently into place, and light through the lattice falls on the old stone slabs.

I dwell among the world of men, yet no clamor of horse and chariot reaches me. When the mind dwells afar, the place grows quiet.

Project information

Project Name: DAQIANLOFT

Location: Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China

Space Design: XIAOOU OFFICE

Branding: Snowball Tribe

Photography: TEN YU STUDIO

Phase I

DESIGN PERIOD | AUG 2025 - OCT 2025

COMPLETED DATE | DEC 2025

DESIGN AREA | 583 m²

Video：https://youtu.be/_mxfX5uIVEU

Phase II

DESIGN PERIOD | FEB 2026 - MAR 2026

COMPLETED DATE | JUN 2026

DESIGN AREA | 264 m²

Video：https://youtu.be/8ys8kcniKYI