This 600-square-metre private club in Shenzhen operates on a singular premise: architecture should cultivate art, not simply display it.
The Growing Garden, designed by EK Designs Mao Hua with soft furnishings by PP Design Gallery, transforms a fragmented building into a space where organic growth becomes the organising principle.
The structure itself was challenging. Street-level retail awkwardly fused to upper villa spaces with no coherent thread. Mao Hua resolved this by establishing a cruciform core and a vertical axis that connects the entrance, courtyard, and central garden. A full-height atrium now unifies five floors, channeling daylight along curved GRG surfaces while biomimetic fibre installations descend from above. Plush botanical reliefs push through wall crevices, creating the effect of natural proliferation rather than applied ornament.
At street level, adjustable frosted glass mediates the boundary between public and private. When transparent, planted elements and interior lighting merge with the urban landscape. When opaque, the space withdraws into a sheltered forecourt. The threshold shifts in response to context, never fixed in a single position.
Materials articulate the growth narrative throughout the interior. The dining area features moss-like plush textures supporting pink-brown fungal forms that appear to rupture through wall surfaces. Corridor walls employ layered pile in varying depths—beige long-pile evoking seaweed, deep-blue short-pile suggesting coral clusters, brown curls recalling seagrass. In the atrium, petal sculptures cascade downward as though generated by the ceiling itself.
Functional elements integrate seamlessly into the architecture. Fifth-floor pale wood panels conceal the bathroom, wardrobe, and refrigerator behind flush surfaces. The tea rooms dual-access doors can reveal or conceal a glass-fronted cabinet depending on use. An abstract work by artist Zhou Li introduces Eastern resonance through feminine brushwork that modulates the spatial rhythm.
The exterior garden extends the same logic through clustered plantings, lemon trees, and subtly elevated stone slabs. Bright yellow chairs against blue tables create deliberate chromatic tension.
Photo courtesy of Huang Zaohui
