33rd Street is a quiet neighborhood at the end of Bagatelle Road in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. Hidden among the brick buildings is the home of Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa.
In the interview, Xie Hui mentioned more than once the impact that Bawa’s home had on her. The space created by Bawa with his own understanding of life and life makes us think: After the current living space meets its functions, how will our emotions and moods be placed?
As a backbone of the Chengdu design circle, Xie Hui has been practicing space for 21 years. During this period of constant change and flow, she has formed mature design values, using design to create a balance between rationality and sensibility in space. Find a balance between.
Nowadays, the "healthy housing" concept she has always advocated has become a new and timeless trend, which has begun to affect more and more people.
Sina Home Furnishing
Side A: Infinitive of home
Explore the spiritual corner of ideal life
“Create some corners that meet different needs in a huge residence, a personal and private spiritual world. This kind of exclusive possession and the comfort and satisfaction brought by being wrapped are not something you can only see with your eyes. ”
Home is our own warm world, and it is also the last joy of freedom and freedom in the hustle and bustle.
Safety, happiness, and satisfaction, the most plain keywords, constitute the most important spiritual refuge in our lives.
Home is also the inner monologue of its inhabitants. Chen Kun once said that what kind of people live in what kind of home, yes, every home is the most unique existence between heaven and earth.
Xie Hui also agrees that the charm of a house lies in the different states of different people. Their personalities, traits, and temperaments are different, and the way they want to express their inner wishes or space desires is different.
Although each home has a different temperament, commonalities can still be found. Relaxation and freedom are the constant themes in Xie Hui’s space. So how to create a relaxed and comfortable home? This may seem like a trivial goal, but it is an important mission of designers.
In her view, design should return to human subjectivity, so the concept of "health" she advocates is not limited to physical health in the traditional sense, but also includes spiritual pleasure.
One is physical perception, and the other is spiritual healing, both of which are indispensable. This kind of attentionDesign based on "body perception" is, to a certain extent, building the relationship between people and space.
Especially in the current stressful and fast-paced life, people need a world where they can wander freely, and a home should meet the different expectations of different people for their ideal life in different situations. At the same time, the most important thing is that the design must also create "corners" that people can occupy.
Xie Hui has always emphasized "freedom" in the home. Designers must use design means to express "freedom" in the space and show the inner path of the residents.
This is the direction taken from Bawa's home. With its unique design, Bawa's house brings about a rethinking of the relationship between "form" and "function", "served space" and "service space".
Space should be occupied by people, not people.
In Xie Hui's view, a "corner" is a small private spiritual world designed to meet different expectations. This corner does not need to be big, but it can definitely soothe people's mental difficulties.
The construction of this kind of spiritual corner comes from more imagination in space, and blank space is one of the important answers.
Blank space, mutual acceptance between people and space
“The design and the final completion of the project are just the beginning of this “living space” on a visual level. To reconcile the relationship between space and people and achieve physical and inner pleasure, we need to mobilize other body perceptions. I think blank space must exist. ”
Blank space has always been a topic that must exist and be discussed in space.
In residential design, Xie Hui attaches great importance to space itself and pursues physical and mental pleasure, so he must pay more attention to the mutual acceptance between the body and space.
The blank space is a kind of acceptance of people by space.
Leaving room is not only a way of doing things, but also a kind of philosophical thinking.
In Xie Hui's view, blank space is to leave space for future residents, and it also gives the body more space to feel, create, and reconcile. Not in residential spaceIt is not only the self-expression of the designer, but also the self-expression of the residents.
A space that can grow with its residents can contain the emotions and memories of a family or individual.
In her understanding, the harmony of aesthetics and self-expression is equally important. When design returns to human subjectivity, materials become the most important medium for design and space. Designers use materials to express designs and materials to react. The inner projection and monologue of the residents. Appropriate materials can provide the possibility of aesthetics and self-expression, giving people space to think, imagine, and dialogue.
Therefore, the importance of materials to space is self-evident.
As a kind of functional material, ceramic tiles are also a medium for conveying design expressions and the basis for building "corners" for users. It is best for them not to dominate the scene, but to be willing to hide in the space, no matter what the trend and aesthetics are. Change, always be that silent friend who is good at accompanying and listening, providing nutrients and possibilities for the growth of space.
At present, Xie Hui prefers spaces with low saturation colors and materials with natural properties. A less enthusiastic and ostentatious space atmosphere makes it easier to achieve inner peace.
Especially now, with the development of the light texture design trend, things that were once obvious in the space, and the once dazzling and straightforward expressions, are beginning to recede. This actually brings about an interesting exploration, because only when you get close, Only then can you discover more hidden surprises and touching details.
For Xie Hui, gaining inner peace is the most important thing at this stage.
This also makes us realize more deeply that material is the medium, space is the carrier, and design is the true meaning and role of the means. No matter how they are changed and applied, they reflect the people themselves. Only when they work together to play a positive role Only when it acts in the direction will an idealist with unique vitality be achieved.
Side B: Growing freely in a utopia
"We can do many beautiful projects or works, but in fact what really touches people's hearts must be their most sincere selves."
Xie Hui, who lives in Chengdu, is an authentic Chongqing girl. She has the frankness of a child of the world and the casual ease. When we tried to explore the AB side of her, we did not find too strong a contrast. There is always a kind of self-consistency in her, and this self-consistency runs through all work and life.
Life in the Twin Cities has shaped Xie Hui in many ways. It is undeniable that we shape our home and the city shapes us.
Relatively speaking, home is a space composed of tangible objects, while the boundaries of urban space are relatively blurred.
For her, Chengdu is a city of diverse possibilities, with an inclusive and free mentality, nostalgic and fashionable, leisurely and pioneering.
She is grateful that this city still maintains its own rhythm despite its high-speed operation, and uses a relatively "slow" speed to bring more opportunities to stop and think about design and life.
If living in Chengdu is the most familiar "living here", then traveling brought Xie Hui a strange experience of "living elsewhere".
She loves traveling as much as eating and drinking. This is not a multiple choice question in Xie Hui's life, but a must.
During the trip, she realized that experience is a repeatable long-term process. She tried to examine her own experience while being aware of her body and inner state, and trained herself by withdrawing to observe her current experience.
At this stage, Xie Hui seems to have a better understanding of the true meaning of the word experience. Although it is not intentional, the customs and customs of the places she has visited have eventually turned into inspiration, providing new nutrients for design.
When she talked about the experience of visiting Bawa's house again, it was different from the first experience. After visiting again in a completely different state of mind, she felt that she was suddenly "knocked" awake by the moving space. .
This kind of moving made her forget all techniques and all forms.
Perhaps under the influence of Bawa’s own home, Xie Hui rejects rigidity, patterns and rules in his projects. She hopes to construct a vivid space. She firmly believes that moving things are not brought about by design, but are inherent, but design discovers this moving thing and expresses it.
Growing wildly for 21 years
"Diverse experiences are also like a medium, a medium for growth."
When we explore a person, it is difficult to bypass personal growth.
This yearThis is Xie Hui’s 21st year in the industry.
Her career also coincides with the development of the design industry:
It is clearly divided into three stages: "what", "why" and "how".
The first ten years when Xie Hui started his design work were also the early days of the vigorous development of interior design in China.
In the first ten years, she was more searching, searching for her own life and her own interests.
At that time, she liked listening to rock music, liked Nirvana's understanding of life, and was moved by their ease of retracting and releasing. She thought about "what design is" in her feelings.
The next step is to enter a very difficult five years of self-thinking, self-summary and self-reflection, "Why do we design this way?" Xie Hui said that she once ran beside the Old Bridge in Florence, passing by pedestrians, tourists, churches and buildings. She found that during the process of running, she would discover the beauty of a city and a street. She felt relaxed, free and integrating. This place also leaves a very emotional state of mind at that moment.
After fifteen years of feelings and thinking, in the past five or six years, Xie Hui has truly felt his own transformation, and has become more and more aware of how to design, and has become more and more aware of how to design. She has a sense of direction. She now likes to drink tea quietly. The taste of the tea is not the most important, but the state of drinking tea and paying attention to her feelings are what she values most.
After 21 years in the industry, Xie Hui can’t help feeling that the times have changed too fast. As the times change, his self-perception, understanding of the market, and the industry are also constantly changing.
The times are constantly changing, and designers must have the courage to change. Just as materials represent an aesthetic orientation and direction, aesthetics is contemporary. But the more things change, the more we need to be calm. We need to stop and think more about what the changing times mean to design? What is the trend bringing?
Xie Hui feels that there are "changes" and "unchanges" in the trend. What changes is the method and medium of building "corners". But the love and emotion for design are the end point of design and the only way to describe and construct the inner monologue of the residents.
Conclusion:
In the interview, Xie HuiShe once used the word "barbaric growth" to describe herself. This was her childhood growth experience, and it was also a review and summary of the development of the design industry. Indeed, Xie Hui grew up "barbarically" with the design industry, but after 21 years of development, both she personally and the industry have become more and more aware of direction. It is like discovering a subtle window in the chaos. The door of light, just walk through it, and the new exit is right there.
Sometimes we can’t find the direction, maybe because of the weather, or maybe because we haven’t reached the right passing point yet. Now Xie Hui has arrived at the ferry and is on the way to where she wants to go. The other shore to go to, and what is there on the other shore? Time will naturally give the answer.
