Residence F is a 105-square-meter apartment in Shanghai reconfigured as a domestic environment shaped by daily artistic practice, personal collections, and material continuity, where spatial organization emerges from lived routines rather than predetermined domestic ideals.
Residence F Technical Information
- Architects: Mountain Soil Interior Design
- Location: Jiading District, Shanghai, China
- Gross Area: 105 m2 | 1,130 Sq. Ft.
- Project Years: 2023 – 2025
- Photographs: © Wen Studio
The home should not be staged as a finished image. It should remain open to accumulation, adjustment, and the quiet traces left by everyday use.
– Tiantian Dong
Dwelling as a Framework for Daily Practice
Residence F approaches domestic space as an extension of daily labor, observation, and informal making. Rather than separating living and working functions, the apartment operates as a continuous field in which routine actions such as eating, resting, collecting, and crafting are interwoven. Spatial definition arises through use, with furniture and objects serving as anchors for activity rather than relying on fixed room hierarchies.
The accumulation of time is central to this approach. Personal artworks, tools, and collected objects are not curated for display but integrated as functional elements, shaping circulation paths and visual focus. This layering produces an intimate spatial order that resists abstraction, emphasizing habitation as an evolving process rather than a resolved composition.
By grounding the interior in lived experience, the dwelling avoids stylistic representation. The space reflects the rhythms of its occupant, where familiarity and repetition establish meaning, and the architecture accepts change as an inherent condition.
Spatial Reconfiguration Within a Standardized Urban Shell
The existing apartment followed a typical three-bedroom urban layout that prioritized numerical efficiency over usability. The redesign consolidates these rooms into a two-bedroom configuration, reallocating area to storage and shared spaces in response to actual patterns of occupation. This adjustment corrects spatial imbalance while supporting both domestic life and creative work.
A subtractive design strategy organizes the primary living zones. Partitions between the kitchen, dining, and living areas are removed to establish longitudinal continuity and visual depth. The resulting openness allows light and movement to circulate freely while enabling flexible use without requiring structural excess.
Household appliances and storage are absorbed into architectural surfaces. Elements such as the refrigerator are concealed within the corridor frontage and finished to match the adjacent materials. This integration reduces visual disruption and supports a quieter spatial atmosphere, where necessary functions recede into the background.
Circulation and Thresholds as Spatial Narrative
Circulation is treated as a generative architectural element rather than leftover space. The corridor assumes a central organizing role, connecting rooms while establishing a perceptual sequence through subtle spatial modulation. Movement through the apartment becomes deliberate, informed by changes in material and elevation.
At the entrance, a stone slab marks a shift in level, signaling a transition from collective urban life to the private interior. This gesture recalls the layered passages of the city, where thresholds such as stairs, tunnels, and platforms frame everyday movement. The domestic threshold performs a similar role at a reduced scale.
Timber surfaces wrapping the corridor bear signs of wear, reinforcing the idea of passage through time and space. Circulation becomes a narrative device, registering repeated use and grounding the apartment within broader patterns of urban mobility.
Material Continuity, Time, and Reuse
Material selection emphasizes continuity and aging rather than surface novelty. Weathered stone slabs, naturally oxidized over decades, appear across walls, bathroom fixtures, and fittings. Their irregular coloration and texture introduce temporal depth, allowing material history to remain visible and active.
Recycled and reclaimed components are applied consistently, not as isolated gestures but as an integrated material system. Door hardware, basins, and partitions share the same material lineage, reinforcing cohesion while reducing waste. Vintage furniture further extends this logic, carrying narratives of previous use into the present interior.
The dialogue between retained materials and newly introduced interventions avoids contrast-driven composition. Instead, old and new coexist through tactile continuity, where aging is treated as a spatial asset. Time itself becomes a material condition, shaping how the apartment is perceived and inhabited.
About Mountain Soil Interior Design
Mountain Soil Interior Design is an interior design studio led by Design Director Tiantian Dong. The practice approaches residential architecture as a lived and evolving framework, emphasizing material continuity, reuse, and spatial arrangements shaped by daily routines and long-term habitation rather than fixed formal hierarchies.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Client: Young artist (private residence)
