There’s a minimalist magnificence behind Shenzhen-based firm AD Architecture. Its spaces are defined by a sense of elevation, pared-back planning and an attention to graphic shape. For the Shantou-located womenswear boutique Trongyee, AD Architecture has created a sleek tricoloured space, swathed in shades of grey and black, with an eye-popping postbox red staircase at its centre.
Graphic fixtures appear like a geometric puzzle within the 90 sq metre space, which offers a spot of serenity with Shantou’s downtown bustling commercial centre. Half moon, orb-shape and rectangular furnishings sit amongst magnificently arched door openings, bisected by panels of clear glass. Low level lighting brings a sense of calm to the interior, and gently illuminates its mezzanine, which is over two meters high.
AD Architecture has worked on a host of commissions, spanning restaurant, night club and office design, private residences and large scale public exhibition spaces. The pièce de résistance of Trongyee’s retail design lies in its oddly rippling ceiling, with brings a sense of surrealism to the space, and an inclination which is almost interstellar. Here, chalky cement forms, rigid graphic fixtures and dense colourations have been offset with a fluid, reflective ceiling resembling the surface of a shiny sea.
AD Architecture was inspired by the idea of derivation and this undulating metal appears evolved from its more solid greyscale interiors counterparts
INFORMATION
arch-ad.com
ADDRESS
No. 6, Building 1
Qinghua Town
Shantou, Guangdong Province,
China
-
Gucci turns its windows into an endless library of books, artefacts and rare treasuresFeaturing a collaboration with artist Luca Pignatelli, ‘Endless Narratives’ unfolds in Gucci store windows worldwide – a reflection of creative director Sabato de Sarno’s broad cultural interests
-
Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025: Formafantasma revisits the masculine codes of modernist designFormafantasma wins a Wallpaper* Design Award 2025, for its Milan exhibition ‘La Casa Dentro’, which took to task the inherent masculinity and conservatism at the heart of modernism
-
Lesley Lokko reviews 2024's wins, shifts, tensions and opportunities for 2025Lesley Lokko, the British-Ghanaian architect, educator, curator, and founder and director of the African Futures Institute (AFI), has been an inspirational presence in architecture in 2024; which makes her perfectly placed to discuss the year, marking the 2025 Wallpaper* Design Awards
-
Chanel heads to Hangzhou, China for a poetic Métiers d’Art 2025 showThis evening in China (3 December 2024), Chanel travelled to Hangzhou’s much-mythologised West Lake, a Unesco World Heritage site, for a show that highlighted the extraordinary craft of the house’s artisans
-
Bottega Veneta constructs ‘invisible' pop-up in ShanghaiConceived by creative director Daniel Lee, the three metre-high, 100 sq m mirrored cuboid continues Bottega Veneta’s subversive denouncement of self-promotion
-
The China List: Chanel, FashionWallpaper* and China’s Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development Fund (CHSDF) present China By Design—a celebration of Chinese cultural heritage and the many global creatives who have been inspired by it. Explore the full list here.
-
The China List: Jean Paul Gaultier, FashionWallpaper* and China’s Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development Fund (CHSDF) present China By Design—a celebration of Chinese cultural heritage and the many global creatives who have been inspired by it.
-
Playing it spool inside Annakiki’s thread-stacked boutique -
Atelier Tao+c designs monochrome multi-brand boutique in Zhengzhou -
AIM designs steely cosmetics boutique in Hong Kong -
Inside SND’s ceremonial boutique in China’s Chongqing
