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Warm honey-toned oak and muted mineral plaster establish the tonal foundation of Hangzhou Shihe Design's Tongli Villa Residential, where a masterfully orchestrated open-plan living space unfolds…

Tongli Villa Residential by Hangzhou Shihe Design is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2026 Silver A' Design Award in Interior Space and Exhibition Design Competition Category.


SilverInterior· 2026

Tongli Villa Residential

by Hangzhou Shihe Design

Client: Hangzhou Shihe Design

Silver A' Design Award Winner in Interior Category

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Verified Award Winner

Verify Award Status for #174289

Colors

The Design

About Tongli Villa Residential

Tongli Villa is a residential interior design for a three-level house with a total floor area of about 450 square meters. The layout is open and free flowing, without partition walls, and it includes an attic lounge left without a ceiling. Natural materials define the interior, among them untreated teak, blackened anti-corrosion timber, and hand-applied mud walls. Ornament is kept to a minimum, so texture and daylight shape each room. The design reflects the Miao heritage of the homeowner and supports a calm and slow daily life.

The Recognition

About the Silver A' Design Award

Tongli Villa Residential is a Silver A' Design Award winner, an extraordinarily prestigious recognition granted to top-of-the-line, gorgeous, and impressive designs. Silver winners are tremendously brilliant and exceedingly creative works that illustrate the outstanding expertise, talent, and acuity of their designers. Tongli Villa Residential is expected to be a wonderful, showpiece work that is remarkably professional and profoundly innovative. This Silver A' Design Award-winning design is a highly notable, admired invention that benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. Tongli Villa Residential is a vastly envied creation that evokes desires, introduces positive feelings, and sparks amazement and wonderment.

Behind the Design

Press Kit

Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.

Unique Properties
This residential design captures the essence of emotional connection, cultural resonance, and sensory comfort. Blending raw materials such as teak, charred wood, artistic mud walls, and hand collected objects, the space abandons decorative excess to return to elemental simplicity. The spatial layout is fluid, resisting traditional segmentation. Instead, it becomes a canvas for daily rituals, emotional anchoring, and inner peace: an aesthetic of stillness and lived poetry.
Dimensions & Packaging
The house includes three levels with a total floor area of approximately 450 sqm. Key spatial elements include a horizontally open plan ground floor, an unceiled attic lounge, and a free flow layout without partition walls. Materials are predominantly natural and untreated, aligning with the spatial philosophy of sensory grounding.
Tags
Emotional Dwelling, Poetic Minimalism, Miao Culture, Nature Inspired Interior, Raw Materials, Timeless Design, Slow Living, Cultural Resonance, Organic Textures, Meditative Space
Production Technology
The project adopts a material first approach rooted in authenticity. Teak wood was used untreated to preserve its warmth and grain, while blackened anti corrosion timber adds weight and durability. Hand applied mud walls and artistic paint deliver texture and tone without ornament. The approach emphasized manual craftsmanship and intuitive layering over mechanical precision.
Design Challenge
The primary challenge was resisting conventional luxury symbols and instead crafting a space of deep emotional value. Balancing the owner's cultural identity with modern comfort required nuanced material choices, emotional mapping, and conceptual restraint. The absence of visual drama demanded heightened attention to detail, proportion, and sensory atmosphere.
Research
This is an applied cultural emotional design study exploring how spatial language can translate heritage and emotional needs into form. The methodology involved user immersion, ethnographic interviews, and contextual material selection. The homeowner's daily habits, values, and sensory preferences were key data points. The result is a space that not only houses the body but also resonates with memory, ritual, and inner calm enhancing the broader conversation on design’s emotional efficacy.
Inspiration
The homeowner's Miao heritage and natural lifestyle philosophy inspired a design that values emotional depth over surface form. Influenced by vernacular dwellings and poetic Eastern aesthetics, the concept centers on the idea of a home as a place of stillness, reflection, and healing. Rain falling on tiles, shifting light across earth toned walls, and silence within wooden textures form the emotional blueprint for the space.
Project Duration
The project started in January 2024 in Suzhou, China and finished in January 2025.
Operation Flow
The space invites slow, unstructured interaction. There are no dominant visual cues or rigid furniture placements. Instead, the flow is organic light guides the user, and silence defines transitions. It's not about usage, but co existence: the homeowner doesn't use the space, she dwells within it, rhythmically, intuitively.
Team Members
Designer: Chen Kezhi
Designer: Wang Huaqiang
Image Credits
Image #1: Photographer Hanmo Vision - Yigao, Tongli Villa, 2025.
Image #1: Photographer Hanmo Vision - Yigao, Tongli Villa, 2025.
Image #1: Photographer Hanmo Vision - Yigao, Tongli Villa, 2025.
Image #1: Photographer Hanmo Vision - Yigao, Tongli Villa, 2025.
Image #1: Photographer Hanmo Vision - Yigao, Tongli Villa, 2025.

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