Press Release
Tongli Villa Residential by Hangzhou Shihe Design Is Granted the Silver A' Design Award in Interior Space and Exhibition Design
Hangzhou Shihe Design honored for interior space and exhibition design by the international grand jury of the 2025 - 2026 A' Design Award & Competition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 19, 2026 /DesignNewswire/ A' Design Award & Competition has announced that Tongli Villa Residential by Hangzhou Shihe Design has been granted the Silver A' Design Award in the Interior Space and Exhibition Design category. The award was conferred within the 2025 - 2026 A' Design Award & Competition and was determined through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who assessed anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
What the Silver A' Design Award Means
The Silver A' Design Award celebrates top-tier designs that embody excellence and innovation. This award acknowledges creations that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also highly functional, reflecting the designer's deep understanding and skill. Silver A' Design Award recipients are recognized for their contribution to raising industry standards and advancing the practice of design. Their work often incorporates original innovations and elicits a strong emotional response, making a notable impact on the improvement of everyday life.
Regarding 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.
About Hangzhou Shihe Design
Shihe Design, established in Hangzhou in 2017, specializes in interior design with a portfolio encompassing hotels, private residences, clubs, offices, and commercial spaces. The firm’s core philosophy centers on fostering deep, meaningful connections between nature, architecture, space, and people—an approach that prioritizes balancing functional utility with authentic human emotions to achieve harmonious, purposeful environments. By focusing on the intrinsic relationships that shape how people engage with spaces, Shihe Design crafts interiors that feel intentional and resonant, staying true to its commitment to integrating natural elements and architectural coherence into every project.
Award Record
This recognition makes Hangzhou Shihe Design a winner of 1 A' Design Award.
About the A' Interior Space, Retail and Exhibition Design Award
The A' Interior Design Award is an international interior design competition recognizing good interior designs by interior designers and architects worldwide. It is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to interior designers, interior architects, architects and decorators from all countries. Typical entries include residential interiors, restaurants, hotels, offices, galleries and retail stores. The awarded interior designs are published at https://designers.org/design-category/interior
About A' Design Award & Competition
Organized annually since 2008, A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The philanthropic mission of the A' Design Award is to advance society through good design, by recognizing and promoting superior products, projects and services that benefit society, and by creating a global awareness and appreciation for good design practices and principles. Nominations are peer reviewed and evaluated anonymously by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members against predetermined criteria such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, sustainability and technology, with score normalization applied to remove biases. Awards are conferred at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron levels. Eligible laureates receive the A' Design Prize, which includes the award trophy, the certificate of design excellence, the hardcover yearbook, a lifetime license to use the A' Design Award winner logo, exhibition of awarded works, an invitation to the gala night and award ceremony in Italy, inclusion in the World Design Rankings and Designer Rankings, and public relations and publicity services. Registration, uploading a work and receiving a preliminary score are free of charge, and Professional and Digital Edition laureates are not contractually obliged to pay further fees to claim the A' Design Prize. More information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com
Press Resources
- Winner Page: https://designers.org/174289
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/174289
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!174289
- Laureate Profile: https://designers.org/d/370236
Media Contact
Giulia Ferrari, Press Office
Designers.Org
Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100 Como, Italy
press@designers.org
+39 031 4491953
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Fact Sheet
The Work
- Project
- Tongli Villa Residential
- Function
- Residential
- Category
- Interior Space and Exhibition Design
- Discipline
- Spatial Design
- Industry
- Architecture and Packaging & Retail
- Colors
- Dim Gray, Dark Olive Green, Gray, Dark Slate Gray and Black
- Images
- 5
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Hangzhou Shihe Design
- Country
- China
- Recognition
- Silver A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2025 - 2026
- Design ID
- #174289
Credits
- Team
- Chen Kezhi and Wang Huaqiang
- Image Credits
- Photographer Hanmo Vision - Yigao, Tongli Villa, 2025.
Design Details
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Realization and 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.
- Operation and Interaction
- 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.
- Project Duration and Location
- The project started in January 2024 in Suzhou, China and finished in January 2025.
- Specifications
- 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.
- Keywords
- Emotional Dwelling, Poetic Minimalism, Miao Culture, Nature Inspired Interior, Raw Materials, Timeless Design, Slow Living, Cultural Resonance, Organic Textures, Meditative Space
