Chris Dépôt

Chris Dépôt is a 169m² premium residence in Shenzhen, China, fully executed by emerging design firm Sanpu Design. Using French Mid-Century Aesthetics as a temporal medium, its core objective is to construct a three-dimensional dialogue across past, present, and future while exploring the enduring value of vintage design in contemporary urban contexts. The design confronts a central proposition: contemporizing vintage elements without reducing them to superficial symbols. Designers discarded classical ornate carvings, distilling French design DNA through essential refinement and reduction. The pivotal strategy introduces Hector Guimard’s Art Nouveau essence—"organic curves". Continuous soft arcs (e.g., semi-circular stone floor inlays, curved ceilings) achieve spatial fluidity and extension. Walls and ceilings extensively feature hand-troweled French plaster with distinctive ripple textures, juxtaposed against cool polished marble to precisely simulate "nature-eroded" traces. This transcends Guimard’s natural forms from two-dimensional ornamentation into a three-dimensional spatial experience. Ultimately, the design reinterprets time through a futuristic lens, creating a "habitable chronicle of time".
This project demonstrates multiple groundbreaking innovations in design thinking and practice:
1.Interface Innovation for Temporal Dialogue：Subverts traditional residential landscape treatment. Innovatively employs slim-frame lift windows(full-height panoramic operation) to achieve seamless transition between enclosed balconies and open terrace experiences. This design transforms Shenzhen’s dynamic skyline into a variable abstract artwork, creating dramatic dialogue between the fast-paced external urban landscape and the internal sense of temporal sedimentation, reinforcing the project’s core spatiotemporal theme.
2.Material Deconstruction of "Non-Explicit Luxury": Critically reconstructs traditional "luxury" definitions. Abandons conventional solid marble paving, boldly adopting mixed orange-red and beige marble to break material coldness and monotony, injecting visual vitality and unique character. Simultaneously, custom cabinet and door panels precisely replicate French skeletal line profiles, but surface treatments reject tradition through juxtaposed modern high-gloss lacquer and raw French plaster coatings. This "vintage contours, contemporary textures" contradictory aesthetics profoundly interprets contemporary deconstruction and reinterpretation of historical elements.
3.Time-Vessel Craftsmanship Fusion: Space becomes a vessel for temporal traces. The delicate, imperfect textures of hand-troweled French plaster contrast sharply with the sleek precision of modern materials (e.g., marble, lacquer), visually manifesting the "time-eroded" metaphor. Curated furnishings (e.g., hand-painted floor lamps, shell chandeliers) transcend stylistic labels.