Seeing the light

The client had purchased six adjoining flats near Sanlitun village in Beijing, known for its purple-and-orange-hued glass buildings, and knocked down the walls to create a 1,500-sq-m penthouse with 360-degree views of the neighborhood.

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This gave Dariel six bedrooms, six bathrooms, a balcony overlooking the living room and a 200-sq-m dressing room to play with. His first stop was the supersize clothes rack. “Know my dressing room and you’ll know me,” the client said.

“There were thousands of colors,” Dariel says. “This guy was an original, full of light and full of life.

“The client wanted natural wood, naturallooking paintings, and no smell. We had 20 ayis (maids) following us day and night. We ended up redoing the same rooms two or three times. It had to be perfect.”

His primary point of reference is the Memphis design movement, a radical group of Italian designers and architects known for their post-modern works in the 1980s. Dariel adopts a similarly playful, norm-inverting approach.

His projects repeatedly evoke the Memphis group’s idol-worshipping of blinding colors, as well as Ettore Sottsass’ “ironic” furniture and the neo-classicism of Gio Ponti.

Dariel designs most of the materials himself — tiles, carpet, parts of the furniture — and has a furniture line due out in November. “The longer I work in this business, the more pleasure I take in the small details, such as the feel of a door handle,” he says.

For one of the guest bedrooms of Project X he used monochromatic fl oor tiles and a squiggly shaped mirror reminiscent of an 18th-century gilt-framed piece with the edging removed. “I wanted typical French elegance, like Chanel or an old Parisian apartment,” he says.

“When I look at a space now I know instantly what I want in terms of playing with the light, using the refl ections of surfaces and materials, and functionality. In China we also must respect the local culture, so I hire Feng Shui masters.

“It’s all about optimization of the space. I also like playful details. For example, in the Blue Penthouse I created air-con grilles shaped like letters instead of horizontal slats. The letters spell out quotes from famous singers and authors.”