Lakeside Villa

A personal art collection often reflects more than just artistic taste; it encapsulates moments from one's life, whether recalling a journey, a relationship, or the time when an object first gained significance. At Lakeside Villa in Shanghai, WJ STUDIO has designed a home where these memories are integrated into the fabric of daily life. Known as "My Gallery Home," this 550-square-meter residence was created for an experienced collector whose works had been in storage for years. The design reintroduces these pieces, allowing art, daily living, and the surrounding landscape to form an evolving composition. The experience begins at the entrance, where a glass pavilion serves as a private gallery adjacent to the garden. Selected pieces are illuminated by natural light, enhanced by reflections of greenery and changes in the seasons. This pavilion offers each visitor a moment of reconnection, inviting them to engage with the collection before returning to the home's more intimate areas. The pavilion's transparency alters the character of the display. Art is observed alongside plants, water features, and shifting weather, allowing the setting to evolve throughout the day. The gallery seamlessly integrates into the landscape and becomes part of the resident's daily experience. Moving deeper into the home, WJ STUDIO eliminates conventional door frames, aligning openings throughout the space. Living areas, corridors, and display spaces flow into one another, enabling art to coexist naturally with furniture and familiar pathways used for conversation and relaxation. This spatial continuity mirrors how personal collections are formed over time through individual encounters. Each piece tells its own story while remaining connected to the life surrounding it. Lakeside Villa grants the collection a similar freedom, allowing individual works to capture attention without isolating them from the broader context of the home. Daylight plays a crucial role in this relationship. Skylights bring natural light into the deeper areas of the house, creating a connection between the upper and lower floors through shifting patterns of brightness. As the sun moves, colours, textures, and shadows transform, offering new perspectives on familiar artworks. The interior colour palette maintains a serene atmosphere for the collection while preserving the warmth of a private residence. Wood, textiles, and familiar domestic objects introduce softness to the rooms, ensuring that the art remains part of an inhabited environment characterized by comfort, conversation, and daily use. Views of the garden and lake add another dimension of change. The landscape follows its own seasonal rhythm, providing a living counterpart to the objects collected over many years. Art, architecture, and nature engage in a continuous dialogue, each offering a different measure of time. WJ STUDIO emphasizes the relationship between viewing and living. The entrance pavilion provides a focused experience with select pieces, while the interior allows the collection to accompany the resident throughout the day. A specific piece may be observed formally at one moment and noticed casually from a familiar chair at another. This proximity gives the house an emotional character. The collection is seen as part of the owner's life story, embodying memories and experiences in the present. The architecture creates a setting where these connections can continue to grow as new works and new chapters in life are added. Lakeside Villa illustrates collecting as a dynamic and personal way to shape a home. Through light, openness, and the gradual movement between gallery, living space, and garden, WJ STUDIO has crafted a residence where art is continually rediscovered within the changing patterns of everyday life.

Lakeside Villa achieves a seamless harmony between focused observation and the comfort of daily habitation. The entrance pavilion acts as a dedicated sanctuary for select pieces, establishing a meditative threshold, while the residence's interior gracefully integrates art into the natural flow of daily movement.

The architecture champions spatial continuity through deliberate, threshold-free transitions and the thoughtful deployment of skylights. These elements invite light and movement to traverse the levels, fostering a sense of openness that remains intimate and grounded.

The design narrative honours the integrity of both the collection and the home. The curated interior palette embraces wood, textiles, and personal touches, celebrating a living environment where art feels deeply connected to the occupant's life story. It is a residence that invites engagement, where the home and the collection evolve together, mirroring the authentic rhythms of the collector.

A collector's residence reaches its full potential when the dwelling serves as a vibrant, breathing backdrop for the works housed within. Lakeside Villa masters this balance beautifully. The glass pavilion provides a moment of distinct focus, while the fluid, open plan allows art to re-enter the gentle cadences of everyday life.

The true brilliance lies in the home's relationship with light. By channeling sun from above and keeping the garden views ever-present, WJ STUDIO allows the collection to shift and breathe alongside the passing hours and seasons. The house possesses a curated spirit, yet it retains a wonderful sense of becoming. An essential quality for a home that is, like the life of its collector, still unfolding.

IMAGE 01 — GLASS ENTRANCE PAVILION A transparent gallery stands against the garden as the first room of the residence. Art, planting and reflected landscape overlap within the arrival sequence.

IMAGE 02 — SINGLE ARTWORK IN NATURAL LIGHT A selected piece is given generous space beside glazing. Daylight and the changing garden provide a living background rather than a fixed white wall.

IMAGE 03 — DOORFRAME-FREE INTERIOR Aligned openings allow one room to continue into the next without heavy thresholds. Art remains visible across living and circulation spaces.

IMAGE 04 — SKYLIGHT SHAFT Natural light descends through a vertical opening towards lower levels. The shaft creates changing brightness and gives depth to the internal route.

IMAGE 05 — LIVING ROOM WITH COLLECTION Furniture, art and domestic objects share one composed but inhabited setting. The room retains comfort and use instead of behaving as a formal display hall.

IMAGE 06 — LOWER-LEVEL ART SPACE Daylight reaches a deeper room through the skylight system, reducing the sense of enclosure and giving the collection a temporal atmosphere.

IMAGE 07 — GARDEN VIEW THROUGH THE HOUSE Long sightlines connect interior artworks with planting and water outside. Landscape becomes another changing presence within the collection.

IMAGE 08 — NIGHT GALLERY CONDITION Controlled artificial light isolates selected works after the garden recedes. The pavilion remains intimate and private rather than adopting museum-scale illumination.

The 550-square-metre residence begins with a glass pavilion that functions as a private entrance gallery beside the garden.

The main interior uses doorframe-free openings to connect rooms and preserve long visual relationships among art, living spaces and landscape.

Art is distributed through circulation and occupied rooms rather than consolidated in one closed exhibition zone.

Skylights carry daylight from roof level into deeper portions of the house and towards lower floors.

Garden and lakeside views remain visible from several internal positions, allowing exterior change to participate in the display environment.

The accessible submission does not include a complete dimensioned plan set. Spatial analysis follows the original statement and documented relationships among pavilion, fluid interior, skylights and lower levels.

Lakeside Villa

“My Gallery Home”

This lakeside residence is more than just a house; for a seasoned collector, it is the ultimate piece—a place to “collect” one's own life and spirit.

At the entrance, we reserved a pure, quiet space as a “Private Gallery” to showcase art pieces that had been stored away for years. By opening up to the surrounding greenery, this glass pavilion turns the act of coming home into a thoughtful ritual.

Moving inward, the residence feels incredibly fluid. A doorframe-free design removes rigid boundaries, allowing the space to flow naturally from one room to the next. Light acts as a breathing material, filtered through skylights to reach even the lower levels.

In this “Gallery Home,” the distance between art and daily life vanishes, creating a sanctuary where the collector finally finds a place to settle their soul.

Project Information Project Name: Lakeside Villa Location: Shanghai Complete: Jun 2025 Typology: Private Residence / Art Exhibition Hall Area: 550㎡ Client: Private Architecture & Landscape Renovation, Interior Design: WJ STUDIO Principal Designer: Hu Zhile Design Team: Liu Yu'ao, Zhou Shuyi Construction Company: Shanghai Liaobo Construction Photography: BIJISPACE, Zhang Xi; Partial images sourced from AD Magazine, December Issue | Photographer: Zhu Hai, Stylist: Zhu Jun Video: BIJISPACE

Prepared for Merci Magazine × Sky Design Awards 2026