Silver A' Design Award Winner 2025
Within the lineage of hospitality and ceremonial interior design, Tiger Club by Guoliang Du emerges as a distinguished meditation on the interplay between organic architectural form and classical spatial ordering, demonstrating exceptional sophistication in its reconciliation of seemingly opposing design philosophies. The space appears to engage with the legacy of expressionist architecture, where biomorphic ceiling elements rise with almost vegetal vitality from the perimeter walls, their sculptural presence suggesting affinities with the organic structural vocabulary pioneered in early twentieth-century European design while remaining thoroughly contemporary in execution and material refinement. The designer seems to have orchestrated a masterful dialogue between the processional grandeur of traditional banqueting halls and the ethereal lightness introduced through transparent contemporary seating, creating a layered temporal experience where historical reference and modern materiality coexist in productive tension. Chromatic decisions reveal considerable deliberation, with the warm neutral palette establishing an envelope of enveloping intimacy despite the monumental scale, while strategic accent lighting transforms architectural surfaces into luminous sculptural events. The bilateral arrangement of twin banquet tables creates a ceremonial axis that channels attention toward the mezzanine terminus, employing perspectival depth as both spatial strategy and symbolic gesture suggesting procession, gathering, and culmination. Tactile contrasts between the smooth plaster vaults, lustrous table surfaces, crystalline chair forms, and sumptuous textile elements demonstrate an assured command of material orchestration that rewards sustained observation. The work invites contemplation of how contemporary hospitality environments might honor traditions of communal gathering while embracing the formal possibilities of organic architectural expression, perhaps prompting viewers to consider what rituals of connection and celebration such spaces enable and how architectural atmosphere shapes the character of human assembly.
Opened by the romantic door of Italian style, guided by the transition of light, it undergoes the beautiful sedimentation of Chinese style, until it becomes light and soft, and also points to the exploration path from the outside to the inside. Along the path, the eye encounters the resonance of details and beauty. The space is overlaid with multiple styles of beauty, highlighting the quality of their respective shapes and colors, allowing the vitality of the space to continue with every appearance of light.