Shanghai Daily news

The challenge of modernizing an old house in Shanghai on a tiny budget proved to be an enjoyable experience for a French designer, writes Ayesha de Kretser.

For young French designer Solveig Tavernier Laferriere (above), innovation and resourcefulness are two key aspects needed to  create a stylish living space. — Ayesha de Kretser

The bedroom before renovation (right) and after (left).

The mission: to renovate an old Chinese lane house with an impossibly low budget. In Australia we'd say: "Tell them they're dreaming."
But once you take into account the determination of a bright, vivacious 23-year-old from Paris, Solveig Tavernier Laferriere, the mission doesn't seem so impossible after all.
In fact, it takes on a collaborative air and becomes a sociable project, drawing on friends with expertise in many different areas.
Laferriere arrived to live and work in Shanghai in January but she had already spent nearly three years in China since 1998. She came to Shanghai to complete an internship for her Master's Degree of Asian Trade with Biche de Bere. Her internship project failed, but, as in all good success stories, a myriad of opportunities arose.
Club Manaco, the company for which she now works, deals in both trading and design businesses. The renovation of the property on Shanghai's prestigious Nanjing Road W is the company's first to involve not only repairs and renovation but also interior design.
Despite having no formal training in interior decoration, Laferriere was put in charge of the project and, as she describes it, it became "her baby."
"They gave me the budget and then let me decide everything. They had full trust in my choices and most of the time there were absolutely no problems," she says.
"They" are Laferriere's bosses, Olivier Pau and Alexandre Daune, two of Club Manaco's investors. Daune was also her age when he arrived in Shanghai 11 years ago and this means the two have a special rapport.
"Alexandre likes the way I work, riding my bicycle around, stopping to look through doors and take photographs. He says it reminds him of himself when he first arrived," Laferriere says with a smile.
It becomes clear that taking a look around the apartment not only works but pays dividends.
The apartment is a living proof that you don't need a huge amount of money to create a stylish living space. More important than fat wallets, what is needed is a creative and interested mind to innovate and collaborate the way Laferriere has.
"Anybody can renovate an apartment reasonably well if they have a lot of money," she says. "The challenge here was really the budget, sticking to it really made everybody work together in a creative but, more importantly, friendly and fun way."
Nearly all of the furniture in the apartment was made by Club Manaco and looks as if it came directly from the pages of the latest edition of Vogue Living. The upstairs bedroom features a timber-paneled bed suite and simple yet elegant decorations.
The bathroom has been completely restructured and an elevated bathtub surrounded by cool slate floor and wall tiles sits against one wall, with a separate toilet cubicle adjoining. It makes full use of what might have appeared, at first, a difficult space to fully utilize.
Laferriere explains how the large lamp that occupies a corner of the living area came into being, and in doing so really captures the essence of what makes being in the apartment feel so unique yet homely. She says she has seen the lamp in a store and fallen in love with it, although it was priced at around 4,500 yuan.
Knowing purchasing it would well and truly "break the budget" she took one of the Chinese tradesmen along to the store to get an idea of what she wanted.
"He put on his best white shirt and came with me and measured the base of it while I spoke to the shop assistants and distracted them," she says laughing.
The two then set to work finding all the right materials and together recreated almost the exact same lamp for just 1,500 yuan. It's this sort of fun that shines through in the final project and makes the house so warm and friendly to be in.
"It has come together like a good party, with the right atmosphere, the right wine, music and people," she says.
The collaborative approach has been integral to the project's enormous success, a point Laferriere herself emphasizes.
"We really want the people living in the apartment to enjoy the space in the same way that creating it was enjoyable," says Laferriere.
All of the friends who have worked with Laferriere to lend a hand in the interior design (from technical drawings for furniture to wall paintings to designing curtains) are from France, and as such there is a distinctly Parisian feel to the place. There are also some Chinese details like posters and Buddha statues but it features predominantly Western design concepts.
The renovations, on the other hand, were totally completed by a group of Chinese carpenters, electricians and plumbers with whom Daune has worked over his 11 years in China. Together they have renovated an extensive array of properties and developed a knack for knowing exactly where to go to source the right products and materials.
"They've eliminated a lot of their early mistakes over the years, and if something has gone wrong in the past now they know how to fix it. Working together for so many years means it is easy to find the right people and develop good guanxi (connections)," says Laferriere.
Her own friends have nicknamed her "Miss Good Dealer" because of her skills at knowing where to look for just about everything. Laferriere says this is because of the way she was brought up.
"My mom and I were always short of money but we'd find a cheap way not only to do things but to do them in the best way possible," she says.
And if the interior design at 1129 Nanjing Road W is anything to judge by, she certainly learned this art well.

Club Manaco
Tel: 5258-1841
For more information, please check www.clubmanaco.net