HAVING lived in an old lane house with Shanghainese charm for seven years, Nicolas Grevot and Lena Yang weren’t necessarily looking for a new home, even if a new vibe would have been welcome.

If they were going to move, the space had to be as beautiful as their lane house — a high benchmark, the couple thought.

Then they looked at Huahai Road’s Henry Apartments.

It was love at first sight, the couple said. “We loved living in our lane house, but when the opportunity came up last year to move into this amazing flat, we just couldn’t resist the temptation. We immediately rented out our lane house,” Grevot, who is from France, said.

Henry Apartments, as it was named in the past, is a heritage building from 1939, built by Leonard, Kruze and Veysseyre firm, one of the most renowned architect firms in the French Concession at the time.

“The building has kept all its original fittings. It has not been extensively renovated or transformed like the Gascogne, for instance, also built by the same architects and located next to (Henry Apartments),” Grevot added.

Inside, the spacious home has a great overall vibe, with abundant natural light thanks to the big windows. To make the space as homey as possible, Grevot opted for original wall colors — a faint pink, purple, sky blue and grey. The charm of the apartment itself is doing the rest.

The interior also reflects Grevot’s and Yang’s personalities as well as their interests, filled with art and little artefacts, yet full of personal memories and stories.

“There is no particular style that we tried to reproduce in the space. It is just the result of my wife and I sharing the common passion for original objects, art, exotic cultures and, above all, books that we have in great numbers everywhere,” Grevot said.

Grevot started collecting Chinese antiques 25 years ago when he moved from France to Taiwan. “At that time, it was still possible to find nice and authentic pieces at affordable prices. When all this changed, due to a high demand and always rising prices of Chinese antiques, I started to focus mainly on Taiwanese aboriginal art,” he said.

Taiwanese aboriginal art is the art of the indigenous population that was in the island for thousands of years, long before the Han settlers arrived. Grevot has collected around 300 Taiwan aboriginal pieces, from small to large ones. A three-meter-high house pillar and a four-meter-long Yami tribe canoe, similar to the ones exhibited at the minorities department of the Shanghai Museum, belong to the biggest pieces in his collection.

Going with the flow

“Most of my collection is currently on loan to a museum in Taipei. Besides, my wife and I never stopped collecting contemporary art, another one of our interests,” Grevot said.

A varied and extensive collection of antiques, contemporary art and furniture accentuates each corner of the apartment, giving the interior a soul and spirit of its own.

Grevot emphasized that he didn’t try to achieve any style or spent too much thought on balancing the modern and aboriginal pieces of art. “It is just like what it is. Sometimes it looks like a museum or an Alibaba cavern, but in fact this is more the result of an accumulation.”

The long corridor is one of the best features of this apartment, according to Grevot. He uses it as a kind of exhibition hall for this art collection. Over time, the space has evolved into a miniature museum. “I didn’t have enough room to exhibit all these lovely pieces in the previous lane house. Now, I have,” he said.

Grevot has interest and passion for varied forms of arts and crafts. Buddhist art is one of his favorites, especially the Gandhara art or Greco-Buddhist art. “I have here three beautiful pieces of Gandhara art that is at the crossing of the Western and Eastern world — a little bit like me and my family.”

Grevot was excited to share his most recent purchase — a pink silicone rubber vase made in the style of the Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220) by artist Zhang Jianjun. “I love it as it is a kind of deconstruction or reconstruction of the past that I love so much, a thoughtful reinterpretation of culture and history.”

Zhang and his wife Barbara Edelstein are two of Grevot’s favorite artists. Zhang’s installations have been exhibited across the world.

Another “treasure” newly added to the interior is the screen from the former iconic Glamour Bar on the Bund. “They remind me of the Glamour Bar and the Literary Festival,” Grevot said.

“When I realized I could use them in our new home, I asked the owner if I could have them. She agreed if I could give an appropriate donation to her charity organization in exchange for the screens. So now I own them and use them not only as beautiful decorative objects but also as a piece of old Shanghai collectibles, a piece of memory of the beloved Glamour Bar.”

Q: What’s the best thing about living in Shanghai?

A: The whirling energy I feel everywhere, and a place where east meets west, where the past meets modernity, tradition meets avant-garde — the contrast, in other words!

Q: Describe your home in three words.

A: Cozy, a lot of light and space.

Q: What’s the first thing you do when you get home?

A: Pat my dog because she is always staying behind the entrance door, and then going to see my daughters in their rooms.

Q: How do you unwind?

A: Playing sudoku, reading books, drinking wulong tea from Taiwan and surfing the Internet.

Q: What’s the view outside your window?

A: The roofs of the Bavarian style house which is part of the music conservatory of Shanghai.
This building belonged to the HSBC compradors in the 1920s and 30s.

Q: How do you scent your home?

A: Flowers and the smell of cooking.

Q: What’s your favorite object at home?

A: It could be my Gandharabuddha head or a huge Ming wooden statue of the bodhisattva Guanyin bringing children.

Q: Where do you source furniture in Shanghai?

A: Anywhere I can find something I love.

DESIGNER

Alex Mok

ARCHITECT Alex Mok, whose parents are from Sweden and China, started Linehouse, an architectural and interior design studio in Shanghai. Together with partner Briar Hickling, Mok has been working at Linehouse for a year and a half.

Tell us about your work and name one of the pieces you’re most proud of.

That’s probably our new flagship store in Hong Kong for french bag company Cote & Ciel. The shop is located in trendy Sheung Wan and we were given such freedom by the client to develop a design that truly compliments their brand and products. We did the architectural facade and also custom-made lighting and a series of fixtures that display the bags. We are very proud of this project, we do feel it shows an evolution in our ideas and capabilities. Prior to this project, we completed a lot of retail and F&B projects in Shanghai. One of our other favorites is a streetware store on Wuxing Road called ALL SH. All of our projects are unique, meaning we are always working with a different concept or set of ideas.

Are you currently involved in any projects?

The next big project to be completed is a wet market in Shanghai. Covering two floors and 5,000 square meters, the building is centered around a fish market with cooked food counters where customers can stand and sample something different at each one. We are working with an existing building which we stripped back completely and also opened up to bring in natural light. It was very exciting as we did all the architecture as well as the interior.

Describe your design style.

We try to create a story for each project, whether its contextual or a narrative, to create a space that’s new and not been seen before. At the same time we try to make the spaces fun and a little quirky. We love working in Shanghai where we can reference much of the local vernacular as well as the performative nature of how people go about their daily lives.

Where are you most creative?

In our studio in Shanghai, surrounded by my great colleagues. Also I love going to construction sites, we have found a really great team of contractors that helps us shape the designs so problem solving on site is definitely an essential part of the process. We work very fluidly.

What does your home mean to you?

I had a very international upbringing; from Sweden, to Hong Kong, to Thailand, to Hong Kong, to England and finally to Chinese mainland. So for me, home has stopped being a physical place and more the place where I can find my fiance and my three cats at the end of the day.

What do you collect?

Bicycles from fixed gears to my road bike to my Chinese shopping bike, Studio Ghibili and kitchenware.

Where do you like to go most in Shanghai?

When I have the time I want to go for a bike ride. Since arriving in this city 6 years ago, I have cycled in every direction possible. Come rain or scorching heat, we love to do 100km loops around the city trying to find unchartered territory. It keeps me sane and is one of the only ways to really let my mind rest.

What will be the next big design trend?

The one thing that we are seeing at the moment with most of our F&B clients is the importance of food safety and transparency in sourcing. They all want this to come across in the designs whether spatially or in brand storytelling. That’s great for us as it’s a topic we can really appreciate and find a lot of inspiration from. For example, we recently started working with a local Baozi (steamed bun) brand from Hangzhou called BAOBAO.

For them these issues were integral to their design. So before we started, we went to their farms and even went to Baozi school to learn how everything comes together.