Corbu's Cave: Paper Plastico

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Today I often skip the watercolor sketch and do the preliminary design in Photoshop. It's faster and more flexible. Still, I love to work with good quality heavy weight watercolor paper and will even use it to create a maquette. This is especially helpful if the architecture is a bit complicated which was certainly the case with my painted room in Hong Kong. It really helps the client get an idea of how the completed room will look.

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Actually, I did begin the project with a nice watercolor, rather tight and in scale. Wisely the client rejected this first idea and it was my own fault for not doing some quick messy sketches just to get some basic concepts down. The room, a dining room in the client's home on Victoria Peak is eight sided. The number eight in Chinese is similar in sound to the word for prosper or wealth so the Chinese like that number but the client didn't necessarily want a design that was especially Chinese.

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I worked with the designers at BAMO to come up with something but they had their hands full with so many other other aspects of the project. In a way I wanted the challenge of trying to design in what to me was a foreign culture and for it to look authentic. What I came up with is a western traditional motif that is skewed in an Eastern fashion. I knew the key to the design issue was to start with the hexagonal panel in the middle of the ceiling. Eventually I realized this shaped replicated the bagwa which often has a yin yan symbol in its center. Instead of a yin yan symbol I gently distorted a tradition palmette design found on ancient Greek pottery. After completing the design of the center ceiling panel the rest of the room sort of fell into place.

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I painted the whole project in my studio in California. I typically use heavy weight muslin for this type of work. It's lighter than canvas but strong enough to hold up to the kind of abuse that seems necessary for applying it to wall surfaces. I went to Hong Kong to supervise the installation despite the fact that that hanging wall paper (or fabric) is not my area of expertise nor do I speak Cantonese. I actually was able to help since I knew readily which pieces went where and I came up with a simple technical suggestion that made it possible to get the central ceiling panel up. I'll post pictures from Hong Kong in my next post.