Lo Chan Peng — Letting the Home Bathe in a Feast of Light, Creating a Life Where Beauty Is Everywhere

With three large windows and four light wells carved into the centre of the second-floor slab, sightlines and daylight travel freely through the space, as lofty and luminous as the interior of a Gothic cathedral. This is the seaside Sanzhi studio-residence that the artist Lo Chan Peng keeps far from the city. “Light is God’s gift to humankind. We are phototropic creatures; warm sunlight pouring in at will produces gradations of light and dark, the warmth and coolness of colour, and the hues of all things — it can fill a space with beauty.” For him, “abundant light” is the one element a home cannot do without.

Beyond his love for the gentle atmosphere that falling daylight creates, the place he most often stays — and likes best — is the kitchen, since he is devoted to his work and spends long hours at home. “Besides carrying the indispensable centre of my daily life, the open kitchen-and-dining design also gives me the best setting for laughter and gatherings with family and friends; it has become the warmest place in the house.”

Refusing the poverty of aesthetic life — or the neglect of the details of living — Lo believes the ideal home must be a place where beauty can be practised, a place that lets one grow calm and listen, at one’s best, to the voice within. He hopes to turn “home” into a museum: in the high-ceilinged space, light penetrates layer by layer; through plain walls and the artworks upon them, and the sculptures arranged on the floor standing in the light drawn into the house, the space is filled with a power of stillness and wisdom. To be within it is to arrive at a deeper understanding of life.