Phuket house 44 - A hundred years old Sino-Portuguese house located in the heart of the Old Town Phuket near Krabi Road is the location of this challenging project. It was constructed during the Sino-Portuguese style and influenced the city's architecture, which nearly conserved all of the symbolic traditional commercial building elements. According to the two-story building style, the building's ground floor was made of brick and mortar, while on the second floor was all constructed with timber structure. Separated two gable shaped roofs covered the entire area, created an open court in the middle of the house for ventilation purpose, and stored the natural rainwater.

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         The owner's main goal is to renovate this old house into a dessert café to operate during day time while planning to open a fermented homemade fruit juice bar at the open court during night time. After the owner negotiated with the previous landlord, they got the house itself and the antique furniture over 50 pieces, all together with kitchen, cutlery, and small decoration more than a hundred pieces that the landlord had been collecting from generation to generation. The designer and the owner had agreed to preserve most of the existing environment, architecture, and furniture to see it as a precious treasure.

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         One of the fascinating things about this house is the painted wall that proclaims the layers over layers through time. If the skin of those colours were peeled off, you would see four to five layers on the wall. The first layer of the wall is 'blue' colour because the ancestor owner of the house was a noble, wealthy dean at that time. Therefore, paint the wall with blue colour was considered the most expensive colour with specific knowledge from the neighbouring port city by mixed indigo used in the fabric dyeing industry with a mortar to painting the wall. The designer decided to peel layers of the colour coating on the wall according to the space sequence; the more private space it became, the darker blue colour has revealed.

         While all of the antique furniture was sent to a skilled carpenter to repair the colour and minor scratches, that new-look furniture set on the house-like planning rather than café-like planning to give the heartwarming environment with the combination of totally new furniture. Inside those cabinets stood the ingredients prepare for making bakery and fermented homemade fruit juice that designer give a little gimmick with lighting design to highlight the existing wall.

         Take away from this project; the designer had the challenge to find the fine line of combining the new generation vibe and function with nostalgia environment, space, and architecture under limited budget for this owner.

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