ADA FLOOR
With a panorama outside, the room doesn't need a second lead actor. Hung on the Qianhai hillside and delivered in 2015, the 172-to-520-square-metre flats, duplexes and townhouses of Hanjing Jiurongtai were carpeted by ADA FLOOR household by household: one grey-gold graded across three pile heights for four house types, rooms measured one by one down to every tread and out-of-square edge.
The mountain outside is the room's first furniture
Hanjing Jiurongtai delivered in 2015, 172 to 520 sqm of flats, duplexes, penthouse duplexes and townhouses hung on the Qianhai hillside, backed by Tian Fangshu's landscape system and a 30%-green life-themed garden. The owners' brief came out plain. Do not compete with the window, and still be weighty enough for the furniture that moved in with them. A mountain-city panorama is a hard act to follow, so the floor's job is to become the quiet ground the eye, and a sitting child, can rest on.
A grey-gold lifted from the garden
The key was invented nowhere. It sits between the coolness of hillstone and the warmth of evening light, interior and garden meeting the same beam through glass. Artwork was compared on the same card as the interior scheme, yarn approved in daylight and warm-lamp versions. A penthouse under rooflight and a low townhouse under tree shade read one colour very differently, so each was sampled where it actually lives. When the view already holds the answer, the designer's job is simply not to miscopy it.
One colour, three pile heights
A single grey-gold covering four house types means four floor build-ups. Flats take 4-metre Axminster in a tight weave, pile weight set for this household inside the specification band, kept lower in living room and corridors so chair legs and the vacuum pass without resistance. Duplex and villa irregularities, void landings and stair runs switch to hand-tufting built drawing by drawing, with more silk to catch the evening. Rooms are measured one by one, every tread and out-of-square edge, with nothing estimated by floor.
Living room, bedroom, study, and the stair between
The large living room runs low-pile tight weave, laying quiet order at scale before full-height glazing with furniture set sparse. The calmer the floor, the more complete the sea and mountains. The master lifts the pile slightly to return warmth to a private space; the study takes the deepest grey-gold, the one that makes you sit down. Duplex stairs are set out tread by tread, the turning landing gets its own drawing, and the media room is absorbed as living space. Three concentrations of one key, colour unified and pile graded, is how the residence holds its order.
What sits underneath the grey-gold
A child sits on this floor for hours, so the household's first question was emissions, answered by FloorScore and GB 18587 limits, with fire performance from the GB 8624 classes used in housing. Quiet came second. Living and media rooms were designed toward 0.4–0.6 seconds of mid-frequency reverberation, and the carpet-plus-underlay system is assessed to ISO 10140-3 and ASTM E492 for impact sound, commonly the 24–33 dB band that neighbours above and below actually feel. Conditioned air runs dry, so static is specified within 2 kV to CRI HT-101. Underfoot, the living room is firm and low, the master and media corner a touch higher and softer.
Samples carried up the hill to be read
Nothing went to the loom before the samples had spent a day on the hillside. An A4 match fixes the colour, then a 1:1 block is left in the living room and another in the study, read in morning and evening light before owner, designer and ADA seal it. Dye lots locked and cross-lot yarn pre-blended before the loom, so the grey never drifts warm in one room and cool in the next. In-line checks held pile height and density, every roll verified for pattern direction. Broadloom at scale runs two to three months, hand-tufting counts in weeks, both aligned to the 2015 handover.
The garden turns colour, the floor does not
Each household was cleared before its own setting-out: seams matched, out-of-square edges taken into the skirting line, stair nosings consolidated. Vacuuming keeps to the family's own rhythm, and what was handed over was a per-room care sheet plus a filed-off remnant. Follow-up years later asks narrow questions. Has the grey-gold photobleached, has the study's castor lane crushed flat, does the master's higher pile spring back. Gardens change with the seasons; the floor has to stay at one grey.
