Days of Being
Silver Lake, Los Angeles2024
In the heart of Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood, Studio Paul Chan has reimagined a 1920s Craftsman home into Days of Being, a cinematic holiday home shaped by memory, emotion, and the quiet power of daily rituals
“I took on this project as a deeply personal exploration, a space where I could give form to the nuances of my own artistic impulses,” said Chan. “It draws on my own cultural and spatial dislocations, the gritty, cinematic streets of Hong Kong, the dense emotional textures of New York and reimagines them as a domestic retreat in Los Angeles.”
The house unfurls like a slow-moving film. “Days of Being is about moving through space the way you move through memory,” Chan reflects. “It’s nostalgic, cinematic, and filled with moments that encourage pause and reflection.” He cites Wong Kar Wai’s saturated films, their lingering glances, their suspended gestures, as major inspirations. “It’s like In the Mood for Love, where two characters come to know each other through small, repetitive gestures,” he adds. “In the same way, I think we develop relationships with the objects and spaces around us, often without realizing it.”
Material choices deepen the emotional register. Hand-finished plaster walls, dark-stained wood, and vintage stone surfaces lend the house a rich patina of time and use, evoking both the textured interiors of Hong Kong tea houses and the quiet ateliers of Europe. In the kitchen, glossy green zellige tiles meet a jade green pendant lamp reminiscent of 1930s Shanghai, blending organic irregularity with geometric restraint. Vintage finds like a Keyaki wood tea chest, a Mario Bellini sofa, sit easily beside custom interventions.
Rather than erase the past, Chan embraced the Craftsman’s imperfections. Weathered joists and exposed beams remain visible, telling quiet stories of time and use. It’s a high-low contrast that mirrors Wong Kar Wai’s world: the grace of grand Art Deco restaurants set against the humble intimacy of a noodle stall under a rainy awning. Days of Being elevates an unassuming Los Angeles bungalow into something quietly profound—a diamond in the rough, carefully polished yet never overwrought.
Collaborators
Jeremy Kim, Krystal Chang, ROAM Builders
Photography
Yerin Mok, Ai Kojima, Emanuel Hahn
Publication
Sight Unseen - Saturday Selects