No signage necessary. That could easily be the slogan for White Is Good Shop, a tidy, all alabaster–hued boutique in Louyang, China, that sells high-end cleaning products in minimalist packaging as well as fashion and tabletop items. To underscore its concept, Beijing-based DesignReserve capped the structure with a white-as-snow pitched roof that’s an abstraction of the traditional eaves of the surrounding centuries-old buildings, formed from twin-wall polycarbonate sheets and translucent waterproof fabric. By day, it diffuses sunlight inside; by night, it glows like a lantern. The roof is joined by raw concrete columns in a slightly darker ecru and a logo aglow in frosty neon. “White is not one color,” DesignReserve founder and design director Song Fengzhou states.
That notion is exemplified in the 540-square-foot interior, where Fengzhou and her team crafted a spectrum of subtle tones and textures for such elements as the epoxy-painted floor and modular aluminum-framed display system. “The environment is dominated by white from top to bottom,” cofounder and codesign director Yue Feng adds, “but it’s not monotonous.”
Floor-to-ceiling glass walls dissolve the boundary between store and street, while an extended eave shelters a platform that doubles as a gathering space. Though it was conceived as a pop-up—and, notably, developed on a pop-up budget—White Is Good Shop has proven so popular that the community has elected to keep it in place permanently, creating a dialogue between traditional and contemporary, embodying a shift that’s happening across China today.
