Reuse, recycle, reinvent

"It's our home, studio, exhibition space, workshop, party space… it's pretty versatile actually", explains Jonas Merian, electric skateboarder, photographer, and most recently, furniture maker. He and his partner, professional photographer Nina Chen moved into the space last summer and between them, lovingly renovated the former textiles factory, filling it with Jonas' original and inspired creations.

Located in Wu Wei Creative Garden in Yangpu District, neighbours include the Zendai Contemporary Art Exhibition Hall, a plethora of artists' studios and even more wedding photographers. Jonas groans: "There's six or seven already, and it's getting worse. In the summer the place is just full of brides…they must all leave with exactly the same pictures!"

Having rented the building in Spring 2010, the couple worked closely with a team of renovators to transform the vast space into the home/workshop/studio that is now. Using secondhand bricks, interior walls were installed, creating a bathroom, guestroom, kitchen and mezzanine bedroom area. A workshop was also factored in, finally giving Jonas the opportunity and space to indulge his passion for making furniture. Incredibly, the process took just six weeks.





Looking around at his pieces – sturdy dining tables, gorgeously quirky shelves and an ingenious stove to name but a few – it seems clear that Jonas must have a carpentry background. Wrong: in fact, the Swiss creative was, until recently, a prosthetist. How, I wonder, does one more used to working in a clinical environment with fake limbs end up doing this? "Well, every table needs legs!" laughs Jonas. "As a prosthetist I'm used to working with many types of materials – wood, metal, silicone, titanium, carbon fibre, and aluminum – anything we could find to make a leg, or could help improve current expertise."

Creative Hunt's tour begins downstairs in the kitchen area, the centerpiece of which is a solid looking, family-sized table. "The wood came from demolished houses in the old towns of Shanghai. If you grind them nicely it's still pretty good, especially in terms of texture. You can still see all the old nails inside, and see how black it is here? That's the nails rusting inside the wood"



The surface of the table is smooth to the touch, each stain and crack testimony to its previous incarnation. The edges, though, are left rough and unhewn – like a visual echo of the wood having been torn away from its earlier abode. "Furniture should tell a story – it used to be nice in the past, and it can be nice again. I never want to hide the fact that it used to be something else", explains Jonas.

The wheeled stove, too, is another Jonas original: an old, very Chinese looking table was resurfaced in stainless steel sheeting, into which holes were cut to fit two standard gas stoves. Like so many around Shanghai, the home is not connected to the gas mains, and so a bottle hangs underneath, convenient and easy to access.



Next stop on our tour is the guest room. Currently the warmest space in the house, the couple are using it as an office, each lounging on remarkably comfortable sofas. As with so many things in this incredible home, they're not quite what they seem, and are, in fact shipping palettes. Also on wheels, they can be locked in place or connected together to make a handy bed for visitors.

But the most striking element of this cozy room is the bookshelves. Comprising 21 biscuit tins, each perhaps 30 – 40 years old and depicting anything from traditional Chinese paintings to flowers, pirouetting ballerinas to puppies, they support hefty, dark wooden shelves, also sourced from Shanghai's old town.





Next is the bathroom, and, more specifically, its sink. "The table was really cheap – it had been left outside, there were pieces missing, and it was quite dirty… I fixed the bowl on top, connected the water and that's it. The taps stand out, I like to play around with materials and combine different styles."

Is it, I wonder, a desire to be environmentally friendly that drives Jonas to breath new life into these old, often overlooked materials, or is it more about the aesthetic? "Yes and no. Of course I like the idea of recycling materials, but I think old stuff just has more character. It's not so much being green that drives me, it's more visual". This is certainly true of the reclaimed flooring to be found upstairs – once someone's wall, the wood has clearly undergone several makeovers in its long existence and underneath the now crackling white paint is a layer of fading black – making it look "a little bit like marble", Jonas notes.





Whilst furnishings may be largely thanks to Jonas' enthusiasm and talent, the project is clearly a joint effort, Nina having been crucial in the negotiating stages, monitoring the progress of the renovation team and assisting in sourcing materials. "I love living here", she enthuses, "of course it's sometimes a lot of work, and things can go wrong, but that's what we want. I'd far rather be here than a more 'normal' apartment!" Nina also proved the catalyst for Jonas to start creating, having started with a letterbox soon after the pair met: "it was a birthday present for her; she always complained that didn't have one. She insisted that she wanted something self made and so I checked at home, found a water bottle and turned it into a letter box. Unfortunately our current postman just drops everything at the gate, so now it's for name cards."



Over a final cup of tea, Jonas proudly demonstrates his current project: a lamp fashioned out of a kettle. Such is the creativity of Mr. Merian: where many of us might be inclined to dismiss old but still perfectly serviceable materials, he has a clever knack of drawing out their charm and beauty. Check out his website, drop him a line and pay him and Nina a visit – although I guarantee that Ikea will never again suffice.