a mix of fashion, exhibitions, and gathering, the space uses everyday references and tactile materials to create a place for cultural exchange.

thomai tsimpou September 29, 2026 6 min

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Paul Chan turns cultural memory into a retail interior

Studio Paul Chan completes LANG’s 110-square-meter flagship at ROW DTLA in Los Angeles, transforming a former industrial warehouse into a fashion store and cultural venue shaped by the experience of living between cultures. Founded by Hong Kong-born Kayla Wong, LANG focuses on Asian-founded fashion brands while hosting exhibitions, artist talks, performances, and community gatherings. The interior uses material, craft, and everyday rituals to consider how cultural identity can be rebuilt through migration and adaptation.

For architect Paul Chan, who was also born in Hong Kong, the project begins with memory but does not end in nostalgia. ‘Much of our generation exists between cultures,’ says Chan. ‘The goal was never to recreate Hong Kong, but to ask how memories of one place can evolve into something entirely new when they meet another. Los Angeles isn’t the backdrop for that conversation, it is where entirely new cultural identities are formed.’ Studio Paul Chan treats cultural identity as something that changes and accumulates over time. Instead of recreating Hong Kong, the interior brings together familiar materials, objects, and spatial references, reworking them through a Los Angeles context.

all images by Alice Choi, unless stated otherwiseLANG’s row dtla flagship is organized around discovery

Paul Chan divides the former warehouse into smaller environments. Velvet curtains replace permanent walls, allowing the layout to change between shopping, exhibitions, talks, performances, and gatherings. Mirrored partitions conceal rooms and create moments of discovery as visitors move through the store. The arrangement draws on the experience of Hong Kong’s layered neighborhoods, where narrow passages, changing scales, and unexpected interiors can produce a sense of spatial discovery. This approach gives the store a degree of flexibility. Retail is one activity among several, with the architecture accommodating the social and cultural programming that has become part of LANG’s identity.

The material palette combines custom mahogany shelving with mauve moiré wallcovering, hand-brushed aluminum clothing shelves, vintage textiles, polished mirrors, handmade paper, and the retained concrete shell. Warm timber sits alongside industrial aluminum, while the roughness of the existing structure is placed against more tactile and decorative surfaces. Studio Paul Chan allows these differences to remain visible. A similar logic appears in the Washi Table, part of the studio’s Domestic Ritual furniture collection. Its surface is assembled from handmade papers sourced across East and Southeast Asia, including Hong Kong, China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Different fibers, textures, degrees of translucency, and cultural histories become one continuous surface. The table offers a useful parallel for the larger project. Identity here is not represented by a single material or symbol, but constructed through accumulation.

a wall of paper lanterns painted with Cantonese characters | image by Ye Rin Mokordinary objects become collective references

At the center of the store, a circular upholstered lounge occupies nearly half of the floor area, making gathering as important to the plan as retail display. Its custom upholstery, developed with Los Angeles textile studio SUAY, takes its colors from Hong Kong’s familiar red, white, and blue woven utility bags. These bags are associated with hardware stores, construction sites, and street markets, but the project does not reproduce them literally. Their palette becomes an architectural surface instead. Cushions referencing the striped towels of traditional cha chaan teng cafés add another everyday reference. These details shift the focus away from iconic representations of Hong Kong toward objects associated with ordinary routines and shared memories.

Above the lounge, four tiers of handmade paper lanterns are individually painted with colloquial Cantonese sayings. Inspired by weathered lanterns found outside Cantonese opera houses and neighborhood festivals, the installation functions simultaneously as lighting, a visual marker, and a social focal point.

Hidden behind mirrored partitions, the fitting room uses reflections to dissolve the apparent boundaries of the room, while a luminous ceiling produces an even, diffuse light. The effect is intentionally ambiguous. Familiar references elsewhere in the store give way to a space where orientation becomes less certain, turning the fitting room into a more direct spatial expression of the project’s interest in inhabiting multiple cultural contexts. Another installation draws from Hong Kong neighborhood newsstands. Instead of reconstructing one of the compact kiosks literally, Studio Paul Chan layers vintage advertisements and printed ephemera to evoke their informal atmosphere. The reference locates cultural memory in everyday urban rituals: buying a newspaper, browsing printed material, exchanging a few words, or simply encountering other people alongside commerce.

the central lounge features hand-dyed upholstery | image by Ye Rin Mokmahogany cabinetry and blue curtains define the retail interior | image by Ye Rin Mokmirrored walls and cream curtains create a reflective fitting room | image by Ye Rin Mokthe fitting room uses reflections to dissolve the apparent boundaries of the room | image by Ye Rin Moka luminous ceiling produces an even, diffuse lightcustom mahogany shelving displays clothing and accessories | image by Ye Rin Mokthe central lounge combines blue upholstery, mahogany, and layered vintage rugsrope details secure the blue upholstery to the custom wooden lounge