Our regular Interiors features take a look through the keyhole into the homes and businesses of some of Shanghai's well known faces.
Having spent 22 years in China and Asia, Tom Doctoroff, the former Asia CEO of J. Walter Thompson, has recently announced his departure from the multinational marketing and communications firm and his employer since 1992. Thinking back on his first introduction to the region when the company sent him to Hong Kong in 1994 and later to Shanghai in 1998, the author and expert in branding and Chinese consumer behavior says, “I became fascinated by a fundamentally different worldview; my American assumptions about the nature of culture were shaken. I found that to be both intellectually and professionally rewarding and enriching.”
Since moving to Shanghai, Doctoroff has always lived in the former French Concession. “I love strolling around the neighborhood and that’s what I love about Shanghai in general, it’s a very ‘walkable’ city. In addition to its charm and elegance, I like that life is so close to the streets. It’s like a cultural anthropological tour every time you walk out the door,” he notes.
He purchased his current home – a 180-square-meter, three-story lane house on Ruijin Er Lu – in 2009 to fulfill one of his longtime wishes: to own a piece of the city that he loves. “To me, something that’s quintessentially unique to Shanghai would be a lane house,” Doctoroff tells me. He then hired French interior designer Baptiste Bohu to do the initial renovation to “give it more light, more flow and breathability.”
“I am not thinking of this as leaving, but rather as a transition to the next phase of my life,” Doctoroff says of his imminent departure, “I’d want China and Asia to be part of my life in the future. I’m at a stage in my life where I’m under no pressure to do anything, except for exploring the opportunities.” As for his gorgeous house? He’s putting it on the market. Here’s a look inside.
When he first looked at the house, Tom Doctoroff thought it was quite closed-in and claustrophobic, but he was attracted to some elements of it. One of the first decisions he and designer Baptiste Bohu made was to extend the living room further out into the backyard to make it more spacious. Doctoroff’s favorite spots of the house is the corner of the grey sofa next to the floor-to-ceiling glass door, where he’d usually do some work on his laptop.
The renovation for Doctoroff’s (right) home in 2009 was the first residential project Baptiste Bohu (left) had worked on. The grey brick wall behind the duo in this photo is a common feature of the Shanghainese shikumen-style architecture.
The backyard of house is lined with well-maintained plants. Doctoroff admits that he often likes sitting at his the sofa and enjoy the greenery when he needs a break from the computer screen.
One of the major changes to the house that Bohu made in 2009 was breaking down the walls that separated the kitchen and the living room and foyer, essentially connecting and opening up the entire first floor of the house.
An element that Doctoroff fell in love with when he first saw the house was the dark wood stairs – a signature design feature for traditional lane houses in Shanghai.
In 2015, Bohu came back to the house to do some small touch-ups, mainly focusing on the bathroom connected to the master bedroom. The floor-to-ceiling door that separates the shower area from the rest of the space echoes the one found on the main floor in between the courtyard and the living room.
The house also features a rooftop terrace, which looks out to similar buildings in the area. Doctoroff admits, “It took a while to make truce with some of the older neighbors who resented someone who owns an entire lane house. But after they realize that I’m friendly and not here to flip the house, things turned better. Every now and then, an 80-year-old man next door invites me to his arts and calligraphy class to speak on behalf of Chinese-American friendship.”
Photos by Mario Grey.
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