Team spirit
Turning two flats into one is no easy feat but a couple's decision to each take on distinct design responsibilities helped keep the peace
Text Charmaine Chan / Styling Anji Connell / Photography John Butlin
Couples often make joint decisions when it comes to home renovations. Not Isobel and Antony Lee. To achieve their goal and maintain harmony, they decided to take responsibility for separate tasks. "We agreed from the beginning that he'd do function and I'd do look and feel," says Isobel. "If he made a decision about layout, I'd be fine with it."
So it was - and still is - in the 3,500 sq ft "very functional" Pok Fu Lam flat, which the couple created by acquiring the apartment next to the one they'd bought three years earlier, gutting both and fashioning distinct public and private zones. A transitional area segues between the bright, open living space of their former digs and the moodier, quieter side of the apartment, which now accommodates three en-suite bedrooms.
This "bridge" between light and dark is a study Isobel shares with her husband, a banker from New Zealand. It's this area that best displays her favourite styles (industrial, vintage and mid-century modern), examples of which she gave interior designer Richy Ng, of Box Design, in the stack of cuttings that accompanied the couple's brief. A rugged black-steel bookcase in the study is a thing of beauty, as are the tubular steel-and-leather Bauhaus chairs sourced through Artek, the company founded by modernist Finnish architect Alvar Aalto.
Continuity is achieved by an impressive engineered-wood floor throughout much of the flat.
"I wanted a look that was industrial but that felt a bit refined, hence the whalebone floorboards," says Isobel, a Hong Kong-born Australian design writer.
To achieve the look, she had Ng install what was the single most expensive design feature in the flat. But it was worth it, she says.
Another design thread stitching together the apartment is the bold anime-style artwork the couple have collected over the years. They commissioned an additional piece specifically for the doors of a cabinet in their movie room. The energy of the Japanese art heightens the dynamism of the vast living area, which contains large and small sitting zones as well as a bar, a dining area and the television room.
"We lived in Japan and you can see [that influence] in our art," says Isobel. That also explains the Japanese-inspired slatted sliding doors to the en-suite bathroom in the couple's master bedroom, which is as big as the temporary flat they inhabited for more than a year while their home was being renovated.
At about 800 square feet, it comfortably accommodates his-and-hers dressing rooms and a sitting area with a wall-mounted TV. In this room and elsewhere, furniture by Hong Kong-based American interior designer Candace Campos complements such classics as the Pelikan chair, designed by Finn Juhl in 1940.
"She consulted on furniture and I bounced ideas off her," says Isobel, who had Campos design the bedside tables, a console, groovy bar stools and a hefty marble-topped dining table with farmhouse legs.
Some pieces, however, were must-haves for Isobel, who, because of her job, receives regular updates of furniture sales. Having her finger on the pulse gave her a headstart in snapping up the Crinoline high armchair (B&B Italia's rope version of the famous Peacock chair), which lords it over a small area near the bar that proved difficult to furnish.
Instead of disguising the space, Isobel created a feature nook distinguished by dark, dramatic wallpaper.
It's in this area that you can see how Ng fulfilled an important part of his brief: giving his clients room to entertain.
"We wanted a home where we could have people over for dinner, for drinks, barbecues; [one in which] we could divide the spaces and do all sorts of things in them.
"If I'm chilling out and Antony wants to do something else or if he's got friends over and wants to watch a game, they can go in [the movie room] and watch it," she says, demonstrating how the automated sliding doors, decorated with blackboard panels, close off the room.
And does the blackboard aspect hint at little hands scribbling in chalk one day?
"We designed for the possibility of kids," says Isobel.
Designing "functionality" into the apartment obviously included flexibility as well.
Study Through the office are the bedrooms. The shelving and desks were by Box Design. The steel-and-leather Bauhaus chairs (HK$7,000 each) came from Artek (12/F, Horizon Plaza, tel: 2515 2333). The whalebone flooring in engineered oak came from Admonter through Cartina International (21/F, Lucky Plaza, tel: 3105 0510).
"Because we have all these women around [in other artwork], she wanted to do a warrior-princess type thing," says Isobel Lee. "The reason we painted a cupboard rather than a wall is so we could take it with us if we moved."
A Joan Miro print, sourced through ZZHK Gallery, hangs behind a sofa custom made by Box Design.