A Hong Kong family home takes one room and gives it several uses
A 200 sq ft room tucked cleverly inside a 1,750 sq ft Pok Fu Lam flat serves as a study, guest room, child’s bedroom, playroom and office
If the room above is not the hardest working 200 sq ft in Hong Kong, it is certainly a contender.
Once two rooms – a study and a child’s bedroom in a 1,750 sq ft Pok Fu Lam flat – this multifunctional space now packs in two double beds, two full-sized desks, a child’s table and chairs, a two-seater sofa, play space, a whiteboard, gym equipment, art supplies, filing cabinets, a printer, HEPA air filter, and all the toys, clothes and treasures a little girl could want. And with a sleek, clean aesthetic. It’s quite a party trick.
The study/guest room/child’s bedroom/playroom is the brainchild of Bruce Harwood, of BHI Design Studio. It is not the first time he has worked on the space.
Ten years ago, he renovated the entire flat for luxury travel specialist Shy Perez-Sala and her husband, Jay Sala, a management consultant, just after they had acquired the property. Harwood opened up the apartment, moving the entrance and redesigning the kitchen to enlarge the dining area, installing a larger en suite bathroom and creating a study and guest room divided by sliding doors.
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Design details included hidden storage and cabling throughout the flat to keep the space looking clean and uncluttered, and a flexible gallery hanging system for Jay’s stunning blown-up safari photographs.
“We’ve changed the paint colour on one wall in the living room to complement a new painting from the Affordable Art Fair – it didn’t pop against the neutral walls and furnishings – and painted a wall in the dining room, but that’s about it,” says Jay.
The big change since the 2010 renovation has been the arrival of the couple’s daughter, Kiera, now seven. She was the catalyst for calling Harwood back, in February, to take a fresh look at the study and her bedroom. “Kiera is the main reason we created the multitasking rooms in the first place,” Shy says. “This way we won’t have to ask her to leave her bedroom and bunk with us parents to accommodate our guests.”
Making the renovation even more timely, the pandemic meant the entire family was working from home. The demand for extra play space for Kiera – as well as a solution for a guest room – suddenly seemed more urgent.
“Jay told me what he wanted to fit into the room and I worked through the permutations,” Harwood says. “The Murphy beds were the saving grace.”
The two Murphy beds were the key to unlocking the space. They fold up into nooks between the walls of floor-to-ceiling cupboards in each room, freeing up floor space for Jay’s swing-out desk in the study/guest room and for a sofa and table and chairs in Kiera’s room.
In place of the old sliding doors between the two spaces is a more easily manoeuvred curtain with a sound- and light-absorbing inner layer that allows Jay to carry on working after Kiera has gone to sleep.
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Harwood sourced the Murphy bed mechanisms from Italy (“We couldn’t get what we wanted in China – they only came attached to a bed,” he says), allowing his contractor to custom make the beds to fit seamlessly between the wardrobes. A damper feature means they glide gently up and down – an important safety measure in a child’s room. When Kiera’s bed is folded up every day, it reveals a two-seater sofa cleverly fastened to the underside.
“Getting the cushions right on the sofa took some time – we only had illustrations to work from so we had a few goes at that,” Harwood says.
The pandemic added its own unique set of problems. “It was a bit difficult because the borders were closed – we had [the built-in elements] made in China, and the bed mechanism came from Italy – so that delayed us a bit,” he says.
As well as the rooms’ moving parts – fold-up beds, swing-out desk, sliding curtain, a pull-down hanging rail in Kiera’s wardrobe, and “magic corner” cupboard mechanisms, usually associated with kitchens but here holding Jay’s gym equipment and Kiera’s art supplies – the lighting is a sight to behold. Fittingly for a child’s room, the multicoloured, app-operated Philips HUE lighting system was fitted for fun.
“We had it installed throughout most of the flat,” Jay says. “At one point, the entire place was lit up in purple – it’s Kiera’s favourite colour.” And when she gets bored with lilac, she can choose from a menu of mood settings: Tropical Twilight, Spring Blossoms and, appropriately for a family that has been on safari about 20 times, Savannah Sunset.
Father and daughter share the glass whiteboard between the two rooms; he writes business plans at the top and she draws fairies at the bottom. It is fastened to a cupboard (HK$23,800 by BHI Design) that holds a paper shredder and air filter.
Jay Sala’s desk (HK$27,880 by BHI Design) is made from the same LG acrylic as Kiera’s but has a pivoting mechanism and legs on wheels that allow it to swing out or be pushed back on top of the windowsill when guests visit and the Murphy bed is lowered.
The balcony is Jay’s favourite workout space, discreetly kitted out with a pull-up bar and a TRX fitting (not seen) to allow him to exercise with a view.
Tried + tested
Off the rails In the en suite bathroom, a lack of wall space for a heated towel rail saw it being fitted to the glass shower enclosure. The wire was hidden behind a discreet magnetic metal strip attached to the edge of the glass panel, rendering it all but invisible apart from a few centimetres at the bottom of the rail.
