Inside the Peak’s Mount Nicholson - Asia’s priciest address - with interior designer Alexandra Champalimaud

Jul 7 , 2017

Designer Alexandra Champalimaud is responsible for high-end projects such as Bel-Air in LA, the Dorchester in London and, more recently, the Mount Nicholson project in Hong Kong

I have no idea how Alexandra Champalimaud found the time for this interview. The renowned interior designer has had such a prolific career that if you’re an avid traveller and a fan of luxury hotels, chances are you’ll have seen her work. She’s done the Bel-Air in LA, the Dorchester in London, the St Regis in Beijing, the Four Seasons in Jakarta, just to mention a few. Now she’s inside one of her recent projects, a Hong Kong luxury residence expected to sell for just short of a billion, talking to us about passion.

“It’s real passion for life when it comes to the work we do. It’s my driving force,” says the founder and president of the eponymous Champalimaud Design. “When you feel attracted to something, you know intuitively as a designer when something is right.”

Alexandra Champalimaud. Photos: Wheelock Properties

She certainly got the Mount Nicholson project right. Much of the hype around this residential property on the Peak has been centred around its hefty price tag, but looking around the house it’s not hard to see why the wealthy would part with a few hundred of their millions to live here.

Mount Nicholson’s living and dining room

In addition to Champalimaud, some of the world’s top names in interior design were asked to design a selection of the 19 houses and 48 apartments at this location. These illustrious designers and firms include Robert Stern, Yabu Pushelberg, David Collins Studio, OLIN, Three. Living Architecture and Talley Associates, and the results are nothing short of stunning.

“You’ve got an incredible space here,” Champalimaud says. “There is a beautiful flow to the whole arrival process and the whole house; I can’t wish for anything more. I think it’s a beautiful house and I hope we made it even more glorious.”

For someone whose design company has done everything from exposed ceilings and concrete floors in a New York office, to sleek minimalism in Niseko’s Green Leaf Village, to majestic opulence and soaring ceilings in Chengdu’s Waldorf Astoria, the key was to hit just the right note for each location with its respective culture.

You always start with the real DNA of the place – what it is, who is going to want this place, and how will they live

Alexandra Champalimaud