After father’s death, a Hong Kong family turns dark house into a bright home for all
With Dad’s trinkets banished to the basement, the 7,500 sq ft house is clean-lined and contemporary, with a double-height living space and subtle Asian details
Whether consciously or not, we often reflect in our homes the expectations and desires of our parents, even, or especially, after they are gone.
That did – and didn’t – happen at the Ko family residence, whose makeover, completed this year, turned an old, termite-infested Sheung Shui house into a future-friendly home for all.
“We did the renovation because Mum said she wanted to stay here,” says Francis Ko Ka-ho, explaining that, after their father’s passing, in 2016, he and his four siblings sought to change “everything” in part to help their mother let go of the past.
Giving the family a new lifestyle meant not only gutting the 7,500 sq ft, two-storey, six-bedroom house but also removing part of the top floor so that the living area, once dank and dark, would make spirits sing. New windows reaching the top of the now double-height lounge throw light even into difficult corners. And at night, a delicate wire-mesh chandelier illuminates the room with more than 2,000 tiny bulbs – a magical sight that still catches Ko’s eye (and breath) every time he pulls into the compound after dark.
Having lived in the house for about 15 years, the businessman remembers much about it that made him recoil. “We had Chinese rosewood everywhere and the place was so dark you had to turn on the lights during the day to see where you were going,” he says. In winter, the floor was icy cold.
The job of remaking the house fell on Wesley Liu Yik-kuen, creative director at PplusP Designers. A friend of Ko, Liu went to the same school in Sydney as his future client – Ko having lived in Australia from age three to 18 – and had met Ko Snr years before. Knowing his friend’s father to be a “very traditional” Chinese man, Liu deliberately incorporated “Oriental” motifs into the scheme.