Meet Tony Chi, designer of the new Rosewood Hong Kong, who doesn’t care much for Instagram
Round-spectacled and beaming, the renowned designer explains how he set out to preserve the imprints of three generations of Chengs and to create spaces where memories could be forged
Tony Chi is sitting in one of the new Rosewood Hong Kong’s myriad meeting rooms looming over Victoria Harbour, the Event Studio, looking nothing like the superstar hospitality designer he is. The founder and principal of New York-based tonychi studio is sporting a casual grey jumper and comfortable loose trousers; he has a flight in a few hours. The only thing that gives away Chi’s seemingly innate sophistication is a pair of his signature round Le Corbusier eyeglasses, today in bright red. He is, after all, an advocate of contrasting materials, patterns and colours.
The man behind the graceful interiors of the Rosewood London and Mandarin Oriental Guangzhou is far from serious and consumed by design and where his next inspiration will come from. Instead, he is philosophical about it, pooh-poohing the notion that good design can be created by a single action, instead likening interiors to a symphony. “There are a lot of noisy elements if you deconstruct the [Rosewood Hong Kong], but when you put them together it makes music. The noise goes away.”
Hospitality is fundamental of everything; it’s etiquette
Which is not to say Chi does not take his work seriously, just that he also finds room in his conversations for levity. He laughs frequently and easily, and happily makes jabs about his dye-job and Patrick Stewart hairstyle (meaning bald) and creaky knees.
Chi looks at interior design as being the “subconscious awareness of good taste. ‘Design’ is not a noun. The question shouldn’t be what good design is. It should be about what good taste is.” In addition to being easy going, firm in his opinions (“It’s wrong to take cheap real estate outside the city”) and casually elegant, Chi is a classic gentleman.
Born in Taipei and relocating to New York when he was nine years old, Chi started on the road to hospitality as an artist. The youngest child in the family, Chi parlayed academic anonymity into art class. A middle-school teacher thought his drawings were strong enough and encouraged him to apply to an art-focused high school. He did a four-year programme. The city and the diversity of public schools – he is a proud grad – shaped much of his view on design, and though he is now known for his five-star interiors, much of his design ethic comes from fundamental experiences we all have in common.
