Who is he? Tino Kwan is a Hong Kong-born lighting designer with a studio in Tin Hau. His team has designed lighting schemes for luxury retail and hospitality projects across the world, from Fendi and Armani boutiques to the Peninsula hotel brand. He was responsible for the lighting in the IFC shopping arcade (above) and Citic Tower.
How did he get into it? Kwan wasn't sure what he wanted to do after finishing a design course at the local polytechnic. 'In the early 1970s, product design was just coming up in Hong Kong and designers were doing radios, cassette players, more electronic things,' he says. 'Philippe Starck wasn't even famous then, but that was my kind of idea, to design products that could be sold all over the world.'
Landing a job with one of Hong Kong's few spatial lighting firms gave direction to Kwan's zeal and took him to Athens, Greece, and later to London. 'The experience in Europe really broadened my design scope,' he says. 'Design information was very limited in Hong Kong back then but I was able to travel around in Europe and see other kinds of lighting design.'
What happened in Europe? In Greece, Kwan spent a lot of time in museums, translating ideas taken from ancient jewellery into chandeliers. But it was the stint in London that really boosted his career. Working as the head of the lighting department at Dale Keller & Associates, Kwan illuminated hotels, aircraft and the palaces of Iranian princesses; the Middle East had just started to boom. He also got a kick out of the era's emerging youth culture. 'It was the beginning of the punk generation and quite a lot of creative things were happening in art galleries and with fashion,' he says. 'It didn't really get into my design ... I did turn my hair pink though.'
What brought him back to Hong Kong? Though Kwan was happily settled in London, first in Chelsea then in Wimbledon, his work on a private club in Hong Kong reopened the potential of China to him. The I-Club was ahead of its time, he admits (it was designed around a modern art concept, and was even promoted by Andy Warhol), but it changed his career path forever, as well as the Hong Kong lighting landscape. At the time his was the only lighting design studio in the territory. 'Most of my projects then were in hospitality,' he says. 'Few other developers would think of working with a lighting designer. When I got a shopping mall in the New Territories I knew people were starting to realise that lighting was important.'
How did he get his big break in Hong Kong? 'My first high-end retail project was for Fendi,' he says. '[It had] a new image, a 'dark concept'. The problem was that in the first few stores it had people falling down, bumping into shelves and hurting themselves ... When the design director called me in, I looked at the lighting plans and knew what the problem was. I reworked the plans, and they first gave me the shop in Bangkok. Since then I've done who-knows how many.'