Split decisions

Hong Kong homes are infamous for their lack of space. Even those lucky enough to have 1,700 square feet to play with, such as interior designer Cynthia Lie-Breit, run out of room when they have two young children, grandparents who visit regularly and a husband with a hobby-job collecting and dealing in retro vinyl records and music memorabilia. With her Discovery Bay home filled to capacity, Lie-Breit hit on an idea popular overseas: the granny flat.

Hong Kong's strict planning rules meant the usual solution - converting a loft or basement - was out of the question. So she started looking for a small apartment near her home where her Indonesian-Chinese parents could stay for extended visits. After a fruitless few months, she finally settled on a rundown 900 sq ft apartment just across the road.

"We were really looking for something smaller," she says. "But the location was right."

And then she had a brainwave. She would gut the space and divide it in two: 400 square feet would be a bijou studio apartment for visitors and the remaining 500 square feet she'd turn into a permanent home for the vast music collection of her husband, Oliver, who is German. The music room is still a work in progress, with concert posters stacked against shelves loaded with LPs, singles and boxes of CDs.

"When we moved the collection out of our home, it made space for two rooms - an office and my daughter Kaya's room," Lie-Breit says. While the music room is not yet ready for its close-up, the visitors' apartment is picture perfect. "I didn't want just a bed in a studio - I wanted something more eye-catching but also functional," she says.

This side of the apartment revolves around a glass-walled bedroom mounted on a 130 sq ft wooden platform. A living area and kitchen sit between the bedroom and the windows, with a small desk niche tucked neatly into the corridor that runs around two sides of the platform.