Designer bows to artist in Hong Kong flat revamp
Taiwanese artist Hsu Wei-bin’s sleekly rustic furniture, made from cast-off timber, dominates 1,700 sq ft Pok Fu Lam apartment, with artfully distressed concrete and Taobao bargains as backdrop
Interior designers are an egotistical lot, eager to leave their stamp everywhere they work and too proud to share the spotlight with anyone else. Right?
Not quite. In this Pok Fu Lam apartment, young Hong Kong designer Wesley Liu Yik-kuen agreed to play second fiddle to veteran Taiwanese artist Hsu Wei-bin. Holding the baton was their client, China-born perpetual traveller Grace Shou Tianyu.
She had fallen in love with the work of the Taipei-based artist and was determined to find a way to display his sleek, rustic creations in her new home. The only way to realise her dream was to put the two creatives together.
“I followed Hsu’s style,” acknowledges Liu, who, as founder of PplusP Designers, had renovated one of Shou’s previous apartments in Hong Kong. “I needed to do interiors that would fit his furniture.”
He has done that in spades, taking cues from the artist and injecting some of his own ideas into the 1,700-sq-ft, seaview flat Shou bought last year.