This 5,000-square-foot Clear Water Bay family home may be a sleek modern statement in glass and granite today, but its former incarnation was a dilapidated wreck, with barely enough walls to hold up the roof.
You could say it takes vision to see the potential in a dilapidated property. Peter and Carmen Lam would say it also takes Original Vision, the architectural firm they effusively credit for creating the home of their dreams.
The Lams bought their Clear Water Bay house because it fulfilled two critical criteria: one, it had a picture-postcard outlook, in this case over Silverstrand Bay and Shelter Island; and two, it was a wreck. 'We looked for two to three years and wanted something really rundown, so we could tear it down without worrying about it,' says Peter, who owns a company producing in-flight magazines for Chinese airlines.
When architect Adrian McCarroll first viewed the property he found barely a shell: 'It had been assassinated,' he recalls. 'There were no windows or doors and it was structurally unstable - two pillars and one of the supporting walls were missing.'
Unusually for Hong Kong, McCarroll's brief was not to maximise space and knock down as many walls as possible: 'Our priority was to have a dynamic space and for it to have a sense of openness, but not necessarily be open plan,' Peter says. 'But it had to let in lots of light and have an outdoorsy feel.'
McCarroll's interpretation of the vision was to create five levels and 5,000 square feet of living space (including terrace), which meets a family's need for private quarters (the Lams have two children, Philip, 10, and Caroline, five) but at the same time visually interconnects. Mezzanine floors and clever, cut-out windows enable you to see through the entire living space and out to sea while being in a defined room. To bring the outdoors in, vast expanses of glass have been used - most strikingly on the double-height glass wall in the main living room.