Renovating a flat presents a range of challenges to an architect - especially when it is his own.
You would imagine that, for an architect, designing your own apartment would be breeze. So did Erwin Hon ... until he started working on his own place.
'I thought it would be much easier than working for a client but it was far harder,' says Hon (tel: 9090 7410), who studied architecture at the Pratt Institute in New York but has been living and working in his native Hong Kong for the past decade. 'There were no design restrictions, no guidelines, no design brief and every idea I had could supersede the one before it. Coming up with everything myself was fun but it was also agonising because I had to discipline myself to know when to stop designing. Otherwise there would have been no end to it and the apartment still wouldn't be finished today.'
The original layout of the 850-square-foot flat, which is in Sorrento (next to the Waterfront in Tsim Sha Tsui), comprised small, boxed-in rooms. Although Hon decided not to change the kitchen, which he confesses he rarely uses, he knocked down everything else possible, demolishing partition
walls and removing fixtures and fittings including all the sanitaryware. Two bedrooms became one larger, open-planned sleeping area and two small bathrooms gave way to an interesting integration of the toilet cubicle, bath and shower unit into the bedroom.
'The idea is to make the space flow and to convey a sense of constant movement,' explains Hon. 'For example, behind the enclosed toilet is the bathtub and sink and you walk past the bath to the shower, which is also accessible via a door next to the bed.'