Clever use of glass throughout a once neglected 1,700 sq ft Mid-Levels apartment has transformed it into an open and airy family home.
A two-year search for a new home ended when Ivy Lam found a top floor 1,700 sq ft unit with a rooftop in a 28-year-old low rise on leafy Conduit Road. It was run down and neglected but met two important criteria: it was big enough to accommodate her family of four and was in a convenient location, close to her office in Central.
The apartment's shabbiness was a selling point. 'We wanted to scrap everything and redo it so it didn't really matter,' Lam says. For the renovation, she called on a childhood friend of her husband, architect Hubert Un (Hubert Un and Associates, tel: 8106 7722).
'In our first conversation, we told Hubert we wanted the apartment to be simple, white, practical and clean,' says Lam, who prioritised her family's needs.
She wanted a study area that could be a working zone for her husband and a common area for all. She was keen to have a roof terrace where her two sons could play safely and wanted to be able to divide the apartment into public and private zones, so privacy would not be compromised when guests visited.
Un has created an interior that is practical and user-friendly but also incorporates clever design ideas. The heart of the home is a large open-plan living and dining room. Before the renovation, the area looked cluttered and disjointed because there were several doorways along one wall that led to three separate bedrooms.