Henning Voss lived communally until just a few years ago. He had a flat that was turned into an office during the day, when he shared his living quarters with a handful of employees who worked at his dining table and ate in his kitchen.
Then his situation changed. He sold the home-office and relocated the company it accommodated, Necescity.com (a free e-mail magazine for Hong Kong men). The change in circumstances required Voss to find somewhere else to live, so he acquired another flat, gutted the interiors and refurbished it to suit himself and just one other person: co-owner Silvia, his German-born Chinese girlfriend.
Although Voss, who is also German, insists he grew used to the living conditions, he jokes: 'I couldn't have any sick days.'
Voss has moved up - literally. His apartment, three floors above his previous digs, retains a lot that is familiar but, he stresses, it is much more comfortable. Housed in a Sheung Wan building with one flat per floor, it is, like the old place, a touch under 900 sq ft, but it's significantly brighter, and not just because of the elevated position. Unlike those beneath it, the flat has windows on all four sides.
As with the lower apartment (featured in these pages in 2009), Voss' new home was designed by Jennifer Newton, of Newton Concepts. The Australian interior designer again introduced timber to the aesthetic, but this time she swapped concrete flooring for warm oak, leaving the aged, tactile teak sourced in Thailand for table tops, including the dining table, the television unit and the bathroom counter.
Contrary to expectations, his previous concrete floor, Voss says, was a hassle to keep clean. 'Because it had a very rough finish, it was hard even to sweep,' he says, acknowledging that it would have been less high-maintenance had he chosen the glossy finish favoured by some art galleries.