Louis Vuitton’s Objets Nomades transports us far away from Hong Kong through the captivating exhibition design of Nelson Chow
- From pier to living room to salon to lounge, Chow places us at a Hong Kong seaside mansion, each of the 10 ‘rooms’ in the Pedder Building space a different hue
- Among the well spaced objets is LV’s first bicycle, Marcel Wanders sofa and chairs, fruits of an Urs Fischer collaboration, and Andre Fu’s Ribbon Dance chair
Since its inception in 2012, Louis Vuitton’s Objets Nomades has circumnavigated the globe, popping up everywhere from Frieze Los Angeles to the Milan Furniture Fair to Design Miami.
Like the collections of the French fashion and luxury goods house, the furniture and homewares collection is inspired by the wonders of travel, with each item carefully created by the crème de la crème of international designers, including the Brazilian Campana Brothers, British Council Talented Award winners Raw Edges, and Hong Kong design darling André Fu.
For its first Objets Nomades show of 2021, and third outing in Hong Kong, the French powerhouse turned to local designer Nelson Chow of NC Design & Architecture to transform the opulent rooms at the Pedder Building in Central into Memento, a multisensory Hong Kong-style seaside mansion.
Arranged across two floors of the Beaux-Arts building, and interspersed with bold colour and an extravagance of greenery, Chow has separated the collection of 56 travel- and home-related pieces across 10 rooms.
“I was inspired by Hong Kong’s old mansions. I studied places like Haw Par Mansion on Tai Hang Road and King Yin Lei on Stubbs Road and transported their beams, curved walls and cross motifs to the interior,” he says. “We also looked at the way these houses were divided into different compartments.”