Make it Instagrammable: Hong Kong millennials’ top apartment design priority
Instagram-worthy looks and smart spatial planning are key to designing living spaces for millennials in the city, many of whom define their lives on a Pinterest board
“As long as it’s done well,” says interior designer Ben McCarthy, 36, you do not need a lot of space to call home.
That is good news for millennials who have no real choice when it comes to apartment size, given the financial constraints of living in a city like Hong Kong. Design wise, they can be quite specific. Even though most millennials do not expect ever to own a home, they do want their rental flats to be just so.
That is, if they move out of the parental home at all. According to global research conducted by real estate services firm CBRE in 2016, Hong Kong has the world’s highest percentage of millennials – people born between 1981 and 1996 – who are still living with their parents. A full 21 per cent of these had no plans to leave the family home.
McCarthy, founder of Hong Kong design firm Charlie & Rose, based in the Sheung Wan neighbourhood, is just completing work on a project designed to lure them away. The Australian is best known in Hong Kong for his work on hospitality projects (Mr and Mrs Fox, Limewood, Stockton, The Winery), so when developer District 15 asked him to design a set of compact apartments targeting millennials, he took a cue from his restaurant projects.
He noted that patrons could barely find a seat because of the people taking selfies in a quirky corner of Chaiwala Indian restaurant in Central, and at plant-filled The Winery in Sai Ying Pun. McCarthy realised that what millennials want from interior design is spaces that are Instagram-worthy.