Shelf esteem
A Happy Valley home is given a luxurious transformation back to its 1950s roots
Text Charmaine Chan / Styling David Roden / Photography John Butlin
So eye-catching are the bold, black-framed windows Andrew Bell puts into the homes he revamps that sometimes he finds himself inadvertently struck by his own designs.
That is what happened recently when the Bangkok-based Australian designer, on one of his work trips to Hong Kong, spotted an apartment in Happy Valley from his hotel nearby.
“I looked up and thought, ‘Hey, somebody else has done my windows,’” he says. “And then I realised it was [client Chris James’] flat.”
It was the retro look of Bell’s signature openings (inspired by the window walls at Central Market) and his charming old-world aesthetic that persuaded James to have him overhaul his 1,700 sq ft apartment.
“The flat was built in the 1950s and I thought it should reflect the original character as far as possible,” says James, a British lawyer who moved to Hong Kong in 1984 and bought the apartment in 2009. Also important was that space be maximised – the flat had previously housed a family with children – and that there be room for his hobbies, among them photography, cycling and reading.
“There was a lot of storage space I wasn’t using,” James says, explaining that the living area, now open plan, had once been carved into several small rooms.
