Industrial-chic Hong Kong studio helps Dutch product designer feel at home

Ride the lift to the wrong floor of the Fo Tan building that houses Danny Fang’s studio and you might find yourself eyeballing pig carcasses being prepared for char siu bao.

One level down, however, the Dutch product designer’s unit is clearly marked: stencilled on the wall by the entrance is his jumping man logo and surname in Chinese, both in flamingo pink. Next to them is a bicycle horn you squeeze to trumpet your arrival.

The quirkiness continues inside the 1,200 sq ft unit but once the doors are closed, the grim(i)ness of the industrial building vanishes. Beyond the foyer, decorated with Fang’s computer art, your eye is drawn towards verdant beauty visible through a wall-to-wall bank of windows.

“It’s set up so that wherever you are you can look outside,” says Fang, who four years ago provided some of the heft to turn a meatball factory into a studio where he worked and, until a couple of years ago, slept. Instead of building walls to delineate private and public spaces, however, he created a curtained-off mezzanine for his bedroom and a long side platform for the office.

Both structures not only demarcate “rooms”; they also provide capacious storage areas beneath. “[The unit] was too narrow to have proper partitioning for living and work,” says Fang. “Underneath is for big things; furniture and stuff like that. I have a lot of junk.”