How a Brazilian designer turned her Hong Kong flat into a home away from home
Former flight attendant Flavia Markovits decided to pay homage to her roots by adding a laid-back, beachy vibe to her Tung Chung flat
You can take Flavia Markovits out of Rio de Janeiro but you can’t take the Brazilian city out of her. Even if her address is now Tung Chung.
There, in a rented, 900 sq ft flat minutes from Hong Kong International Airport, the newly minted Brazilian interior designer has created for herself, her pilot husband and their 11-year-old daughter rooms that are warm but chilled and, in her words, modern bohemian: natural fibres, relaxed shapes and neutral hues help layer a look that mixes design genres.
“My previous homes were full of colour,” the former primary school teacher and flight attendant says, describing how she had decorated a flat in Macau, where the couple lived for seven years after leaving Brazil in 2006. “But I got sick of it after a short time, so I decided if I wanted something to last it must calm me down.”
The family’s latest acquisition for their three-bedroom flat hews to the scheme. “A Brazilian house is not complete without a hammock,” she says, displaying a capacious, tasselled cotton sling that hangs from hooks on opposite walls of the living room. “I had wanted to buy one for years and it was love at first sight.”
Mindful of their relatively tight space, however, Markovits has kept her family’s possessions under control (“The secret is to declutter whenever possible”). And she has achieved consistency throughout to help the flow.