A Hong Kong home gets a masculine makeover to recall a gentlemen’s club

Enoch Hui Nock had just finished renovating a flat in Yau Yat Chuen when his client, a local business investor, made an unusual request: turn another apartment he had just bought upstairs into a party pad. “He always invites friends home for cigars and whisky, so he was expecting the flat to look like a club,” says Hui, the founder of interior design and architecture studio Atelier E. “He asked for a masculine design with some classical elements.”

A coffered ceiling with a grid of moulding was installed, which made the space feel “classical but not too classical”, he says. In the living room, bulky leather armchairs and a sofa emblazoned with the Union flag were arranged around a black leather coffee table. White marble tiles installed diagonally along one of the walls echo the geometric pattern of the rug in the living room. And heavy curtains and a birdcage-like display case mounted in front of a window round out the look.

In the dining room, an eight-seat table, the top of which bears an isometric-cube pattern, is flanked on one side by a large window with a wood frame bearing decorative mould­ing – yet another touch that evokes the gilded aura of a private club. On the other side of the table is a row of free-standing wooden cabinets with bronze-tinted mirror fronts. Hui designed them and had them custom built for the space.

“Usually in Hong Kong, people have huge built-in cabinets, wall-to-wall,” says Hui. “For this project we decided to have loose items instead. It’s a bit like a showroom.”