An Indian family who spent 20 years in Japan mix cultural influences in their Hong Kong home

Indo-European style, with a Japanese touch, is a cultural mix that may be hard to envisage in residential interiors. But challenged to come up with a cohesive design for Indian clients newly arrived in Hong Kong by way of Tokyo, designer Keith Chan Shing-hin adapted, incorporated and custom made to make his clients feel at home.

In a departure from his usual minimalist style, Chan, founder of Hintegro, created a cultural sanctuary for a family of four in a four-bedroom, 2,300 sq ft flat near Wong Nai Chung Gap. He worked within the existing floor plan, leaving most walls intact but otherwise completely refurbishing the unit.

Setting the multicultural tone is the living room, which shares space with a dining area and a coffee-and-tea bar. A marble shrine to a pair of deities, one of which is the elephant-headed Ganesha, the Hindu god of beginnings, is located behind doors repurposed from antique Japanese screens known as ranma. Nearby, a corridor to the bedrooms begins at an archway that tips its hat to British India.

Chan’s clients, who hail from the Indian state of Rajasthan, spent more than two decades in Japan. When it was time to expand their jewellery business to other parts of Asia, family connections brought them to Hong Kong. Apart from two bedrooms for their teenage daughter and son, there is an en-suite grandparents’ room, which features a wide door in case wheelchairs are needed some day. The couple’s bedroom sits beside this guest suite.

Notwithstanding the Indian and British-colonial elements, added partly to make the family’s elderly visitors feel at home when they come to stay, Chan says of his clients: “They are half Japanese now. They live like Japanese and even among the family they sometimes speak Japanese.”