A Wong Kar-wai film set? No, it’s an old Shanghai-style family home in Jing-An
A Hong Kong designer transforms his late aunt’s flat with 1930s East-meets-West glamour
When Hong Kong-based designer Yu-chang Chen was asked to breathe new life into a 30-year-old, 1,200 sq ft apartment in Shanghai, the challenge was personal. The unit had belonged to his late aunt and, for 30 years, had been the site of many family gatherings.
His cousin, Lu Yi, who inherited the flat, asked Chen to design the space in tribute to his mother, Chen’s aunt, in the style popular when she was born. Chen, who was otherwise given creative freedom, says that his main task was to do “old Shanghai style”.
Although Chen, who is known for Scandinavian-style interiors, left Shanghai in 1980, when he was two years old, he says he could “easily relate” to the style Lu was after and conceptualised the aesthetic with hoo interior designer Keene Lam Wai-kin. “I wanted to pay tribute to my origins in this love letter to Shanghai.”
Beyond the nostalgia, the brief for the flat, in Shanghai’s upscale Jing-An district, was simple: maintain the existing layout of the two-bedroom, one-bathroom flat and reuse the vintage furniture passed down through the family while upgrading the space in a way that paid homage to its surroundings. Budget constraints shaped many decisions. “We tried to source most of the materials from Taobao,” Chen says.