Craig
The client that owned this place was a highly-educated professional with a busy work life and a heavy travel schedule and so it was almost natural that he wanted a place where he could return to after a hectic day and feel completely at home. For us, it was a challenge, but it was a challenge that was possible to overcome with a touch of ingenuity and a sliver of creativity.
The house was small but high, 7 meters high. We came up with the idea to build two mezzanine levels above the main living area to create liveable space whilst maintaining the airy feeling that was initially present. However, building a mezzanine level meant that the ground floor would be dark and uninhabitable thus, in order to preserve the natural light coming in from the skylight, 1 inch thick glass was used as the flooring of the mezzanine levels so that the natural sunshine would filter down to the main living area.
Our principle is always to marry both functionality and minimalistic design. Storage space is something that a home cannot lack to maintain the straight lines that we emphasise in all of our designs, we decided to build storage areas into the sloping sides of the buildings, effectively making masking the storage areas into false walls and keeping the minimalist theme.
We know that a loft design can get messy so we designed self-contained areas to keep the mess to a minimum. The doors of the kitchen are self-balancing which allows the kitchen to be closed off when not in use and to work around the small size of the house, we designed the kitchen to be as compact as possible in a galley style with stainless steel counters and subway tiles to make the kitchen bright but functional.
The outcome was a design that is creative, unique and functional whilst maintain a level of personal touch and comfort which is seen in the motifs found throughout the house, highlighting the client’s English and Chinese cultural influences.