City One Shatin

By the time the owners called us, every surface was doing overtime: the dining table, the coffee table, even the kitchen counters were buried under bits and pieces. The flat clearly needed proper space planning, but a thicket of structural walls and columns meant we could not move the layout around freely. So instead of fighting the structure, we wrapped storage around it, like a full-height shoe cabinet built around the wall between the kitchen and dining area.

From there it became a job of giving each person their space back. We merged the two bedrooms into one so the tall husband could finally have a king-size bed in an enlarged master. The couple used to hang their washing along the windowsills, which blocked the daylight day after day, so we built an ensuite with room for a small laundry, washer and drying rails included, and the windows were free again. This is small-flat interior design as a storage problem solved.

The husband was a keen mechanic who loved fixing his bicycle, but the spare room meant to be his workshop was so packed with tools there was no room left to actually work. We moved the workshop into the original kitchen and used the full ceiling height for storage, which freed the floor for a proper worktable, a chair, and a parking spot for the bike. The new kitchen and dining sat in the old living area with no partition to keep things open, just a glass screen on hand for when the cooking really got going.