Park Island

The flat came to us brand new with three bedrooms, but the only thing the owners really asked for was a sanctuary, somewhere to forget the busy world outside the front door. So we took them at their word and went fully open-plan. We knocked down every internal wall except the two we needed for the kitchen and the guest bathroom, which turned the unit into one continuous space.

That one move changed everything. With the partitions gone you can now see clear through the full 37-foot length of the apartment, where before the eye stopped at about 11 feet, and the balcony doors run the entire span so the view of the Tsing Ma and Ting Kau bridges does the talking. The couple owned a lot of books, so we used two rows of bookshelves as the only dividers, marking out a living zone, a working zone, and the sleeping area. Leave a few shelves half empty and light from the next room filters straight through.

Comfort was the quiet brief underneath the open one. We added a freestanding swivel TV stand so the screen turns to wherever you are sitting, a pair of L-shaped workstations so husband and wife each have their own desk, and a roomy master bathroom with both a shower and a tub. It is open-plan interior design at its most literal, but the point was never the loft look. It was a calm, generous home to come back to.