Hong Kong apartment’s design inspired by a tree over 100 years old, with wood finishes and a wall of glass to bring natural light inside
- A longan tree, more than 100 years old, has borne witness to the lives of several generations of a Hong Kong family in the northern New Territories
- It provided the inspiration for the design of a ground-floor, elderly-friendly flat – and is perfectly framed in a huge window in the living room
In a small square at the heart of an ancient clan village in the northern New Territories, amid fields and fish ponds close to the Chinese border, is a venerable longan tree.
More than 100 years old, its trunk is twisted and gnarly and covered with parasitic plants, but its branches are thick with leaves and alive with tiny songbirds. Surrounding it are a rock “turtle”, a pine tree, a stone table and stools, and an old cannon – thought to date from World War II – propped up on bricks.
Every element holds special significance for clansman Kuan, who inherited both the square and the house next to it from his father; other family members also live around the square, including an aunt and uncle next door.
The longan tree has borne witness to the lives of several generations of Kuan’s family, the pine was planted to celebrate his uncle’s wedding, and his father constructed the turtle. Even the bricks were handmade in the village, relics of an old house that previously occupied the site.
So when Kuan decided to convert the house into three flats, and asked interior designer Tang Chi-chun, of studio Absence From Island, to renovate the 700 sq ft (65 square metre) ground-floor flat for his mother, he requested that the longan tree provide both the focus and the inspiration for the design.
“Kuan had recently returned from the UK and wanted to create a bright, open space for his mother, with linkage to the garden that would highlight the tree, which is special to the family. He sees it as protective,” Tang says.