How 2001: A Space Odyssey influences designer Frank Leung’s vision of homes of the future
- Founder of multifaceted Hong Kong practice, responsible for 28 Aberdeen Street and ArtisTree, says studio is returning to its private residential design roots
- Over the years Leung, who trained as architect and makes functionality a priority, has been driven to outperform his rivals and surpass client expectations
For Frank Leung, 2019 is a significant year. It marks the 10th anniversary of via architecture, the Hong Kong multidisciplinary design studio that the University of Texas graduate founded with his wife, Irene Lai, in 2009.
“It’s come full circle,” says Leung, who is also principal of the design studio, while Lai is director of development.
[Working at Sun Hung Kai] it boiled down to how I could satisfy my customers better than the competition. My time there gave me an insight into what the customer wants and how to exceed their expectations
“We started with small private projects, then we grew and we started doing all this real estate stuff. In the past couple of years we’ve spent a lot of our energy on a variety of projects, including retail projects.”
This year, Leung and his team find themselves working on private residences once again, but on a range of different scales.
“We started 2019 wondering if we could do something more process-driven, and not really be mindful of the scale, as long as it’s physical, it’s material, it’s got [a] programme and it’s planned,” he says.
