Known for their fluid and pared-back interior designs that exude a certain warmth, Lorène Faure and Kenny Kinugasa-Tsui of Bean Buro have just added another project to their names that continues to carry these values forward.
Clocking in at a spacious 1,600 sqft, the home is situated in Pok Fu Lam’s Bel-Air apartment complex and was designed for a young family with two children who had just moved back from Oxford, England, and craved an oceanside location for its tranquility and promise of physical wellbeing.
The design was inspired by a nearby secret waterfall which the designers chanced upon while conducting a site visit. The idea of the continuously flowing water and the way it is formed by the topography of the natural rocks became a metaphor for the two juxtaposed volumes [that form the design of the apartment],” reads a project overview from Bean Buro.
See more: Three’s a crowd: Bean Buro houses 3 generations in the Valley House
The seaside apartment accommodates a baby grand piano in the lounge for the parents to enjoy playing with a view to the ocean. A curvy blue volume forms half of the apartment; beginning as a bookshelf with random niches from the lounge, it flows into a corridor that conceals the children room and guest room, and pools in the master bedroom where it forms a storage volume with a seating niche.
Ceramic tiles with a wooden texture were used for the flooring, and were chosen thanks to their durability and ability to impart visual warmth to the space. The tiles also form the wall finish for the dining area, creating a comfortable setting with a pendant light and an extendable table for six to ten people.
Juxtaposed against the blue volume is a rectilinear grey concrete volume that forms the other half of the apartment. Starting in the entrance foyer, it forms the backdrop of the dining area and bleeds into the master bedroom while concealing a guest shower room, a walk-in storage, and a study room which is connected with the master bedroom suite.
The concrete panels used in the project were prefabricated in France and could be easily cut and assembled quickly on-site, considerably shortening the construction time. A long, continuous LED light strip accentuates the concrete panels from above, and can be controlled by the apartment’s lighting control system. Coat pegs embedded into the concrete provide an element of playful functionality.
The result is an overall composition that allows the deepest spaces of the apartment to be fluidly connected to the entrance and kitchen, forming a sociable and open atmosphere for the family. Family relationships were also deeply thought out, leading to the use of concealed, acoustically-engineered sliding doors that could be opened to increase the flow of the entire apartment, and closed to separate the parents’ quarters, or even to allow the man of the house, a surgeon, to work late at night in the adjoining study room while the wife sleeps in the master bedroom.
The bathroom takes on a different design scheme, utilising a diagonal hatch pattern that extends from the walls to the floor and lending the space an atmosphere of measured lightness.
Find out what inspires Bean Buro’s design duo on the daily, and don’t miss out on the rest of our inspiring homes coverage in the Interiors section.
The post This wavy Bel-Air family home was inspired by a secret waterfall in Pok Fu Lam appeared first on Home Journal.
