LAAB Architects is behind some of Hong Kong's most prominent public spaces, including K11 MUSEA, Phillips Asia Headquarters, and Victoria Dockside, as well as F&B venues such as MOSU Hong Kong. This year, the team brought to Maison & Objet Paris the Hong Kong Eco Pavilion, constructed with staggered 3D-printed bricks made from recycled PET bottles and aluminum. Coffee enthusiasts themselves, the founders have included a ground-floor coffee shop connected to their headquarters, which has become a gathering spot for bon vivants.

How did you get into interior and architectural design, and what did you do before becoming a designer?

Ng: I have always been interested in design and technology ever since my parents gave me a computer before entering secondary school.
I started to self-learn about design and coding from books and the internet while producing design materials, including websites, videos and animations, publications, posters, and venue settings, for my school and for my friends' businesses. Besides studying architecture at HKU and MIT, I also worked in the UK, the US, and Italy on various innovative architecture and smart city projects. All these experiences have provided a foundation for my career and shaped my visions in design across disciplines.

Hang: My earliest memory of architecture came from a book about the Hong Kong Space Museum bought by my brother when I was around 10. I used to read over the site photos showing different stages of the construction from the groundbreaking to the completion of the iconic egg structure. I think that book must have planted a seed in me since then.

I spent my undergraduate years at UC Berkeley and did my master's degree at HKU. Spending the early stage of my career in different major architecture firms in Hong Kong has equipped me with experience in designing projects of different scales and typologies. These diversities have shaped our holistic design approaches for LAAB.

How do you integrate local culture, traditions, and aesthetics into your commercial designs while maintaining a consistent "LAAB" style?

At LAAB, we do not follow a particular design aesthetic, paradigm, or style, but rather we spend a lot of time understanding the context of each project and discovering its authentic culture and history to inform our project narratives. Intuition and intellectual questioning are equally important in driving our creative process. We believe that the mind (design) and the hands (making) are equally important in turning intangible ideas into tangible reality, so we experiment a lot with prototypes and physical models. We go back and forth between design and making, and they inform each other at different design stages. If there is a "LAAB" style, that'd be our design methodology.

Which projects are you most proud of this year?

commaa! We completed our new office in the Tai Ping Shan neighborhood earlier this year. It is our workspace, but there is also a cafe and a cultural space called commaa that is open to the public. Since commaa's opening in March, we have held various workshops, exhibitions, talks, and events. Many of our colleagues have contributed to designing this new home, and we are very proud of the outcome.

Which city provides the most inspiration for your designs?

Hong Kong is a very inspiring city in and of itself, and yet we did not realise this until we travelled abroad When we experience different ways of doing things in other cities, we ask ourselves "why is this not in Hong Kong", "why Hong Kong has a different practice on such things". These reflections give us insights on the opportunities and limitations of Hong Kong as a city, and how together they come to inspire design and culture.