Boathouse Home Office | Bean Buro

The apartment is located inside a high-rise residential building in Hong Kong’s Aberdeen, in close proximity to the Ap Lei Chau shipyard.

In response to the growing trend of working-from-home culture, Bean Buro designed the apartment with large panoramic windows facing the sea boating sceneries in Aberdeen, as a balanced calm and dynamic home office for an expat couple.

Bean Buro is a new design studio set up in Hong Kong, lead by Kenny Kinugasa-Tsui and Lorène Faure from London and Paris. The studio is interested in the design research of cross-cultural exchanges.

The concept demolished two existing partition walls, to transform from a three cellular bedrooms apartment in to an open studio apartment. The opened up spaces increases panoramic window views, thus allowing the external boating environment to be experienced inside.

The material palette is calm and refreshing, with a tranquil blue colour chosen for the continuous blue wall to reflect the sea, while the timber finish for the floor and joinery brings warmth to the live & work space.

Drawing inspirations from traditional French boathouses in Brittany, the main spatial concept was a continuous ribbon-like blue wall that ‘floats’ and connects all the different areas of the apartment together. The blue wall starts from the lounge, with subtle computer generated display niches. It then forms the main circulation space with various shelves for displaying art. It creates an intuitive experience by linking up the lounge with the office and ending its blue colour in the bedroom.

The timber surface was conceptualized as a landscape that would rise and fall to provide different functions. Wrapping the entry space with full height hidden storage doors, it then falls to seat-height along the panoramic windows to create a an infinity-pool effect, and provides informal seating along the bay. Rising again as a half height timber wall, it partitions the office and the lounge while preserving open panoramic window views at eye level. On the other wall of the office is a full height bookshelf that acts as the main spatial element for storing and displaying personalized items.

The main table, Bean Table, has two large pendant lights that form the centrepiece in the lounge. The bespoke CNC cut table shape is wiggly and playful, acting as a meeting table by day and dinning table by night.

The bed is an island unit that faces the panoramic windows, allowing the calm Aberdeen boating sceneries to be fully experienced. Full height mirrors are installed at the edges of each room’s end walls to create an infinity effect of the panoramic windows. The resulting experience is connected, intuitive and calm.