T

he initial thing that struck Wesley Liu, lead designer at Hong Kong-based interior design studio Pplusp Designers, about the space that was to become his home was its leafy, open view overlooking a nearby park and the dramatic peaks of the New Territories beyond. However, even for a professional, the task of transforming a blank canvas into a thing of beauty doesn’t always come easily. “Designing my own apartment was totally different from working on a client’s project,” explains Wesley. “There are a lot more personal issues. Budget becomes much more sensitive and I wanted to avoid repeating what I have done before. But at the same time, I also wanted to reuse some of the materials left over from previous projects. It became an extremely contradictory process. On the one hand, I wanted to create something that would suit my lifestyle in the long term, but I also had a lot of collectable items such as the antique light switches and sewing machine that I wanted to make use of.”