18 BUSINESS
MINIMALISM IN HONG KONG’S MINUSCULE FLATS
Reported by Phoebe Lai Edited by Sammi Chan
Tax consultant, Erica Ip Kayee, struggles to find space to work at home. She lives with her parents. “They [her parents] cannot let go of things easily so they keep everything and I understand them,” said Ms. Ip. “This situation is unavoidable when living spaces are generally compact within the city.” But Ms. Ip is a minimalist. She said her friends often approach her, asking about how to achieve a visually aesthetically-coherent and clean style, similar to images they see on Instagram and Pinterest. She started blogging about the idea in 2017. “To master minimalism, you have to come to terms with your own life in order to see real virtual changes in your living environment,” said Ms. Ip.
She explained that reflection is important in order to live a minimal life. But she believed few in Hong Kong truly give up their material desires when even their basic needs, such as proper shelter, cannot be guaranteed.
“Extremely small flats are great for people who are minimalists, who want to enjoy city life,” Mr. Hanczar said.
Szymon Hanczar, Polish designer and college lecturer, has been making the headlines since July 2015, when his idea on a 140 square feet “micro-apartment” appeared in Dezeen, an online international design magazine.
Chen Yu-chang, founder and creative director of Hoo-residence, who specialises in local home design, said the demand for simplistic and neat interior home layout has always been around in Hong Kong.
According to Dezeen, Mr. Hanczar’s apartment focused mainly on “comfort and functionality” by including merely Minimalism first emerged in the the “essentials”. 1960s as an artistic and abstract ideology in New York, in which For example, he hooked his artworks were mainly composed bike, which had been an “inteof simple shapes, such as trian- gral element of life” for him in gles and squares, according to Wroclaw, over the wall to free information from Tate Modern, up space. an art gallery in London. In terms of design, he used Today, minimalism has become white walls and light wood a social trend that is more than flooring to “visually expand the just an artistic concept. space” through bright colours.
