Residential

The Harbour Project

Harbour North Point, Hong Kong

Bespoke joinery throughout, harbour-facing apartment

Photography Pending

An apartment with a harbour on one side and very little floor area on the other. The whole scheme is built from light oak and white lacquer, kept deliberately quiet so that the view is the thing you notice when you walk in, and every piece of joinery was drawn to give back floor space rather than take it.

The main bedroom is a platform. The bed sits on a drawer base, the step up to it is itself a run of drawers, and the headboard is a curved oak panel with an upholstered centre and a recessed ledge above holding a socket for a phone. A platform bed of this size buys back roughly the storage of a full wall of wardrobes without a single cupboard door appearing in the room.

Behind the bed, a dressing table turns the platform's end wall into something useful: a curved oak counter with a wide sliding mirror above it, open shelving to one side and drawers below. Elsewhere, a wall of white joinery holds an oak-lined niche with a cushioned bench, three open shelves, tall cupboards, and a desk built into the window bay where the daylight and the view already are.

The corners are the tell. Every exposed edge in the flat is rounded, on the headboard, on the dressing table, on the end of the wardrobe run. In a compact apartment you brush past joinery constantly, and a radiused corner is the difference between furniture you live with and furniture you keep catching.

Light oak veneer, white lacquered joinery, oak counters and sills, upholstered headboard panel.

Bedroom opening to a balcony, with built-in joinery and a desk set into the window bay — The room opens through full-height sliding glass to a balcony and the harbour beyond, with a desk built into the side window bay and a wall of white joinery to the right. Putting the desk in the window bay rather than against a solid wall is what gives a working surface the daylight and the view, and it uses the one part of the plan too shallow to hold a wardrobe.

Wall of white joinery with an oak-lined open niche, three shelves and tall cupboards — The wall combines closed white cupboards top and bottom with an oak-lined niche and three open shelves through the middle, and it rounds off at the corner where it meets the walkway. Lining only the open compartments in oak and keeping every door flat white is what stops a full wall of storage from reading as heavy, because the timber appears exactly where the eye stops.

Platform bed on a drawer base with a curved oak headboard and dressing table behind — The bed sits on a platform of deep drawers, reached by a step that is itself a run of drawers, with a curved oak headboard rising behind it into a partition that carries the dressing table on its far side. Using the headboard as a room divider is what lets one piece of joinery serve a sleeping side and a dressing side, and it saves the wall a separate partition would have cost.

Second bedroom wardrobe run with an oak-lined niche and a rounded end panel — In the second bedroom the same language repeats at smaller scale: white doors, an oak-lined niche with a seat, open shelves beside it, and a generously rounded end where the run meets the doorway. Repeating one detail across rooms instead of designing each room separately is what makes a compact flat feel considered rather than assembled.

As Built

The joinery wall as built, with the oak-lined niche, cushioned bench and window desk installed — The joinery wall as installed, with the oak-lined niche, its cushioned bench and the three open shelves in place, and the window-bay desk visible to the left.

All work Next: The Canyon Project