Retro renovation of parents’ Hong Kong home by architect and his interior designer wife creates unexpected pairings – think Papa Smurf and antique furniture

A kitchen fit for a Wong Kar-wai film, Chinese rosewood furniture, a Jeff Koons balloon dog – couple’s 2,700 sq ft Hong Kong apartment is a study in contrasts

Architect and artist William Lim and his interior designer wife, Lavina, opted to keep many of the items his parents accumulated there, while adding their touch

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William Lim in the Hong Kong’s Mid-Levels apartment where he has spent most of his life, first growing up with his parents, later with his wife, Lavina, and their children. Photo: Eugene Chan

Published: 12:45pm, 27 Apr 2023Updated: 1:19pm, 27 Apr 2023

There are two flats on the floor where William and Lavina Lim live in Mid-Levels on Hong Kong Island. The entrance to one is sleek, minimalist; surely it heralds an architect’s residence. The entrance to the other has a decades-old curlicued grille and one of those floral-carved doors that you don’t see so often in Hong Kong these days. The visitor hesitates.

“Exactly! People come out of the lift and they wonder which is our apartment,” grins William Lim, architect, art collector and, now, artist. “And they go to the other side […] They’re very surprised when they come in. They normally see my work as more contemporary and clean-lined.”

He’s standing in a lively room of unexpected pairings: rosewood furniture, modern Chinese paintings, Thai Buddhist statues, Ettore Sottsass sculptures. In a glass cabinet, a green Jeff Koons balloon dog gleams perkily alongside a blue limited-edition Papa Smurf.

But what Lim has collected in this 2,700 sq ft, four-bedroom flat isn’t only things: it’s memories. He’s been living here, on and off, for half a century, since his parents moved in when the block was completed, in 1972, and he was a 15-year-old at La Salle College who loved art.

It wasn’t meant to be like that. When he went to Cornell University, in the United States, to study architecture, he met fellow student Lavina, they married, settled in Boston and had their first son, Kevin.

In 1987, they returned to Hong Kong and, temporarily, moved in with William’s parents. Their son Vincent was born; and as time passed the family grew up, grew older, together. The boys married and moved out. William’s father died in 2017, his mother in 2020.