‘My heart is here’: unlovely empty house in Macau turned by creative couple into a stunning retreat filled with art and minimalist whimsy
- In 2004, artist Konstantin Bessmertny and his pianist wife, Gala, saw potential in an empty building in Coloane, Macau, and turned it into a stunning retreat
- While the art-filled home has gallery lighting and concrete floors the dining and kitchen area is open and inviting, perfect for the sociable duo to host guests
In Konstantin Bessmertny and Gala Bessmertnaia’s Macau bedroom, there’s a small black-and-white photograph taken 35 years ago in Kazakhstan on their wedding day. It’s probably the simplest artefact in a vivid house: it shows two young people dwarfed by what looks like an ocean.
“The desert,” explains Gala, who grew up there, when Kazakhstan was still part of the Soviet Union.
Konstantin’s childhood was spent in Siberia, in the border city of Blagoveshchensk, whose inhabitants had a ringside view of Mao Zedong’s gigantic portrait on the Chinese side of the Amur river.
These days, the couple live on the tiny tip of Coloane and their stupendous view is of the South China Sea. Occasionally, swimmers stray across the invisible dotted line just round the corner and then the mainland Chinese patrol boats yell at them to go back.
“In water, you must know your borders,” as Gala says.
That can also be true in houses – there’s, literally, a seam that runs through the Bessmertny residence where they’ve added space (note: with government permission) to the original structure.
