Which piece are you most proud of designing?

There’s a chair I designed very early on called the HK97, which commemorated the handover. I see this piece next to me every day and I still think it’s the most beautiful thing that I’ve done. There’s not much to it, not much glamour – it’s such a simple thing, but it looks and feels right. There are good proportions to it. It’s something I never grow tired of.

Image: Menam fabric, courtesy of Jim Thompson

What’s your colour or colour palette du jour?

I always imagine this wonderful skyscraper with bronze and steel metalwork, with glass, a polished marble floor – all of these together to create this opulent 1930s feel. You never get that look without having some kind of metallic.

Image courtesy of Bob Bob Ricard

Favourite restaurant?

I love the restaurant David Collins did: Bob Bob Ricard in Soho in London. It does modern British food. One of its special features is this little bronze button next to every table with a label that says “press for champagne” underneath. There’s a really wonderful use of materials and a sense of colour. It’s really stylish and makes you feel like you’re on a really wonderful night out. You feel so pampered by the interiors and the staff. It’s a really special restaurant experience.

Image courtesy of ThinkStock/VanderWolf-Images

Favourite travel destination?

I haven’t been on a long trip since before I moved to Thailand, which was in 2007 in Morocco. I spent three months there. For the first time, my partner and I said, “What if we don’t set an end date and keep travelling? Until we say, ‘Yep, we’ve had enough, we’re happy to go back to work.’” That never happened; we just kept travelling and travelling and didn’t want to go back. I think it was one of those life-changing trips – wandering about, not really having an itinerary, not having a cut-off date, not having a home or anything to anchor you. It was a really powerful , once-in-a-lifetime experience. And that was when I didn’t have an iPhone – and even if I did there was no 4G connection – so I was really nicely and cleanly cut off from the rest of the world.

Image courtesy of Landmark, Hong Kong

Can you name a designer who’s been particularly inspiring to you recently?

I met a Belgian designer, Gert Voorjans, a couple of months ago. I found his aesthetic and use of colour really inspirational. He’s good friends with Dries Van Noten and he did the stores in Europe; he’s done the store here too. The stores are very colourful and eclectic – they have a lot of European pieces mixed with Chinese pieces, crazy colours and print and embroidery. There’s a real sense of enjoyment in textiles and decorative pieces, and a real freedom of expression, which I love.