DREAM AWAY

It's not an ordinary world in this flat inspired by Venice, Santorini and an anime. ROSSARA JAMIL discovers the details that bring this unique concept to reality

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Occasionally, interior designers encounter design briefs that out of the norm. While interior designer Carmen Tang is no stranger to challenging briefs, the one given by the owners of this four-room HDB flat was what she would describe as "unimaginably tough". The homeowners had initially approached her for a Scandinavian-style home.

However, the anime Aria captured their hearts, and they changed their brief to a romantic Venice-inspired space decked out in the colours of Santorini.

Given this unique brief, the design director of Wolf Woof took this as a challenge to push the design limits of the typical HDB BTO homes. She aimed to create a one-of-a-kind home with the concept she imagined for this flat in Geylang. She says, "I aimed to approach the design from a unique angle so that there is a story behind it, rather than just painting a few walls blue and throwing some blue cushions around for cosiness." Carmen pushed herself to develop a living room concept that revolves around Venice's canals, but one that would assimilate the television feature wall and incorporate storage.

She proposed the idea of a boardwalk along the canal bank for the television feature wall and stepped storage units.