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

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.