US native Dix is known for designing some of Hong Kong’s hottest restaurants and bars, as well as boutiques, showrooms and offices for luxury brands, and occasionally residential projects. These include some of the bars and restaurants inside the recently opened Forty-Five Landmark; Yardbird’s former and current locations; and many others that make frequent appearances on best-of lists, including Tatler Dining Awards 2023 winners Ho Lee Fook and Mora. His portfolio spans projects around the world, including Moschino’s headquarters in Milan and the restoration of a 1928 cinema complex in Siberia. He also has a signature line of furniture. His projects are famed for their modern yet timeless aesthetic. “I try to avoid trends—they tend to look dated even before the project is completed,” he says. “I like to go back to the roots for my inspiration: vintage objects, modern art and design.”

That line of thinking is evident in Dix’s three-bedroom, four-bathroom loft, which spans 4,000 sq ft and offers views of the south of Hong Kong Island. The immense, sunlit, open expanse of the main room, which takes up most of the home and has windows that wrap around three sides of the space, stood out to the designer on his first visit: “I remember joking about needing to go get some rollerskates,” he says. It also reminded him of the home he lived in as an architecture student in Chicago—located in a “beautiful but decrepit brick 1800s accordion camera factory, just around the corner from the Bop Shop, a jazz club I managed and bartended at”.

The real star of the show here, however, is his eclectic collection of books and curiosities. Almost every object on display holds a fascinating story. Positioned around the main room, they have accumulated during Dix’s travels and life around the world—he has lived in Fiji, Micronesia, the Philippines, the Netherlands and the UK. The collection is also, he says, testament to his 30 years in his field.

An old map of Asia, which Dix’s father found, decorates a wall by the entry and denotes Hong Kong’s then-de-facto capital of Victoria. A fingerprinting stand from a police station in Monza, Italy, which was used for booking suspects, has become a small table for sundries. A 1960 rosewood shelving system by Poul Cadovius for Cado Denmark, a rare model Dix had been in search of for years, is from a “dusty vintage shop” in Bangkok—“it must be quite a story how it made the trip from Denmark to Thailand.” The shelf is home to everything from design titles to Chinese books that belong to Dix’s partner. A German factory stool, which Dix says likely originated in the 1940s or 1950s, is positioned by the bookshelf and became the inspiration behind Yardbird’s dining chairs—these are just a few of the pieces in home with mid-century roots.

Other acquisitions include a 1960 Braun tube amp and turntable by the industrial designer Dieter Rams—it has a “made in West Germany” label—which sits by a vinyl record and CD collection and sizeable 1970s Altec movie theatre speakers; original sketches by the late Saul Steinberg, who was the creator of View of the World from 9th Avenue, a celebrated New Yorker cover from 1976; a 1970s toy Porsche; wooden splint designed during the Second World War by the seminal designers Charles and Ray Eames; and signage from the now-defunct Wan Chai dive bar Club Bunny, which is also the name of Dix’s rockabilly band, who practise here.

The biggest change Dix made to the space was its illumination. “The existing lighting in the space was atrocious: exposed fluorescent tube lighting exuded blinding, cold, white light, and some areas of the main space had no light source at all,” he says. Dix used “tricks from his restaurant design experience”, too: he backlit the wall shelving to create a dramatic effect, eliminated most of the overhead lighting and distributed smaller, warmer sources of light throughout the space. The oversized plant pots in the home also feature hidden lighting, “creating a lighting effect washing up through the leaves”. Warm-coloured lighting creates a sense of calm—and also “makes people look better than cold, blue light”, he explains.

The open kitchen was another feature that Dix says “really beckoned” him. “Many of my friends are chefs, and I cook a lot, so it was love at first sight.” Above the kitchen island hangs a goldfish-shaped piece, made of chicken wire, by the Italian artist Benedetta Mori Ubaldini, who is a close friend. Dix designed the dining chairs for Feather & Bone’s restaurants. “I’m not the kind of guy who needs to surround himself with his own designs—I periodically rotate my designs into the space to see what living with them is like.” Having used the chairs, he has decided that their arms are too high. And for the most part, “I’d rather share my space with the inspirations for my work.”

In the centre of the main room stands vintage furniture collected over the years: think a 1968 Pulkka armchair and footrest by Ilmari Lappalainen for Asko Finland and a 1938 IronRite chair produced in Detroit.

Designing a home—even his own—presents a different set of challenges compared to creating the interiors of commercial spaces, Dix tells us. “It is a space that you spend much of your life in—not just a couple of hours. It is less about creating an impactful experience and more about reducing impact; of peacefulness; day-to-day comfort; and a more relaxed form of hospitality and of well-being.”

Despite this—or perhaps because of it—when it came to the design of his home, Dix admits he “didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it”.

“I spend long days designing for a living, carefully analysing projects for clients,” he says. “I love my job, but this was an opportunity to just relax and not think too much about design.”

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