Cover André Fu is celebrating 25 years of his design studio (Photo: Karlson Tsang/Tatler Hong Kong)
André Fu is celebrating 25 years of his design studio (Photo: Karlson Tsang/Tatler Hong Kong)
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André Fu is celebrating 25 years since he founded his eponymous Hong Kong studio, with an installation of his own Upper House sketches, a talk at the Hong Kong Design Centre with the man who first hired him, and the global release of his third monograph, ‘André Fu: A Designer's Vision’, published by Assouline
On the 49th floor of Upper House, along the Sky Bridge that has become one of Hong Kong's most well-known architectural set pieces, hangs a small exhibition: 25 of André Fu's own hand-drawn sketches for the hotel. Some date back to 2006—the year he first showed them to Keith Kerr, the then chairman and chief executive of Swire Properties who gave him his first break. “This was my first hotel and I knew nothing about hospitality,” Fu tells Tatler.
The installation marked the 25th anniversary of André Fu Studio and formed part of a celebration that unfolded over three days this summer. It began on August 25 with a talk at Upper House, followed that same evening by a private dinner in the André Fu Suite, his namesake residence on the hotel’s 48th floor.
Above André Fu reflects on 25 years of his design studio (Photo: Karlson Tsang/Tatler Hong Kong)
André Fu reflects on 25 years of his design studio (Photo: Karlson Tsang/Tatler Hong Kong)
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The following evening, Fu shared a stage at the Hong Kong Design Centre (HKDC) with Kerr, alongside HKDC executive director Rainy Chan, in front of a room of design graduates—a session that doubled as a chance to share the André Fu Studio origin story. In 2005, Kerr spotted a young designer's work in the pages of the South China Morning Post. “There was a picture of a young, handsome young man, and I recall there was this floor lamp next to him,” Kerr said. “I thought, that looks interesting. So I asked my colleagues to find this young man and bring him in for a chat. And that's how it started.”
Fu, then 29 and running a studio with a staff of three and no hotel experience, was handed a brief that came down to two words: “calm” and “comfort”. It would become the hotel now known as Upper House. “It was a miracle,” Fu said of the opportunity. “To be frank, I had no idea what it took to do a hotel.” The four years that followed were, he admits, gruelling—at one point, standing on site as the plans were reworked, "I literally burst into tears ... I think those four years were probably the most challenging time of my life.” But when the hotel opened in 2009, he was identified as one of the defining voices in Asian hospitality design.
André Fu before his talk at the Hong Kong Design Centre (Photo: Billy Chan/Tatler Hong Kong)
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The August 26 talk also spotlighted the newly launched André Fu Young Design Talent Award, a bursary offering a local graduate the chance to work abroad—Fu’s way to pay it forward after his own career took off when someone took a chance on him.
On August 27, Fu gathered friends and family—among them actor Carina Lau; Jia Group founder Yenn Wong, for whose Causeway Bay hotel Fu designed the interiors early in his career; his mother and sister; and Olympic swimmer Siobhan Haughey—at the Upper House’s Sky Lounge to mark the anniversary. The event also served as the global release of his new book, André Fu: A Designer’s Vision.
Published by Assouline, the book is Fu’s third monograph and, by his own account, his most candid. Across 280 pages, it moves through 20 recent hospitality and residential projects in Europe and Asia—among them Claridge’s in London, Villa la Coste in Aix-en-Provence, and Capella Taipei, which features on the cover.
André Fu attends a dinner in his honour at the André Fu Suite at Upper House on August 25 (Photo: courtesy of Upper House)
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The book is structured around three ideas Fu says now define his practice: heritage reimagined, escape and cultural dialogue. Each of the three sections opens with a conversation between Fu and a creative from outside his own field: Hong Kong fashion pioneer Joyce Ma; Tokyo-based British chef Daniel Calvert of the Tatler Best restaurant of the year 2025 and three-Michelin-starred Sézanne, which Fu designed inside the Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Marunouchi; and French filmmaker Audrey Diwan. The book closes with a dialogue with London designer Thomas Heatherwick, Fu’s collaborator on Upper House and on the coming Park Hyatt Xi’an, due to open next year. The foreword, meanwhile, comes from actor—and longtime friend—Michelle Yeoh, who credits Fu with having the discipline of a martial artist and the soul of a poet.
At the book launch, Fu toasted his mother, a founder of two Hong Kong schools, who had rescheduled her evening swim to be there. “When I was about six, we were in a coffee shop, and she said, ‘André, you love drawing—imagine if you were to become a designer. Maybe you could design a hotel,’” he told the room. It was, he said, how he first came to the discipline of drawing lines.
25 of André Fu's own hand-drawn sketches for Upper House line the Sky Bridge (Photo: courtesy of André Fu)
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The book is not billed as a retrospective, but it reads as a moment of reckoning for a designer who has spent two and a half decades building an unusually consistent body of work. Since Upper House, Fu’s studio has gone on to shape Hong Kong’s St Regis, and three commissions for the Hong Kong Palace Museum; further afield, his interiors define three super suites at The Berkeley in London, Hotel The Mitsui Kyoto, and the Waldorf Astoria and Dusit Thani in Bangkok, Waldorf Astoria Osaka and Capella Taipei while Upper House Shenzhen is due to open in late 2027.
Born in Hong Kong and sent to boarding school in England at 14, Fu went on to read architecture at Cambridge before returning home—a transcontinental upbringing he has described as the root of the “fluid duality” in his work. Twenty-five years on, Fu remains a Hong Kong studio first—one still drawing, by hand, in the same city where it all started.
As Content Director at Tatler Hong Kong, Tara shapes the brand's editorial vision across social, digital and print. She also drives the planning and execution of Tatler's flagship IPs. In her dual role as Head of VIP, she reports on Asia's most influential figures — from CEOs and leaders across business, style and the arts — curates star-studded events, and builds the relationships and communities that define the brand. Born and raised in the Middle East, she honed her craft in Dubai, crafting communication strategies for luxury brands across the Gulf. Follow her on Instagram @tarasobti.
