André Fu on Design Beyond the Signature and Scale
Updated: 10 hours ago
As André Fu Studio marks its 25th year, André Fu seems less interested in defining a signature than in protecting the conditions that allow design to remain personal.
The timing invites reflection. His third monograph, André Fu: A Designer’s Vision, arrives through Assouline as the studio reaches this milestone. Across 280 pages and a broad sector of hospitality projects in Asia and Europe, the book considers his practice through three recurring ideas: heritage reinterpreted, escape, and cultural dialogue. It is less a conventional retrospective than an examination of the thinking that has accumulated beneath the work.
“I do not need someone to walk into a room and immediately say, ‘This is André Fu.’ I would rather they resonate with it because they feel a personal touch.”
When we met in Hong Kong, however, our conversation kept returning to something less visible. Fu spoke about the years required to understand a city, the trust that has to exist before a designer can interpret someone else’s story, and the small decisions through which an interior gradually takes form.
Then came one of the clearest observations of the conversation. For Fu, the challenge of an international practice is not simply how to grow, but how to preserve involvement.
“Design itself is not scalable in the way a conventional business is,” he tells me.
That thought offers a particularly revealing way into his work today. The Upper House, Hotel The Mitsui Kyoto, Capella Taipei and Dusit Thani Bangkok belong to different cities, histories and cultural conditions; his furniture and objects enter daily life in a different, more intimate way. Their connection lies less in a recognizable visual formula than in the attention given to how someone enters a room, moves through it, pauses, gathers and remembers.
For this edition of The Inspire Conversations, Fu reflects on what sustains that attention: learning a place without reducing it to symbols, maintaining intimacy as a practice gains international reach, preserving time for decisions that resist shortcuts, and remaining curious enough to keep changing after success.
“I want to transport people to a place that dances between the familiar and the unfamiliar.”
André Fu: A Designer’s Vision by Assouline Upper House Hong Kong, one of Andre's most recognized projects. The new Capella Taipei
The Years Inside a Place
For Fu, understanding a place begins with duration.
Travel, in the conventional sense, has become almost secondary to the way he encounters cities through work. Arriving somewhere briefly can offer impressions; designing there demands something slower. A project can take years, bringing him into repeated contact with local teams, clients and ways of working that gradually alter how he reads a city.
Capella Taipei, he tells me, was six years in the making. Over that period came friendships, conversations and the accumulated experience of returning. “No matter how international someone is, when you spend real time in another place you begin to absorb its pace and behavior.”
That distinction matters in a region frequently flattened into broad cultural categories. Osaka is completely different from Kyoto; Kyoto, in turn, from Tokyo. The closer Fu gets to a place, the less useful the larger labels become. Geography gives way to rhythm, how people communicate, how quickly decisions are made, what feels natural in one city and misplaced in another.
“For me, design becomes a form of cultural immersion.”
The same patience extends to the people behind a project. Many of Fu’s commissions in Asia involve families, inherited sites and histories that existed long before the designer arrived. His role is to understand what the client considers worth carrying forward and eventually find a way to interpret it through his own language.
“It is almost like dating,” Fu says. “You have to build trust before you can really create together.”
Inside the new Capella Taipei Inside the new Capella Taipei Inside the new Capella Taipei Inside the new Capella Taipei Inside the new Capella Taipei Inside the new Capella Taipei
Beyond the Literal
The longer Fu works in a city, the less interested he becomes in representing it through recognizable symbols.
He has often been asked where a particular detail comes from—which temple, building, or historical reference supplied the source. For Fu, that question can miss what makes each project distinct. The Upper House and The St. Regis Hong Kong sit only a short distance apart, yet each required a different response to its brand, location, views, and surrounding neighborhood. “The more projects you do in one country or city, the more specific you can become,” he says.
That also complicates one of the descriptions most frequently attached to Fu’s career: the meeting of East and West.
“I do not consciously think, ‘Now I need to bring out my Eastern side’ or ‘Now I need to make this more Western,’” he says. “We are all hybrids of different cultures.”
The Andre Fu Suite at Upper House Hong Kong Upper House Hong Kong Upper House Hong Kong Upper House Hong Kong
At The St. Regis Hong Kong, the question was how to engage with heritage without turning Wan Chai into a collection of immediately legible motifs. Fu and his team looked at several buildings in the neighborhood, then extracted, decomposed, enlarged, and recombined their elements until the references no longer functioned as quotation.
Kyoto required a different kind of restraint. At Hotel The Mitsui Kyoto, Fu was working with Mitsui Fudosan on land tied closely to the family’s history, alongside a Japanese team and a brief centered on Japanese beauty and landscape. He remembers repeatedly questioning whether particular decisions felt culturally appropriate. Eventually, the client told him: “André, trust your instinct. That is why you are here. We want to see us through your lens.”
Fu is careful about what instinct can and cannot claim. “I cannot be an expert in every culture,” he says. “I tend to lean toward sensibility and the feelings I experience.” Sometimes the starting point is architectural or historical; at other times it may be an emotion, a landscape, even a group of trees.
The distinction is important. Cultural knowledge gives him material to work with; sensibility determines what survives the translation.
“I cannot be an expert in every culture, and no one can. I tend to lean toward sensibility and the feelings I get from a place.”
Gloucester House Bespoke Lounge (Photo by Common Studio) Hotel The Mitsui Kyoto (Photo by Nacasa & Partners) Gloucester House Bespoke Lounge (Photo by Common Studio) Hotel The Mitsui Kyoto (Photo by Nacasa & Partners)
What Cannot Be Scaled
For all the cultural complexity of Fu’s work, his starting point can be remarkably simple. When he began The Upper House in his early career, the brief came down to two words: “calm and comfort.” Both were intangible. The challenge was to create something restrained without allowing restraint to become coldness.
That concern still shapes the way he reviews a room. Rather than treating an interior as something to curate, Fu asks his team to imagine themselves actually inhabiting it. He compares the process to designing a garment: it is not enough to picture it on a model; you have to imagine wearing it yourself.
“There is no point creating a room that photographs beautifully if it is so visually busy that you cannot sleep in it,” he says.
Behind that simplicity lies a constant sequence of decisions—proportion, height, material, distance, the relationship of one element to another. Fu is wary of reducing design to palettes and finishes precisely because those things have become widely accessible. “Anyone can specify the same timber or the same fabric,” he says. “That is not where the real value lies.”
For him, value has shifted toward what is harder to reproduce: time, care and attention. “We live in a culture of speed and scale,” he says. “Being able to spend more time, to put more of a hand into the work, may be what sets something apart.”
“Design is not scalable in the conventional sense. It is about connection, touch and micro-decisions.”
Inside Andre Fu Studio, 18 On Lan Street in Hong Kong (Courtesy of Andre Fu Studio) Inside Andre Fu Studio, 18 On Lan Street in Hong Kong (Courtesy of Andre Fu Studio) Inside Andre Fu Studio, 18 On Lan Street in Hong Kong (Courtesy of Andre Fu Studio) Inside Andre Fu Studio, 18 On Lan Street in Hong Kong (Courtesy of Andre Fu Studio)
The size of his studio reflects that conviction. Despite the international reach of the practice, Fu says it has remained roughly the same size for about a decade. Technology has made the operation more efficient, but he has resisted treating expansion as an end in itself. For Fu, remaining closely involved is a commitment to the people who have trusted his work.
The process inside the studio remains conversational. Fu marks up drawings, sits with his team, and works through details one by one. He returns to the garment analogy, this time at the level of construction: understand the overall silhouette, then concentrate on the shoulder, the seam, each component until the whole begins to hold together.
“These days, having the time to really look is a form of luxury.”
Villa La Coste Aix-en-Provence (Photo by Richard Haughton) Villa La Coste Aix-en-Provence (Photo by Richard Haughton) Villa La Coste Aix-en-Provence (Photo by Richard Haughton) Villa La Coste Aix-en-Provence (Photo by Richard Haughton)
Curiosity, Kept Alive
Experience has given Fu greater confidence, but not necessarily more certainty.
“The important thing is to keep the curiosity and the interest, to remain excited,” he says. Maturity, in his telling, does not simplify the work. It expands what he is capable of noticing. “The more you understand, the more energy you may need to invest because you are aware of more layers and consequences.”
When I ask about people he has looked to over the years, Fu mentions Joyce Ma, the pioneering fashion figure who brought major international designers and ideas to Asia. What stays with him now is not simply her influence, but her energy. “What fascinates me is not just her style. It is her charisma, her energy, and especially her curiosity. To remain that curious at her stage of life is extraordinary to me.”
That resistance to becoming fixed also appears in the way Fu thinks about longevity. He is skeptical of the idea that timelessness can be manufactured through a particular palette or degree of restraint. “People ask how to make something timeless,” he says. “I do not think there is a formula. What feels avant-garde in one moment can become normal later.”
“People ask how you make something timeless, but I do not think there is a formula.”
If anything, his visual vocabulary has widened over time. In André Fu: A Designer’s Vision, he describes himself as a minimalist at heart while acknowledging that years of working across different projects have encouraged a bolder use of color: cracked walnut and green-tea tones in Kyoto, coral and magpie blue in Taipei, racing green and orange in Osaka.
That expansion has also taken his work from rooms into objects. With André Fu Living, Fu was interested in a different kind of proximity. His hotels and interiors have to be encountered in place; furniture and objects can enter daily life.
“Sometimes people come to the store because they have experienced one of my hotels or restaurants before, so an object may become an extension of that memory,” he says. Others discover the objects without knowing his architectural work at all, creating another point of entry into his world.
André Fu Living now has two boutiques in Hong Kong: its first retail boutique at Pacific Place and a 1,600-square-foot flagship at Elements, where furniture, textiles, lighting and tableware bring the wider collection together under one roof.
Despite that physical presence, the retail line remains closely connected to Fu. The brand initially worked toward an annual collection, closer to the cadence of a European design house; over time, that structure became more organic. Pieces are now released when they are ready rather than because a season requires them.
For a designer marking 25 years in practice, curiosity may be the more revealing form of continuity. What Fu admires in Joyce Ma, remaining curious long after one has earned the right to rely on experience, is something he continues to seek in his own work.
“An object can enter someone’s life on a daily basis. That creates a different kind of connection.”
The Emory London (Photo by Tsun Yuen) The Emory London (Photo by Tsun Yuen) The Emory London (Photo by Tsun Yuen) The Emory London (Photo by Tsun Yuen)
Between the Familiar and the Unfamiliar
Away from project sites and studio reviews, Fu’s eye recalibrates through contrast.
Privately, he says he is increasingly drawn to experiential travel, often shaped by landscape and nature. A recent trip to Umbria, including a visit to Reschio, stayed with him less for any single design detail than for the colors, the surrounding landscape, and the atmosphere of the region. Yet he resists the idea that this makes him a landscape person rather than a city person. “I enjoy both. It depends on the moment,” he says. He might spend two days in Shanghai completely absorbed in a project; at another point, what he needs is something much quieter.
“An engaging conversation with someone new can be a form of travel in itself.”
Hong Kong gives him both. Fu has two homes there that offer markedly different perspectives on the city: one on the south side of Hong Kong Island, around Deep Water Bay; the other in the New Territories, closer in feeling to a country retreat. Together, they complicate the familiar image of Hong Kong as purely dense and urban.
Music offers another way of shifting perspective. Fu played piano when he was younger and still gravitates toward scores and soundtracks for their emotional quality. Music is a constant presence in the studio, and occasionally it enters the design process itself.
While developing The Upper House, Fu remembers repeatedly listening to a Sade song whose title he can no longer recall. He used it during a presentation for the hotel, another way of communicating something that drawings and materials alone could not. “An experience is more than a set of visuals,” he says. Music adds another sensory dimension.
“The world can become obsessed with the new, but for me it is not about newness for its own sake.”
The same responsiveness shapes how he thinks about what comes next. Fu does not describe the future through a list of ambitions or destinations. An opportunity may be compelling in itself and still feel wrong if it arrives at the wrong moment, or if it begins to feel repetitive.
“It is very much about time and place,” he says.
His final thought returns to the tension that has run quietly through the conversation: between recognition and surprise, what we already understand and what might still alter our perception.
“I think my work is a genuine reflection of the way I experience the world. I want to transport people to a place that dances between the familiar and the unfamiliar.”
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