Built over 50 years ago, Dai Heng is a well known and loved lake-side property on Macau peninsula.
Mention the building ‘Dai Heng Dai Ha’ to any taxi driver in Macau and they’ll know instantly where you mean. Even with the poorest of Chinese accents and often not needing to follow it with ‘Sai Van’, or West Lake, its just one of those buildings that seems to have become etched into the memory of most locals. 
What is it about the place one wonders? Perhaps its because as teenagers they remember strolling hand in hand on a cool evening with a loved one along the lake in front of Dai Heng, or more recently sitting on one of the lake-side benches or in cars lined bumper to bumper to enjoy the best vantage point for seeing fireworks displays.
Or perhaps it goes back even further to when Macau’s one-time patriarch Stanley Ho decided to build this 7 storey homestead, a first foray into residential development in the area for him it is said. And so there’s some kind of emotional connection with the place and this gracious old lady on the lake. She wears her age well; rejuvenated last month, thanks to government coffers, her exterior is back to her original glorious pale yellow with white trim.
Some time back in 2005 one of the apartments in Dai Heng was purchased by Caryl Pike, a British property investor who found it in a very sorry state. Having been used as a staff boarding house it has a myriad of little rooms, bunk beds, damp and peeling paint and a weird configuration of bathrooms. An ugly cramped kitchen was located at the back with a 2 ring gas burner hooked up to a gas bottle and there was a squat toilet next door.
But Caryl saw potential in the place given its area and close proximity to central Macau and so set about giving it a total make-over. Flipping the kitchen from back to front, to be incorporated into the living area, this interesting renovation has brought the apartment into the 21st century and made it an extremely desirable home with at times a waitlist of tenants wanting to move in.
Caryl explains that her design theme from the start was to mix ultra modern materials with antique Asian furnishings. Cheap linoleum floors were done away with and a coloured concrete laid throughout – predominantly grey with hints of black and the palest of sandy orange to bring in the colour theme of the rocky hillside that runs behind the whole building. The old kitchen became the guest room and ensuite bathroom and because it was at the side of the building looking into another building, frosted glass panels were used for some of the windows.
One and a half bedrooms were combined into a sizeable master bedroom and ensuite bathroom. To bring in as much light as possible and to make best use of the hillside view the windows were enlarged to as big as they could structurally be. The crowning glory to this room is the silk ceiling to floor curtains in honey-dew melon, a colour Althea chose to complement the sandy orange of the hill. An old Indonesian teak bed, two different antique side tables, lamps, a horse shoe back chair, a couple of white rugs and a George Chinnery sketch of old Macau complete the look.
“I generally like to keep wardrobe space hidden” explains Caryl, “unless a cabinet is beautiful enough to be made a feature of”. Case in point – the master bedroom has a walk in dressing room hidden behind a concealed door that opens to a push against springs, rather than a pull. But in the guest room the wardrobe 
is an old wardrobe from Denmark, and the piece de resistance is the huge Chinese antique in the living room, that had to be brought in through the windows by crane. “That piece I found in the store rooms of the Repulse Bay Hotel in Hong Kong. No longer fitting their current renovation theme I bought it, and its sister which is in another apartment. It weighs a ton and is here to stay, there’s absolutely no moving it!” laughs Caryl. 
With the kitchen now taking up the space of one of the bedrooms, an area for a third bedroom had to be found. “The moment one reduces the number of bedrooms in a property”, says Caryl, “the value diminishes, no matter how spectacular a renovation, so it was vital we added a third bedroom cum study, however small”. So she converted the space that was the old dining area. “At first I thought to build it all in glass to give a sense of light, modernity and spatial perspective, but as a bedroom this wouldn’t give sufficient privacy. So we built a room with one brick wall, and the other longer wall Japanese-style sliding doors. Beautiful teak with opaque glass panels that cost a bomb!” As they are located directly across the hall from the master bedroom, when both the doors open, the natural light from the master is ample for the third bedroom.
The kitchen is the focal point of the apartment. 
A creamy marble countertop with veins of palest orange (to again reflect the hillside), this ‘Z’shaped kitchen was designed to have all the appliances built in to keep to a sleek modern look. The dining area is set out with a modern European pine dining table, teamed with pale wood Chinese high back chairs.
Walls throughout the apartment are white with a slight gloss to them to accentuate as much natural light as possible, and there is a red feature wall as one enters the living room. Two striking art pieces ‘A Conversation’, by Hong Kong based artist Brian Tilbrook, hang opposite each other, and another Tilbrook in the dining room, was commissioned to yet again reflect the hillside.
Both bathrooms are tiled (“only in the wet sections”, says Caryl, “the other parts I prefer using only water proof white paint”) in an Italian range of tile that looks like natural stone – black and grey in the master bathroom, red and creams in the guest bathroom. “I love these tiles, I bought them from Eur-Idea in Areia Preta which has a great selection, I always find interesting tiles there, but sadly these particular ones are now out of stock”. Bathroom accessories are purchased direct from the manufacturers in China, “as the good quality European designs are expensive here in Macau and even crazier in Hong Kong!” Caryl exclaims.
Dai Heng, literally translated as “Happy Mansion” is a U shaped building with a courtyard in the middle, somewhat akin to the traditional courtyard houses in the hutong neighbourhoods in old parts of Beijing. Through the entrance arch way is the banyan tree-lined Praia Grande and the West lake. Caryl designed oversized sliding windows with white stone window seat in the living area to make best use of the tree and lake views. “Everyone we’ve had staying in this apartment have said how happy they’ve been here so I guess the name of the building couldn’t be more perfect”, smiles Caryl.
Photographs courtesy of David Hartung and Antonio Mil-Homens
