One Central’s Waterside offers some of Macau’s most elegant homes. Interior designer Lesley-Ann Murray reveals some of her tips.
The challenge of working around a previous designer’s original fit out and redecorating 59 apartments is not something for the faint-hearted. Self taught Hong Kong designer Lesley-Ann Murray took on the project at One Central’s Waterside and has gradually transformed this luxury residence into some of Macau’s most elegant homes.
Situated on the Macau penin
sula, the 31 storey Waterside is part of the 7 tower residential complex making up One Central, sitting between the Mandarin Oriental and Wynn Macau, and connected with the MGM via the luxury retail One Central Mall below. All the apartments face westwards; Nam Wan lake in the foreground, the charming Praia Grande and Penha hill district in mid view, and beyond, the Macau Tower, fast developing HengQin Island and the Zhuhai hills in the distance. 
Built in 2007 by a consortium of HongKong Land and Shun Tak, when its doors opened in 2009, One Central introduced a level of residential sophistication rarely seen in Macau. A standard bearer for state of the art clubhouse facilities, quality design, building materials and finishes and for offering a sense of life style glamour, the complex raised the bar for Macau’s developers.
Owned by Macau Property Opportunities Fund Ltd (MPO), an investment fund registered in Guernsey, the Waterside is managed by local property management company Bela Visa Property Services. Interior décor was originally done by Yasumichi Morita of design company Glamorous Co., Ltd., a fitting name given the ornate, contemporary Asian feel they created, with shiny grey textured wallpaper, crystal chandeliers and chrome-edged furnishing. But it fit well at the time, and appealed to the high end slightly 
older Asian tenant who at that time was the early profile of resident at Waterside.
Gradually as the years passed, with the ebb and flow of tenants and general wear and tear of the apartments, refurbishment was needed to keep the Waterside’s 59 apartments in tip top condition. Hong Kong based designer Lesley-Ann Murray took over the project. “One of the first things I did was get rid of all the wall paper”, she explains, “In this humidity it’s a recipe for mold”, especially if the airconditioning is turned off when units are in between tenants. The walls are now painted in a very pale, soft grey.
“For cost savings I had to work around some of the furnishing that I had inherited. Working with pieces that are not my taste, the best thing to do was to accent them, in order to bring out the best in them. I was lucky that the furniture though large, is still quite simple in design, so it wasn’t too onerous. I tried to buy things that would match. And the dark heavy wood pieces could be softened and complemented with light upholstery fabrics, a few pale wood accent pieces, window treatments and floor coverings.” 
“Modern furniture tends to goes well with the simplicity and straight lines of Ming-style Chinese furniture. I think its important to use only a hint of Asia in modern contemporary homes. And contemporary Chinese art goes well with contemporary furniture.”
Another tip she shares: “Don’t have furnishing with chrome in them – it tarnishes and rusts in time, it’s the humidity again”.
“I tend to use neutral tones for the furniture and let the artwork give the splash of colour. It gives me much more flexibility to change the look of a room; I can just switch out the artwork and some of the smaller accessories.”
Some of the most stunning apartments in the Waterside are their simplex units. These 4,420 sq ft homes cover a whole floor. They have 4 bedrooms 
4 bathrooms and glass fronted balconies with sensational lake views. One is featured in this article.
The rest of the building is made up of two 4,740 sq ft. duplex penthouses, and 54 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 2,300 sq ft. units. Of these, 45 are standard fit out and 9 are the “Sapphire” luxury fit out. Lesley-Ann has a clear understanding of her customer when she decorates the apartments. “A more traditional Chinese look, the bling aspect of crystal chandeliers, decorative, etched mirror wardrobe doors and crystal door handles, tends to appeal to the slightly older mainland Chinese client. Only a third of the apartments are designed in this style. The rest are a more contemporary European design; “this style appeals to the younger Chinese and the western expatriates”.
Lesley-Ann freely admits that “I’m totally self taught. My background is investment banking, in hedge funds. But I’ve always loved interior design.” She now has many years of experience under her belt decorating homes, offices and restaurants in Hong Kong, London, the US and for the past ten years in Macau. 
With an innate sense of good taste, artistic eye for simple, practical
elegance and a passion for discovering unique accessory and accent pieces, Lesley-Ann has built a group of trusted Hong Kong and China-based companies around her from which she buys her art, custom-made furniture and soft furnishing.
“
Most of my lights come from a lighting company in Guangdong, the upholstered sofas, dining chairs, buttoned cushion window seats, bed heads and curtains come from a company in Hong Kong. I take a van and a driver and we go to Shenzhen, about 2 hours beyond the Lo Wu border, for my custom made carpets and rugs. For the throw cushions, I choose the fabric and they’re all made up in Shenzhen. Some of the furniture comes from Zhuhai, again custom-made to my specifications. For accessories, finding good places to buy these is by trial and error”, and Lesley-Ann clearly enjoys the fun of hunting things down.
Most of the artwork bought for Lesley-Ann’s projects comes from the Artist Village outside Shenzhen where 300 artists work full time producing a wide range of original and copied art, from the European Old Masters to young up and coming Chinese artists. The large abstract vibrantly coloured oils and panels she hangs in the Waterside are in the style of Bo Yan and Yang Yang. “Over the years I’ve got to know a woman in the village who paints in a tiny area under the stairs of a shop, and lives on the 10/F above, (with no lift!) where she dries out her paintings. She can usually have a large piece painted for me in about 10 days.” 
“For bedrooms and bathrooms, I like to make them feel more homely by using flowers. I go to Indigo in Hong Kong for their artificial flowers, especially the huge heads of white and pale pink hydrangeas, they’re so realistic, I love them so much I bought some for my own home. Also their scent-sticks – Amber ginger is a favourite. PlantaPark in Hong Kong have excellent quality artificial plants, but Shenzhen varieties will work adequately well at a fraction of the price.”
For curtains at Waterside, Lesley-Ann often uses quite thick sheers at the front and mushroom grey ‘black out’ curtains behind. This so that the sheers let in light from the floor to ceiling windows and at the same time protect furnishing against the sun and give privacy to those windows at the back that may face other apartments.
Can it become a little mechanical buying 9 of these, and 10 of those? “No, not really. But my creative juices really start flowing when I come across something unusual, like a chair or a beautiful lamp!”
Written by Suzanne Watkinson, Managing Director of Ambiente Properties Ltd. for the April 2017 Macau Closer magazine.
Photographs by Suzanne Watkinson and Eduard Martins
