Interviewed on Homepride.com.my

by Adrian How

homepride

Homepride.com.my approached me to do an interview which I gladly obliged. Being part of the Catcha Group, Homepride is both a print magazine as well as an online portal on all things home & living for urban dwellers. The interview mainly focuses on my thoughts and experiences with home design and living. The last question was a nice touch.

Read the full interview after the jump

How’sHouse is in the house

What does the man of How’s House himself has to say?

By Sher Yen on 16th June 2010.

Knowing that firsthand experience is more important than any other hokus-pokus, we got Malaysia’s interior designer blogger, Adrian How to share with us a few stories of his own.

HP – HomePride
How – Adrian How

HP: How do you relate yourself to the rest of home buyers?

How: I’m just like any other home buyer – wanting to get the most bang for the buck when it comes to furnishing the home whilst staying within the allocated budget. I enjoy the thrill of a challenge in matching one’s aesthetic and functional ambitions for their homes by getting the most value for the budget that they have in mind.

HP: Do you target readers of the higher end or just any other average people like you and me?

How: The site caters for a wide variety of readers. Most of the content is targeted for the average to upper middle income earners. Occasionally, I’ll feature something opulent and extravagant but it’s really more to provide my readers with the knowledge and images of a great product design to fire up like ideas within them in implementing something similar for the home, more than to target the wealthy into a purchase. After all, i don’t sell the items, i merely write about them if I find it interesting enough to be worth a mention.

HP: As a home owner, what kind of difficulties do you face when designing your home?

How: Often times, the real headache comes when you have an overflow of ideas for a particular space. You get crippled in the decision making process because there’s an opportunity cost tied to any decision made. In designing my home, I was focused on what it was I ‘needed’ for the each part of the home. I then moved on what it was I ‘wanted’. One of my guiding principles is ‘form over substance’ and therefore I always ensure that a space is functional before I even go into the aesthetics of it. Going back to my home, I was then able to formulate a wishlist of items for the home from my needa and wants, which then transcended into design. After several design iterations and a lot of imagination, I had the blueprint to how my home would look.

HP: When renovating and decorating houses, what are the main priorities to focus on?

How: Many people often miss the mark by focusing too much on aesthetics. Unless it’s a home for which you intend only to get gasping wows from your guests, it better be livable than just merely being pretty. As i mentioned earlier, ‘form over substance’ as the guiding principle. It’s much easier to do the ‘how’ when you have a compelling ‘why’. Know what you want in your own home and work towards achieving that. With a splash of creativity and imagination, you can convert any functional space to being that and aesthetically pleasing.

HP: On a lighter end, what was the most expensive and cheapest thing you have spent on your home renovation/decoration?

How: I like this question best.

The most expensive item – relative to the type of item itself, not just from a pure monetary perspective – is a little period Chinese porcelain vase that is now valued just under RM10k.

The cheapest decorative item in the house is incidentally one of my favourites. It’s a modern art wood sculpture of a man with his leg crossed and his head leaned sideways against his hand – a pose which portrays a daydreamer – but without a torso. I got it for a steal of RM15 in Bali and recently saw the exact same item on sale for RM129.

About the man
Adrian How is like any other wage-earner who has a family of his own and has a place he calls home. But for the betterment of the rest he leaped out and came up with How’sHouse to help house owners beautify their homes.
www.howshouse.com
The original source of the article can be found here