Why long-haul flights are the best time to disconnect for celebrity architect Dara Huang, founder of Design Haus Liberty

Flying is often the least favourite part of any international business traveller’s time. But to Dara Huang, founder of Design Haus Liberty, it means getting the opportunity to unwind from a busy work calendar.

“If you think about it, the time you’ll ever get the most peace and be disconnected in terms of the internet, people asking questions, the endless emails, is actually on an aeroplane,” she reasons. “For a while, I found the most quiet I had was when I was on a flight. I started requesting to fly alone on separate planes from my colleagues to gather my thoughts before the next meeting.”

It is important to find time to completely disconnect from daily responsibilities, and for Huang that happens to be in the sky. “I’m really used to long-haul travel and these days if a flight that takes under five hours I consider that an easy flight,” she adds.

The Harvard graduate architect-designer is not joking. There are occasions when she will fly into a city to go straight into eight-hour meetings and then sometimes take a flight right back out. Huang’s company has worked for recognisable brands such as LVMH, Harrods, Cartier and the Four Seasons Hotels group, to high-end property developments such as big residential towers, including London’s Knight Dragon (owned by New World), and on 1.5 million sq ft towers in mainland China, as well as projects involving urban squares and mixed-use developments.

“I love what I’m doing,” Huang says as she looks out over the harbour from the Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong. “I didn’t know I could make a business out of it. I think business is a totally different skill set from talent, and it just so happens that if you have talent and you’ve got business skills and you can marry the two, then you are really lucky. There are few people who have that but they may never know. I found out because I threw myself into running my own business at a very young age, but it worked.”

There is talk of London-headquartered Design Haus Liberty setting up their first Asia studio in Hong Kong. Huang, who only came to the city for a second time last year for Art Basel, talks about meeting fellow artists, one of whom left a deep impression.

“I met Maxime Plescia-Büchi, who is a famous tattoo artist. He designs – I was told – the highest-selling Hublot watch in Hong Kong and what I love about Maxime’s design is that it is super architectural. If you look at the watch’s face, he uses architectural techniques from before the time of computers.” Huang adds, “When we start drawing blobs it’s very much about the T-square on the drafting board, and you can see he is using all these geometrical shapes. And it’s crazy because everyone is so obsessed with him that they tattoo these designs on their bodies. But he has managed to put it into the face of the watch.”