dragon-i Reopened in 2026 With a Members' Room Named 115 After Its Owner's Favourite Tempo

dragon-i is the oldest room Mandos works with, and the only one that is a true Hong Kong institution: the same owner, the same address and the same name since November 2002. In 2026 it did the thing institutions almost never do and rebuilt itself from the inside out, keeping everything that made it matter and changing almost everything you could see. That is the story, and outside the design magazines almost nobody has told it, least of all in Chinese.

The rebuild was led by founder Gilbert Yeung, with the London studio Pirajean Lees setting the creative vision and the Hong Kong studio JJA handling the execution, under lighting by Isometrix. The reference they worked from is the cinematic world of Wong Kar-wai, and the result is a room that looks nothing like the red-lantern chinoiserie that defined Hong Kong nightlife luxury for two decades, and nothing like any other room in Central.

What stayed the same, and what changed

What stayed is the shape of the thing: dragon-i is still a restaurant and terrace by day and a club by night, in the same building on Wyndham Street, run by the same family. What changed is the room. Out went the phoenix lanterns and dark lacquer; in came coloured glass bricks, timber floors, silver leather banquettes and mirrored-ceiling installations, with bespoke textiles made by workshops in London, France and Italy. The entrance now sits under a stained-glass ceiling handcrafted by a third-generation atelier in Quiapo, Manila, the kind of slow, specific craft that does not turn up in a club built to be flipped in three years.

The Wong Kar-wai reference is not decoration. Pirajean Lees put it in the brief, and it is the one film language every Hong Konger reads on sight, which makes this the rare case where a cinematic reference in a club is accurate rather than borrowed. Coloured glass and mirror, velvet and timber, stained glass overhead: it is a room that photographs like a film still, and the distance between the dragon-i you remember and the one standing there now is the most interesting thing about the place.

Why the new room is called 115

The best detail in the whole rebuild is a number. The members' room next door is called 115, named after the tempo Gilbert Yeung likes best, the slow disco groove that sits between house music and hip-hop. It is a vinyl listening bar built around his own record collection, with turquoise velvet walls, green banquettes, a games room and an outdoor terrace. A club that names its most private room after a beats-per-minute count is telling you who runs it and what the place is actually about: music first, and the kind of music you sit with rather than shout over.

People don't really go to clubs to meet strangers anymore, the project's design partner has said.

It is also a quietly radical idea for a room with dragon-i's history. For twenty years this was the loudest address in Hong Kong nightlife, the place people were photographed leaving. The 2026 version keeps the club but builds a listening bar next to it, a room designed for the way people actually go out now, in small groups who already know each other, sitting with the music rather than performing in front of it. A brand this old reading the room that precisely is not something you can fake.

Who has walked through the door

dragon-i has twenty-four years of documented nights behind it. David Beckham and the Real Madrid squad came through on the 2003 Asia tour; Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre have both played here. The point is not the names, which every club drops. It is that this is a room with a real memory of the city, where the crowd skews older and more industry than any other room Mandos works with, and that has outlasted most of the venues that opened over the years to try to beat it.

The address people get wrong

One practical thing, because it trips up visitors and even the design press. dragon-i's address is UG/F, The Centrium, 60 Wyndham Street. Some of the international coverage of the 2026 rebuild puts it at 33 Wyndham Street, which is the LKF Tower building, a different address further down the same street. If you are sending a taxi or a visiting friend, use The Centrium, 60 Wyndham Street, or check the venue's own Instagram, @dragoni_hongkong, and you will not end up at the wrong door.

The booking is the part that changed most

For all the design, the most useful change for a reader is quieter. dragon-i has always taken its tables and its guest list through a host, a direct relationship by phone and message, which is a lovely thing when the host replies and a closed door when they do not. The brand recognition was never the problem; everything downstream of wanting to go was. Finding the room, seeing what is on and planning a night through Mandos is the part that lifts that ceiling, and it leaves the relationship with the house exactly where it was.

How to plan a night at dragon-i

dragon-i is a destination, not a room you stumble into, so treat it like one. Eat first in Central or SoHo, go later rather than earlier, and because the night runs long, sort out how you are getting home before you go up. It sits near the top of Wyndham Street in Central, a short walk above Lan Kwai Fong, which means the room sets the tone for a district that measures itself against it whether it admits so or not. Follow @dragoni_hongkong for the week's line-up.

If you only do one thing tonight: find dragon-i through Mandos and plan it properly, rather than hoping the door goes your way on the night. And if someone in the group chat still pictures red lanterns and dark wood, tell them to look again, because the room they are remembering has been gone since 2026.