Designer James Shaw’s latest creation is a self-built home in east London

Designer James Shaw had been looking for a spot to build a house in London for a while when, in 2017, he came across an overgrown plot near his flat in east London. Fast forward five years and the 60 sq m parcel has become home to him and his partner. Designed in collaboration with architect friend Nicholas Ashby, the house develops over two floors (with the living area taking over the basement, and a bedroom on the ground floor) accessed from a courtyard facing a quiet street. ‘The house design was a reaction to the irregular plot,’ Shaw explains.

James Shaw on his self-build project

Despite being largely underground, the house is designed with light in mind. ‘When I moved in, there was no staircase, no floor. It was basically a concrete shell,’ recalls Shaw. ‘And that was really nice, because it meant I could see the way the light moves, and plan it from there.’ A portion of the basement features double-height ceilings with windows on two sides, while the lower ceilinged area is equipped with circular openings that add brightness to the space. A deck with a small plunge pool dug into the concrete extends the space with an indoor-outdoor vibe. Shaw and Ashby chose to keep the architectural elements exposed, with concrete walls and ceilings and brick pillars cohabiting with softer elements, such as expressive wood veneer over the kitchen and bedroom walls and colourful mosaic tiles in the hallway and bathroom. Shaw personally built and put together every element of the house.

To ease into the process of furnishing his new home, Shaw staged a show with Seeds Gallery, presented during London Design Festival 2022. Titled ‘Two Kettles, No Sofa’, it centred around moving in with a partner, and the decorative chaos this often brings. Among the new pieces he created was a pear-shaped table made of walnut timber, its three wooden legs sinking into shapeless, green plastic blobs (‘I was looking at floor plans of the house and laying stuff out to figure out what shape would actually make sense,’ he explains). Also from the exhibition are the bed, whose archetypal oak frame is topped with four green extruded plastic pears, as well as a console in the living area, ‘wearing’ four tiny wooden shoes at the bottom of each leg.

James Shaw's experimental designs

Although he experiments with a range of materials and techniques, Shaw is best known for his pastel-hued, extruded plastic forms, which he has used to build everything from lamps, chairs and tables to a drinks trolley, and home accessories ranging from door handles to cutlery and candle holders (many of which feature throughout the house).

‘I’ve been working with extruded plastic for nearly ten years,’ explains Shaw, who graduated from the Royal College of Art’s MA Design Products course in 2013 with ‘Making Guns’, a project comprising a trio of weapon-like design tools. ‘That was me trying to figure out: how am I going to equip myself? How am I going to start a career? These tools allowed me to set up my own workshop later with this idea that the tool dictates the outcome.’

Among these tools was a gun pumping out recycled plastic into an organic stream of material that he has since learned to shape in myriad different ways. ‘The way that the plastic comes out [of the extruder gun] is just the product of the machine,’ says Shaw. He describes his outcome as ‘the way the plastic wants to be. We only ever see it used in a much more controlled and unified way.’

His first instinct was to explore bioplastic (an idea he’s keen to revisit in his practice). ‘But what immediately became apparent is that waste plastic was just this incredibly abundant thing, and companies were offering unlimited amounts to take away for free,’ he says. Dubbed ‘Plastic Baroque’, the initial series has grown over the years, using discarded post-consumer plastic to create expressive objects that combine archetypal forms and a novel, contemporary aesthetic.

Shaw’s practice has branched out into different materials, with a hands-on experimental approach that has seen him work with metal and wood in creative ways, often including the extruded plastic elements within his designs. As well as his pieces from the 2022 LDF show, Shaw has also developed further objects specifically for the house, including a light blue plastic handrail for the spiral staircase and a large bookcase made from aluminium extrusions.

Shaw’s own furniture is mixed throughout the house with pieces by designer friends such as Jochen Holz and Wendy Andreu, vintage finds and design classics, including a pair of Kartell’s ‘Componibili’ storage units by Anna Castelli Ferrieri (used as bedside tables) and Achille Castiglioni’s ‘Parentesi’ lamp for Flos. ‘I really like the interplay between those different things,’ he notes. ‘I think a lot of people would have expected [the house] to be like a completely insane grotto,’ half-jokes Shaw, nodding to the recognisable style of his most popular ‘Plastic Baroque’ works. ‘But I like to give [my pieces] the space to breathe. Until living in this house, I had never really had the opportunity to live with my own work before, so it’s been nice to actually get to have that day-to-day experience.’ 

A version of this story appeared in the March 2023 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today