Chinese designer Wanmu Shazi wears multiple hats. He kicked off his career as a carpenter and furniture maker; he moved on to apply his woodworking skills onto anything from furniture, spatial installations, sculpture, and even fashion; and most recently he has turned his hand to architecture, when he took on the project of an industrial building transformation into a contemporary home and atelier for himself and his studio. 

The scheme occupies the site of an abandoned cement factory on Fengnan, Xiamen, in China's southeastern coast. Sat on the edge of town, next to existing structures, farmland and a landscape  of verdant, rolling hills beyond, the original building was in dire need of a refresh. Wanmu Shazi maintained most of the old building fabric, including a dramatic composition of three tall, concrete cylinders, which he gutted and reused. One of them now contains a 15m-tall ‘meditation teahouse', another hosts the artist studio and a woodworking exhibition hall, and the last houses the designer’s own home. 

‘As I was renovating the building, I repeatedly walked through the space, to find the most comfortable scale and the most appropriate positions for window openings. Stepping into this place, you’ll feel being "wrapped" by the architecture and be healed both physically and mentally,' the designer explains, highlighting the importance of physical comfort and achieving a warm home in the project's redesign. 

Wanmu Shazi worked mostly with volumes and negative space, openings and light to compose his interiors. Decor is sparse and minimalist, allowing architecture and emotion to take centre stage. A green tree in the foyer, planted centrally and underneath a round skylight, blurs the boundaries between inside and outside.He describes the spatial ambience as ‘Qi' (the Chinese concept for ‘vital energy' or ‘life force'). He believes that quality design needs to ‘focus on "Qi" rather than form, as the spatial atmosphere can not only stimulate sensory experience and but also evoke emotions.'

A narrow, wooden bridge connects this industrial building transformation with the outside world, creating a sense of mystery and exploration. Meanwhile guests walk into the complex through a door that feels distinctly utilitarian in nature, made of rusted steel and lightweight glass, hinting to the industrial heritage of this unusual home - which Wanmu Shazi also opens to young creatives for workshops, shows and events, to stimulate creativity and culture in the region.

This new complex in Xitang Ancient Town takes its cues from its context. Set within a historic water town in the Jiangnan region of southern China, the project, called Villa, is a hotel conceived by design studio Nature Times Art Design Co, embraces local vernacular architecture to create a low, elegant, domestic-feeling space centred on a green and serene central courtyard. The venue hopes to blend old and new, while being embedded in nature and a new, yet seamless landscape. 

The hospitality scheme is located in a new part of town, next to another newly launched hotel and an urban, residential eco-village. Its concept aims to reflect that, combining modern luxury with sensitivity and respect towards nature and the surroundings. A clean interior and minimalist architecture with nods to traditional Chinese architecture help create accents and subtle drama where needed, and secluded, private areas elsewhere, balancing the visitors' needs.

Indeed, the overall design balances various elements – landscape, art and design. In this context, the presence of nature was key, so the designers worked with the ‘emptiness’ between volumes and clever gardening techniques to produce exterior spaces engulfed in green. At the same time, irregularly cut stone paving, winding pathways, terraces and large, floor-to-ceiling glass openings merge indoors and outdoors, blurring the boundaries between the two. 

Inside, natural wood and stone offer tactility, looks and smells that nod to nature, drawing again on the development’s wider environment. Furniture and decor also work towards the same effect. ‘The original introverted and gentle beauty of objects is intensified, producing a soothing atmosphere. The placement of each object is elaborately considered, which builds a dialogue with the space. The visual composition is combined with the spatial narratives. The imagery of mountain and water is mirrored by objects, closely interacting with daily life,' the design team explain. 

Carefully framed views offer either subtle glimpses or majestic, full views of the landscaped courtyards, while maintaining the luxurious, cocooning atmosphere inside each room.

An Edwardian house in the Ponsonby neighbourhood of Auckland, New Zealand, has been given a 21st-century facelift with a thorough redesign and a touch of minimalism – through an extension's monolithic architecture. The residence, a family home on Franklin Road, was designed by Jack McKinney Architects and interiors specialist Katie Lockhart Studio, who drew on principles of modernist architecture, and in particular tropical modernism, for the project's warm yet unfussy interiors and the new building exterior's sharp, minimalist outline. 

The house now features a contemporary, monolithic rear extension, which brightens up the architectural garden at the rear, clad in light-coloured stone, yet abstractly referencing the heritage architecture shapes of the original home and the wider neighbourhood beyond. Large glazed surfaces and openings connect the new space with the green outdoors and the home's swimming pool. 

Inside, the minimalist architecture of the exterior volume is reflected in the clean surfaces and uncluttered decor of the extension. However, it is infused with warm colours and natural materials, both in the plaster's earthy hue and treatment, and the dark wood species used for joinery and details. The new addition holds the home's kitchen and dining area, which is kitted out with state of the art Fisher & Paykel appliances, and carefully selected furniture that nods to midcentury styles and colour tones. 

The highly crafted kitchen and dining volume explores ‘form, light and space in a new addition whose compact nature belies its soaring volume and whose simplicity channels a heightened emotional impact', say the design team. The aim was for a ‘unified experience', says architect Jack McKinney. The architect is a deft hand at composing homes that carry drama and character in a sophisticated, poised way that is conducive to calm yet memorable spaces – as with the monolithic architecture of Franklin Road. He adds: ‘[This ] minimalist design allowed us to keep a contemplative mood in the room.' 

INFORMATION
jackmckinney.co.nz
katielockhart.com

Manea Kella is a champion of slow architecture. The movement, which favours an appreciation of crafts, simplicity, locality and sustainable architecture, ultimately leads to better buildings and improves the lives of people, say the London architecture studio's directors Adrian Manea and Elena Kella: ‘We believe that thoughtful architecture and design benefits society and is a force for social good – regardless of scale, architecture has the potential to shape and transform society for the better.’ 

The emerging studio has recently completed Casa Popeea, the renovation of a majestic historical townhouse in Romania to transform it into a boutique hotel. The project has been led by everything the slow movement stands for and has now opened its doors to the public. Here, we catch up with Manea Kella to find out more about Casa Popeea, the practice's work, and how to achieve ‘slow' architecture.

Wallpaper*: You have described your work, and Casa Popeea, as ‘slow architecture’. Please could you tell us more about this approach?

Manea Kella: Our perception of this term, ‘slow architecture’, or better called ‘good architecture’, considers people at the forefront of design – we believe that an architect’s only role is to design buildings in which people can lead a decent life, whether these are used for working, living or leisure. The ‘slow’ movement in architecture is dedicated to simplicity, fitting buildings with nature and with people, and producing buildings that evolve. 

Casa Popeea is a project that transforms a single-family dwelling into a hotel, repurposing this historic building through carefully selected materials, construction techniques, the use of light and the creation of charm, while balancing this with the contemporary needs of its guests. We believe that this project will offer fresh thinking about future development within the historic Hellenic quarter of Brăila, Romania.

W*: How does one apply a ‘slow’ approach to an architecture project?

MK: This movement has been described as ‘slow architecture’ by a thinking that encompasses locally produced buildings based on local materials and skills. Architects have long called for the return of architectural craft and more locational context for buildings. At Manea Kella, we are preoccupied with creating architecture that is rich in character and distinct in identity. We investigate historic and vernacular precedents to best inform our response to projects. We strive to create buildings which last and can adapt. Within a rapid and sometimes thoughtless commercial industry, we pride ourselves on our rooted approach and direct relationship to material application and construction. Considerations of local identity and sense of place go hand in hand with our belief in creating sustainable places.

W*: Can slow architecture work for any project, or any type? And what makes Casa Popeea a perfect candidate for it?
 
MK: Well, there is an argument to say that considering materials, end users and consumption is what architects do anyway – ‘slow architecture’ ought to be an architect’s job description in the first place. Conservation through retrofitting is perhaps the most environmentally sustainable approach within the wider construction industry. Retrofitting buildings usually results in significantly lower upfront emissions than demolition and rebuild because of the embodied carbon in existing structures. Moreover, we believe that this project can demonstrate sustainability in a cultural, social and economic sense also. Heritage buildings in Romanian city centres have long suffered from neglect due to a web of complex economic, legal and bureaucratic issues.

W*: What are the gestures and materials defining the space at Casa Popeea?

MK: The restoration and repair of the existing fabric was driven by the idea that the original structure should be emphasised in its spatial context and original materiality – the new reflects the lost without imitating it. The compressed, dark stained palette in the reception, lobby and coffee shop, with stained solid oak floors, joinery and bespoke furniture, opens up to a light-filled stairwell. The building’s original oak staircase has been meticulously restored, guiding you towards the tranquil sleeping quarters above. Carpenters from Transylvania were called upon for their expertise and life-sized 1:1 models played a part in rigorous design development workshops.

Our design for the spa aims to create a sequence of restful spaces, using a refined palette of natural materials, including Bulgarian limestone, black marble and stained solid oak, which work harmoniously to create an intimate environment. The architecture of the spa aims to transport the visitor from the busy raised ground floor into a quiet, considered inner environment that invites a feeling of reflection and relaxation. Lighting apertures in the ceiling and through the window louvres offer the subtle feeling of cool light outside and also bring out the reflective quality of the natural stone and warmth of the solid oak.

W*: What is the next ‘slow’ project on your list?

MK: We are delighted to be working on an intriguing project in the historic heart of Bucharest, Romania. Originally designed by architect Dimitrie Hârjeu (chief architect of Bucharest 1910-1916) in French Neoclassical style, the building is located in the vicinity of Cismigiu Park on the Mihail Kogalniceanu boulevard. It was built in 1914 as a private residence measuring approximately 1,000 sq m, and it later served as the Gestapo headquarters and German Embassy, until 1944. After 1990 it was occupied by local film production company Rofilm. Our brief will entail retaining the commercial use of the building and we will be exploring options to transform it into a high-performance, 21st-century workplace that could provide choice and balance between work modes. The post-pandemic world will be different, and this project offers a great opportunity for thoughtful, adaptable and sustainable intervention.

INFORMATION

maneakella.com

British jewellery designer Hannah Martin is no stranger to London’s Hatton Garden; she has occupied studio and atelier space on the edge of London’s traditional jewellery quarter since 2008. But after a year of introspection, Martin has rebranded and recalibrated her collections, and designed a new premises in Farringdon.

Entered via an anonymous gated alleyway, a ground-floor entrance hall opens into her retail and exhibition rooms. Extensive renovations, which began early last year, saw the old building stripped back to its bare brick walls and wooden beams. Says Martin, ‘We’ve rebuilt almost everything, but worked hard to capture the essence of the brand in the process.’ Known for her androgynous jewellery that harvests motifs from punk and rock ’n’ roll, Martin creates edgy and graphic pieces, handcrafted in precious metals and gems.

‘We wanted the mood to be really beautiful but not in a hard way,’ she says. A poured concrete floor is offset with clay-plastered walls flecked with mica powder, a soft, reflective material that gives the surface a tactile, gentle sheen. Four large showcases, inspired by the sculptures of Richard Serra, dominate the space, with bases welded together by a friend and left in the rain to rust and patinate to a soft orange. ‘They’re a great interruption of the volume, but crucially they’re on casters, so we can move them around,’ says Martin. ‘I wanted the flexibility to be able to throw a gig, or host a fancy dinner, or collaborate with a photographer and hang pictures on the walls; it should feel like a gallery, too.’

If an environment must echo the aesthetics of its owner, then Martin has achieved just this, successfully treading the fine line between a brutalist, industrial oeuvre and cosseting luxurious space.

INFORMATION

hannahmartinlondon.com

As originally featured in the May 2020 issue of Wallpaper* (W*254) – download the latest issue free here

The interior spaces of this intensive makeover by Steffen Welsch Architects in Melbourne are all about creating a sense of flow. The architects describe their understanding of the ancient Chinese art of Feng Shui as a way of making sense of the elements that balance an interior.

‘There is a surprising correlation between Feng Shui and what we would call "good design",’ the architects write, ‘sunlight access, air and ventilation, balance of natural light, equal relationship between inside and out, comfort and privacy, balance of materials, and a well-organised environment.’

Starting with a traditional semi-detached house on a long, narrow slot, the brief called for a new extension that added bedrooms and created a large kitchen and living/dining area. A courtyard separates old from new, helping bring light and air deep into the plan, while the new addition is gradually unveiled as you walk through into the heart of the house.

A new study area forms part of a wide central corridor, beyond which is a curved wooden wall that conceals a storage area. At this point, the Feng Shui house opens up to a generous main living space, with kitchen, dining area and sitting area leading out to a deck and the garden beyond.

The central staircase is given a crucial role, both as sculptural focus and source of daylight. It rises out of the family zone in a series of bold curves, with Barraganesque flashes of colour revealing themselves as the planes twist and turn. Surface materials also shift throughout the space, with the dining room timber floor reflected in the wood clad ceiling of the sitting area, giving it a detached, cocoon-like calmness between inside and outside and the folds in the new roof creating a covered balcony and planting area.

‘Build less, accomplish more,’ was one of the driving forces behind this project; big ambitions were certainly achieved.

INFORMATION
steffenwelsch.com.au

Rimini is about to bear the cultural fruit of a productive combination of public policy, a local sense of civic responsibility and a strong architectural vision. This mini-metropolis on Italy’s Riviera Romagnola, known as the country’s party capital and the home town of Federico Fellini, is opening the doors to a new contemporary art museum. PART, or Palazzi dell’Arte Rimini, is an adaptation and renovation project by Milan based architect Luca Cipelletti. It is housed in two medieval buildings in the city’s main square - the 13th Century Palazzo dell’Arengo and the 14th Century Palazzo del Podestà.

The project has a remarkable grassroots origin story. The hills surrounding Rimini have been home to some of Europe’s most legendary discos, but also to the San Patrignano Community – a dedicated, hard-working, drug rehabilitation centre operating since 1978 for men and women. This community later established itself as a foundation. Thanks to its efforts and to charitable donations of numerous works of contemporary art over the years, it has built up an eclectic and ambitious collection. 

According to a new endowment model for Italy, artworks donated to a foundation that cannot be loaned for long periods, need instead to be made accessible to the public. This provided the City of Rimini with the opportunity to create itself a new art museum.

The restoration of the two historic buildings was only part of Cipelletti’s task. He also had to completely rethink the rooms as spaces for art, for example, ensuring there are extra surfaces for exhibition space and hanging. ‘My aim was to enhance the impressive medieval volumes, but avoid reconstructing new elements in the historical style,' he says. ‘I wanted to bring out the precious original elements, such as the materials, the Palladian wooden trusses, the large polifora windows. The interventions of technical modernisation, the paint colours on the surfaces, the flooring and the fixtures all express a balance between a contemporary aesthetic language and its historic counterpart.'

The art museum, including the ticket office and café, occupies two levels. Spatial fexibility, which allows the architecture to transform into any interior needed for each show, was key. Cipelletti, inspired from Italian masters such as BBPR, Carlo Scarpa and Franco Albini, designed the space so that the galleries place the art at centre stage. Yet it also offers the visitor visual rhythm, as well as opportunities to pause and reflect.

New, freestanding walls create additional wallspace for displays, navigating the structures' large windows. There are newly installed, near-invisible, bronze window frames; flooring and bespoke furniture in durmast oak; and plinths in stone from San Marino. The last is the same material that was used in medieval times but, seeing as it can no longer be quarried, it was recovered from an old warehouse and reused.

Attention to detail and material use, both original and contemporary, a sense of perspective and a ‘less is more' attitude guided the architect’s hand through the development of all interiors. The project is completed by a lighting concept by designer Alberto Pasetti Bombardella and a site-specific piece by artist David Tremlett.

INFORMATION

ar.ch.it

In Wiltshire, UK, Prewett Bizley Architects has designed a new extension and refurbishment for a Grade II listed three storey Georgian townhouse located in the Malmesbury Conservation area. While the extension, clad in rose-coloured zinc, is a very 21st century addition to the house, the architects took a lot of care to celebrate, preserve or echo the house's historical evolutions.

The house has a colourful history that resulted in various eccentricities, both charming and awkward, say the architects. First established in the 1670s, it was converted in 1800 into a Georgian style house, yet was later subdivided into three dwellings and then back into a single family home.

It's 21st century evolution shows how existing and historic architecture can grow organically with time, and convert sustainably to new ways of life, with thoughtful re-planning and minimal demolition. Architects Graham Bizley and Robert Prewett, who founded the practice in 2005 and now have studios in London and Somerset, apply this way of thinking to each project they work on.

Their goal for this project was to create a more comfortable and modern home for a family. Several problems needed to be addressed to achieve this. The house's kitchen was cramped, the narrow corridor that lead to the living spaces was dark, and an abrupt level change in the garden completely disconnected the house from the outdoors.

The modern extension expands the kitchen into an uplifting dining space more suitable for family life and the pitch of the roof opens the space up to the garden bringing in views of the landscape. A new terrace features an outdoor dining space.

Respecting the history of the building, the architects designed a new top-lit central hallway that echoes the rustic character of the house. The original stone wall was repaired and three concrete portals added, along with the exposed spruce roof structure that both nod to the former agricultural use of the space. Elsewhere, modern paints and plasters were stripped back and the old stone roof was re-laid with insulation.

Combining a clean-cut extension, with insightful echoes, and some tending to history, the resulting design is a unique and unashamed celebration of its past. 

INFORMATION

prewettbizley.com

New York City-based architecture studio Worrell Yeung has renovated and redesigned a 1920s factory building on the corner of Washington Avenue and Park Avenue near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The new flexible workspace, 77 Washington, features an artist studio and a photography studio.

The project is an adaptive reuse success story, aimed to celebrate the neighbourhood's history and the design typologies of early 20th century masonry New York warehouses. Preserving the historical character of the six-storey masonry building, and a cluster of surrounding one-story buildings, was key to the commission for co-principal Max Worrell: ‘The existing buildings were so rich with history and layered with texture that we wanted our design to highlight these found conditions while also updating to accommodate new uses and new programmes.'

Careful tweaks helped to uplift the workspace and equip it for its new creative community. A verdant courtyard space was carved out by removing a roof, and a garage to the left of the factory was removed to make space for another lush garden, designed by Michael van Valkenburgh Associates. Original storefront openings were restored to create a visual presence of activity at street level, and bringing in more natural light to the buildings.

Rough, durable, unrefined materials fall into sync with the Brooklyn factory's history. The core material palette of diamond plate floors, unfinished steel railings and doors, and concrete floors. Benches in the garden were built from salvaged oak logs collected by a shipbuilder after storms. The architects collaborated with Navy Yard-based woodworker, Bien Hecho to use salvaged materials from the building to make a custom conference room table and lobby bench.

Minimal design interventions inspired by the history of the buildings uplift and enhance the space for its new use. A large glass block clerestory window diffuses light into the corner artist studio. To cover the elevator shaft openings, a lattice motif was layered upon steel grids which can be seen from the building's exterior. Brick walls were cleaned and sealed to preserve layers of old paint, to contrast with the clean concrete floors and white walls.

‘These interventions are a nod to the aesthetics of storied factory buildings and Navy Yard warehouses, which historically featured grids in their sash windows, fencing, and ship docks,' says co-principal Jejon Yeung.

INFORMATION

worrellyeung.com

When architect Richard Parr moved to the Cotswolds 15 years ago, to live and set up his studio and workspace, it was a pretty radical move. However, he only saw advantages, such as eliminating his commute, getting more space for his money, spending more time with his family, and being closer to nature and a more sustainable way of living. His bet paid off big, not least now, when we all find ourselves working from home and juggling work and family life on a different level entirely. 

Parr, a working-from-home veteran now, has in fact just completed a new extension to his countryside studio – the conversion of a 19th century agricultural barn on his property. His original studio contained eight workstations, occupying buildings that were formerly a hayloft, cow shed, dairy barn and a bull pen. The new addition offers valuable extra space to the small but dynamic practice in what was a grain loft, one of the last remaining buildings to be converted on the estate. 

‘My life is my work, I enjoy living the way I design for other people, so why separate it? This is also a testing ground for ideas,' says Parr, who admits that some infrastructure work was needed before everything could work smoothly. ‘Fast broadband throughout has made it all work as well. Investment was needed and I brought in fibreoptic some years back.'

The ground floor contains an entrance with informal client meeting space and breakout room; the upper level houses workspace and a timber pod containing a shower room and kitchen. The colour palette ranges from neutral, natural colours (such as the exposed wood), to darker tones, and original materials, such as the old rustic stone walls, sit effortlessly side by side with recycled rubber flooring, a ceiling comprised of wood wool panels and raw plaster paint colour.

The composition even contains a wooden panelled wall, handmade by Berthold Lubetkin and rescued from a farmhouse in a neighbouring village where the Modernist architect once stayed. This mixing of old and new is a challenge Parr relished: ‘What you start with is a character, what you have to end up with is an enrichment and projection of that character into the future. It’s also a balance, too much of either can kill the other. Both need to live and exist with a certain tension.'

And now that he's added the latest element to his work/life campus, is there anything he'd do differently? ‘I would have done more extensive groundwork and landscaping at the outset,' he says. ‘I have done masses but it is a long term process and life is short.'

INFORMATION

richardparr.com

Dynamic duo Jackie Thomas and DeAnn McCoy are behind the renovation of Herbert W Burns' Gillman Residence in Palm Springs originally built in 1948. The house, which was inspired by the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, has been brought back to life with careful attention to historical details and new interiors that reflect a contemporary approach to mid-century modern design.

The pair started developing and designing in 2005, when they bought a property in the Canyon View Estates designed by Palmer & Krisel. In 2010, they made their passion for mid-century modern architecture official and moved to Palm Springs to formally set up Thomboy Properties, Inc. with a philosophy to 'respect the beauty and simplicity of design from the past and re-imagine it for the way people live today'.

Their latest re-imagination is the Gillman Residence, a house that was sitting neglected prior to their intervention, but was a hit when it was first built. The house was referred to as a ‘sophisticated sun seeker’ in the January 1951 issue of the Los Angeles Times Home Magazine. It was total fate that Thomboy Inc. found the property after a tip-off from a local realtor, and they made an offer after 30 minutes of seeing it.

Located in the neighbourhood of Little Tuscany, the 4,700 sq ft, three bedroom house, which also features a two bedroom guesthouse and a rectangular pool, is like a small complex sprawled across its half-acre lot. With its flat roofs, cantilevering overhangs and horizontal lines, the house design was inspired by the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier in the Late Moderne style.

Like many desert modern houses, the Gillman Residence responded to the landscape by reflecting the natural colours of the desert through screens, grids of ribbed obscure glass and planters of Arizona sandstone. The lines betweeen indoor and outdoor living were blurred with Burns' trademark Santa Fe block brick that runs from the exterior wall into the heart of the house. Wide overhangs extend over the immediate outdoor space creating shade from the sun. Many of these elements were restored by Thomboy Inc. with the assistance of Steven Keylon, Burns’ architectural historian, after they had been removed by previous owners.

While the original house design was respected, the renovation has been comprehensive. ‘This house can truly be considered a brand new home with Herbert Burns’ bones. Every single surface has been touched, from all new electrical, plumbing, HVAC, windows, roof, and poured terrazzo floors, the landscape, you name it, we touched it,’ says Thomas.

For Thomas and McCoy, the project was a learning curve in understanding the differences between restoration and renovation, while, as developers, always thinking about the end sale. ‘We would say the delicate dance of restoring the house to its original grandeur while balancing the expectations of today’s buyers was constantly in the forefront of our minds,’ says Thomas. 

INFORMATION

thomboyinc.com

The restoration of house was supported by Ferguson, JennAir, Brizo, Dunn-Edwards, Corian Design, Room & Board, Hunter Douglas, FLOR and Bang & Olufsen

Georgian architecture has long been a source of inspiration to architects for its clean external lines, balanced proportions and majestic windows that often concealed a more playful, ornamental interior. Even modernist Erno Goldfinger admits to referencing the historical style, when he designed his famous Hampstead home, Willow Road. 

Architects Gundry + Ducker also looked at Georgian interiors for their latest residential project in London, White Rabbit House, the renovation of a 1970s Neo-Georgian terrace. ‘The idea was to insert a modern interpretation of Georgian house interior into a standard post war house’, says Christian Ducker. ‘We wanted a playful interior, accommodating the unexpected, with changes in scale and height and atmosphere.’

The result is a colourful home, which ticks all the boxes the client outlined – mostly, practical requirements in terms of bedroom numbers and storage needs – but also offers a tongue-in-cheek alternative to residential design. Marble and terrazzo floors, arches and bespoke joinery in a vibrant green colour make the living areas pop, while the standout moment is without a doubt the grand staircase that unfolds into the entrance hall’s triple-height void. 

White Rabbit's distinctive style made it a worthy winner in the ‘Most Unique Character’ category in this year’s Don’t Move, Improve! competition, organised by the NLA; winners were announced earlier in the week, celebrating the capital's finest home improvement projects in categories highlighting, among other elements, size, sustainability and craftmanship. 

A version of this article originally appeared in the March 2020 issue of Wallpaper* (W*252)

INFORMATION

gundryducker.com

Rotterdam has developed a knack for reinvention. After the city was flattened during World War II, reconstruction between 1945 and 1968 saw the rise of a new more functional urban design. The following decades experienced some radical relief with Piet Blom’s Cube House completed 1984. Then in the 1990s, Rotterdam became an open-minded testbed to rising Dutch architects OMA and MVRDV, with De Rotterdam completing in 2013, and the U-shaped Markthal in 2014.

While known for its forward-thinking approach, recently the city and its architects have been taking some interest in the past too. Historical buildings are a rarity in Rotterdam, and the time has come for preserving and preparing them for a long-term future.

The impressive Postkantoor (central post office) dating back to 1916, is one of the landmark renovation projects embracing the city’s architectural history. Developer OMNAM Group and NYC-based ODA have taken on the redesign of the mighty modern-meets-art-deco building, and ODA will be extending the site with two new contemporary buildings. The mixed use scheme, named POST, aims to give the historic building back to the people of Rotterdam, with social and retail spaces at ground level.

POST: A survivor of the Rotterdam Blitz, the Postkantoor dates back to 1916, and was originally designed by Gustav Cornelis Bremer. In an ambitious move, ODA, a studio with experience bringing contemporary design to historic buildings, will add a new 150m-high tower to the site combining hotel, residential, retail and social offerings. Local architects specialising in adaptive reuse, Braaksma & Roos Architectenbureau, will take on the restoration. ‘The success of the project is down to the courage of the developer (OMNAM Group), the local architects bringing ideas about context, and the city which was empowered to do something special,’ says Eran Chen, ODA.

A new era for the Boijmans

Elsewhere in the centre, the world-renowned Boijmans Van Beuningen museum, which moved into its stately brick, stone and copper building in 1935, has just closed for a much-needed renovation. The city of Rotterdam decided to opt for the most ambitious plan for its renovation, expected to take seven years, to not only clear it of asbestos and protect it from flooding, but also to equip it for a long future ahead with a new museum shop, dining area and more space for large-scale exhibitions.

In its time, the Boijmans has experienced many layers of growth and expansion – a modern exhibitions wing was added in 1972, and a pavilion designed by Hubert-Jan Henket in 1991. This stage of its growth is no different and the renovation project is also about renewal. After a competition, a winning architect will be selected in January 2020 to take on the creative challenge. Shortlisted architects include KAAN Architecten in association with Van Hoogevest Architecten, Mecanoo, and David Chipperfield Architects with WDJ Architecten.

In Rotterdam however, total reinvention is never far away. Driven by a necessity to provide safe storage for artworks after a series of floods, the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum has added a radical and ambitious new string to its bow with the ‘Depot’ designed by Rotterdam-based MVRDV – a mirrored ‘pot’ (as the locals have coined it) for art storage that will be open to the public to explore. Set to open in 2021, the curved building in the midst of the Museum Park has been designed to attract public interaction with its reflective façade, akin to Chicago’s much-loved Cloudgate sculpture by Anish Kapoor, and to expand the surrounding green public space.

The Depot under construction: Covering 15,000 sq m and a 40m diameter footprint widening to 60m at the top, the Depot, designed by MVRDV, includes everything you may expect from a storage facility – handling, packaging, quarantining and loading, yet it is also enlivened with exhibition spaces, a suspended concrete staircase inspired by Italian architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and a rooftop bar and restaurant. Described as the ‘engine room’ of the museum, the Depot will also have rentable space for private collectors, as well as storage for the 151,000-strong museum collection.

The Fenix warehouse rises again

Another curious architectural object will be appearing in the Fenix Warehouse, located in Kachendrecht – the industrial port area. At the Fenix 1 warehouse, which dates back to the 1920s, Wim Pijbes, director of the Droom en Daad Foundation (translation: dream and do) has enlisted MAD Architects for a Vessel-style observation staircase and deck, set to complete in 2025. Determined to create a spectacle, backed up by the Jane Jacobs quote ‘New ideas need old buildings’, Pijbes is certain that this intervention will ‘give people a 21st century reason to come here’.

Yet along with the new, there is a clear respect for the past, and preserving the history of the architecture is integral to the plan. The swirling staircase will be at the heart of the Foundation’s Landverhuizersmuseum, a migration museum, which explores the history of Rotterdam’s role as a port for migration from Europe to Ellis Island. ‘It’s important to the city to embrace the past, because there’s very little history left,’ says Pijbes. ‘You can feel the narrative of the harbour city of Rotterdam – it’s the DNA of the city.’ Without many remaining ‘monuments’ to history across the city, Pijbes sees the Fenix warehouse, which will be restored and renovated by Bureau Polderman, and the port location as a monumental space worth celebrating.

The original 360m long Fenix warehouse, previously called the San Francisco warehouse, was designed by architect C.N. van Goor and first built in 1922 when it was named the largest warehouse in the world. It was then rebuilt in two parts in 1954 after suffering fire damage after the Rotterdam Blitz, and named Fenix (translation: Phoenix).

And while the migration-themed museum is destined for Fenix 1, at Fenix 2, local practice Mei Architects has just completed a new mixed use project – the Fenix Lofts and Fenix Dock. The project features a renovation of the two-storey warehouse into a dance school and workspaces, plus a block of cascading apartments wedged on top. Increasing density and the permeability of the building through a public walk-way, the solution is a creative approach to urban regeneration of the Kachendrecht neighbourhood.

Fenix Lofts and Fenix Docks by Mei Architects: Completed in November 2019, this renovation and redesign preserves the character of the industrial architecture while adding new layers of function with 200 high-ceilinged apartments, a dance school, workspaces and a public thoroughfare to the building. Mei Architects, established in 1994 in Rotterdam, developed expertise redeveloping former industrial buildings – from turning a steam former laundry in Delfshaven into creative office spaces and or building apartments in a former Gouda Cheese warehouse.

Creative grassroots regeneration

Regeneration has become a collective and creative enterprise in Rotterdam, and as the city grows, its modern architecture has become a base for innovation. The vast Hofplein Rotterdam train station and Schieblock office building both built in the 1950s are at the heart of a new urban and landscaping strategy by ZUS architects, who have connected the site to the centre of Rotterdam with the crowd-funded, 390m-long Luchtsingel pedestrian bridge built in 2014. The next part of the plan, a vast rooftop park atop the station, the Luchtpark Hofbogen, concluded the completion of phase one in 2018. The Schieblock office building also gained a rooftop asset, the DakAkker urban roof farm, where vegetables, honey and fruit are grown and cooked up seasonally at Op Het Dak, a restaurant designed by Studio Ossidiana. Rooftops have become an important part of the city's regeneration, and the network is celebrated each summer at the Rotterdamse Dakendagen, an ‘open rooftop’ festival following a similar format to international franchise Open House.

Rotterdam’s harbour is another area with newly-tapped urban potential. Architecture studio Goldsmith Company describes the harbour as being ‘slowly orphaned’ by the city, and one of their latest designs is part of a new plan for a ‘Foodstrip’ for food production to bring new purpose back to the area. The architects combined technology with agricultural architecture to create the Floating Farm Dairy for 40 cows, and they are currently working on two new prototypes for floating farms in Rotterdam Harbour – one for vegetables, and one for 7000 chickens.

Meanwhile an artistic approach to regeneration is happening east of the city centre in the M4H neighbourhood. Artist Joep van Lieshout, opened his atelier there back in the mid-1990s when it was a red light district, and he’s now taking the neighbourhood’s development into his own hands. After purchasing land from the city in the area, he has drawn up brutalism-inspired designs for The Brutus, a new block of artists’ studios, apartments, a restaurant, hotel and an art gallery, reflecting his artistic philosophy and directly connected to the city by a cycle path. Watch this space, he says.

Rotterdam’s residential fabric

Across the city, emerging architects have been working with the Klushuizen scheme to improve the existing stock of mostly 20th century buildings. The initiative, first launched by the city municipality in 2003, gives architects the opportunity to buy cheap, dilapidated buildings from the city in exchange for their renovation. Slowly but surely, the scheme is contributing to the overall improvement of the historic social and residential fabric of Rotterdam – over 500 houses have been purchased under the scheme since it launched, and its success has seen the scheme migrate from Rotterdam to other Dutch cities.

This DIY approach to renovation supported by Rotterdam has given emerging architects the opportunity to gain experience and grow. Architects Eklund Terbeek, Shift Architecture Urbanism and Studio Nauta have each worked on recent renovation projects that bring new function to under-appreciated historic buildings, contribute to wider neighbourhood regeneration, and are in line with urgent environmental concerns in architecture.

‘In the light of climate change challenges and the growing awareness of using resources more sustainably, the DIY housing concept has only gained more relevance and has paved the way for further experiments – like houses in vacant offices or school buildings that provide a second life to the existing, outdated, built stock of the city. After all, re-use of what is already there is the most basic, and perhaps the most crucial, principle of a sustainable city development,’ says Shift Architecture Urbanism.

Eklund Terbeek’s Gym Loft

Rotterdam-based architecture studio Eklund Terbeek has taken advantage of Rotterdam’s DIY pre-war building renovation programme. The latest project, completed in 2019, is the Gym Loft, the conversion of a former gymnastics building of an early 20th century school complex in Rotterdam North into a spacious family loft. The studio was in charge of developing the whole building complex into seven unique homes. The architects often work with older buildings, even though the projects often bring extra constraints, however they agree that in the end: ‘Context makes design richer.’

House in a School 2 by Studio Nauta

Located in the Rotterdam West area, a former primary school has been converted into a house by Studio Nauta. Initial restoration work was undertaken by the city scheme Pak Je Ruimte, then architect Jan Nauta replanned the house and worked on the interior. Currently under construction, the house is set to complete later this month.

‘The scheme has made an enormous impact on the area. Dilapidated, but beautiful, buildings have been rescued and revamped,’ says Nauta, who also notices an increase in commitment and engagement in the area, because of the hands on approach. ‘People don’t go through all the trouble of renovating a house to move out after one or two years.’

Matryoshka House by Shift Architecture Urbanism

The renovation of this house, completed in 2017, involved preserving and renovating the entire existing outer shell, except the rear façade, which was so heavily deteriorated that it needed replacement. Inside, the architects maintained as much of the original wooden flooring structure, while also opening up new double height spaces. Any leftover wood was reused in the walls of the new rooms and recovered stained glass was redistributed creatively.

The Brutus by Atelier Van Lieshout

Sculptor, artist, inventor and liberal design collective, Joep Van Lieshout, who sees the edge of Rotterdam as his playground, moved to the M4H neighbourhood when it was a red light district. As part of a city initiative to develop the area, free artists’ studio spaces were introduced – ‘Rotterdam is very supportive of artists’, says Van Lieshout. Now he is taking the neighbourhood into his own hands. He has designed a new forward-thinking development for art, living and socialising.

On his new enterprise he says: ‘Architecture’s not that difficult if you ask me. There is a lot of technology that I don’t have the skills for, but neither do many architects.’ And he also has some progressive ideas about living inspired by modernist architects that he plans to bring to life at ‘Laocoon’: ‘I like to have flexibility, if you buy a house or rent its different – if its for sale then I would prefer to say I want a kitchen 20m long and my bathtub on my balcony. I think there should be no interior walls in a house.’

Floating Farm Dairy by Goldsmith Company

In Merwehaven, Rotterdam, this floating farm for 40 cows completed in 2019. The lightweight agricultural building compactly contains technology, storage, processing and production. The dairy is the first in a ‘Foodstrip’ for food production. The architects describe the harbor as a ‘slowly orphaned’ space in the city, and bringing new industry to the area with the aim to bring producer and consumer closer. The studio is currently working on two new prototypes for floating farms in Rotterdam Harbour – one for vegetables, and one for 7000 chickens.

Floating architecture ideas have also floated beyond the Rotterdam city limits. The studio also designed a series of unrealized floating pavilions for the Tokyo Olympic Games, barges and a collective deck made of stacked containers, steel framework and a skin of polyester sheets. The structures questioned the ‘Olympic Legacy’ and how many Olympic stadiums and villages are abandoned once their main use is over. Their concept can move from country to country without a trace, and it can be easily dismantled and assembled.

Architects’ houses have long been a topic of intrigue, and architect Noor Dasmesh Singh’s house on the periphery of the modernist urban plan of Chandigarh is no different. The founder and principal of NOOR Architects Consultants has created a personal haven tailored to his lifestyle, his zeal for crafted details, and the furniture he has collected over his lifetime.

Dasmesh Singh bought the utilitarian row house, dating back to the 1980s and built of wire cut exposed bricks in 2017 and the project has been a labour of love ever since. Yet however utilitarian in form, the architect has brought a warm richness to his restoration, which is layered with new materials, custom detailing and his own designs.

Despite its sensible appearance, maintaining the original architectural form was in fact integral to his plan – all of the exterior openings were preserved to maintain the gratifying exposed brickwork jamb of the house.

Subtle edits were made to the interior plan to adapt it to Dasmesh Singh’s way of life. A studio space on the first floor, a meeting space for discussions on the ground floor and a long and thick outdoor table make of south Indian granite slab were each designed with Dasmesh Singh’s working habits in mind.

The removal of a few inner walls, allowed the space to become more open plan. There is a sense of flow from entrance hall, to living room then dining room flow, and subtle interior additions such as a fluted glass and metal screen, or a moon pendant hung between the ceiling vaults, work to delineate the space.

The architect’s aesthetic for the house was formed through a ‘a confluence of styles, personal impressions and influences,’ he explains. While his material palette combines refined hints of ‘vernacular’ held together loosely within an ‘overall modernist framework’.

Abstraction meets traditional Indian design in the entrance hall where a blown glass light installation hangs above a geometric grey-green Indian Kota stone floor, combined with white marble and Jaisalmer yellow stone. Elsewhere hand-crafted bone inlay furniture inspired by Punjabi interiors, Sikh miniatures and white marble Makarana lamps are combined with iconic furniture pieces such as the Anacleto Spazzapan chair, a Nagashima console against a Corten back panel and restored art deco chairs.

An earthy-coloured layering of materials acts as a backdrop to all of these accents, including Burma teak, Corten, exposed brick, fishbone wooden floors and dusk-grey walls. These softly-toned surfaces allow Damesh Sinh’s custom-designed details, such as the handcrafted ironmongery, solid wooden knobs, and the fine brass mesh drape, to become highlights of the house.

INFORMATION

noorarchitects.com

In the lush green environs of the Italian Emilian countryside, at the foot of the Parmesan Apennines on the edge of a vineyard, Di Gregorio Associati has cloaked an old rural house in a floating concrete pergola – and given the house itself a total modernist makeover.

While the Monticello House has been transformed, much of its design was translated from the original simple barn architecture – volumes have been expanded, openings widened and glazed, bricks restored and rebuilt. The new concrete frame is another extension, and the defining element that gives the house its new identity. The bold structure responds directly to the scale of the house, yet quite sensitively never actually touches the house.

‘The interstitial space, the void, located between the bricks of the ancient manufacture and the new concrete frame, ideally represents the intimate relations between past, present and future, on which the house is constantly interrogating, silently lying on the ground to which it belongs,’ says lead architect on the project Francesco Di Gregorio, who is son of Gianni Di Gregorio, founder of the more than 30-year-old practice. 

Plants will soon find their way between these interstitial spaces, softening the square columns and tumbling over the platform edges – just like Di Gregorio intended.

Each new exterior cube in the concrete frame responds to an interior space that consequently doubles in size with its mirror image reflected back at it. And the architects’ use of glass walls and exposed concrete finishes on the ceilings magnifies this illusion even further. Inside, smooth lines and clean volumes create a minimalist stage for living.

Volumes of European oak hide facilities and in-built storage and the interior brick walls of the original house have been upholstered with German fabrics, Italian ceramics and quartzite from the nearby Val Taro river.

It’s perhaps not surprising that the architect of this cinematic vision of unfolding frames, echoing exterior and interior landscapes and the weaving of nature and concrete, is in fact also an associate producer at Paris-based film production company ZID Films. And that Di Gregorio, born 1985, studied architecture in Mendrisio under Mario Botta, the master of bridging concrete geometry and organic forms in architecture.

Information

digregorioassociati.it

Two robust monoliths guard the entrance of Cornerstone House, which ushers in a new Stone Age for residential design with its succession of brusquely honed boulders positioned throughout the interior and landscaped garden. ‘It’s an ode to rugged beauty inspired by the project site itself, referencing the quarries that once typified the area,’ enthuses Chris Stanley, director of Melbourne-based Splinter Society Architecture, of the build’s founding elements in the city’s Northcote suburb.

Craned onto the block, with the two-storey structure built around them, the rocks exist in a rough-hewn state (bar markings from industrial tooling) as though mined from beneath. Referencing the house’s namesake, they articulate foundational and key aesthetic elements: interior partitions, joinery, flooring, landscaping, and even furniture in the form of a finely shaved outdoor table slab.

Harmoniously balancing the heft and substance of the natural, split-faced stone with rigorous tailoring and tapered refinement, a ribbed fabric of black steel cladding and vertical fins located on the entrance façade tautly stretch over the family home, rising to angled peaks above modular bases. Within this carapace, incorporations of natural light relieve surface density, permitting ‘a subtle sense of ornamentation’ via shadow work, notes Stanley, citing the client’s preference for a low maintenance, robust home that didn’t require objects to decorate it.

The outlines of charcoal timber slats and fine steel handrails enabled by a seven metre long skylight animate the walls and polished concrete floors with lithe pattern-play. Another skylight located above the fireplace ‘washes down the black granite wall,’ adds Stanley, highlighting the texture of its linear-sawed and chiseled features. Other clever utilisations of natural luminance include the upper level lightwell and balcony stationed between the children’s bedrooms, which enables a steady stream of sunshine to the pool and garden beneath.

Copper metallic finishes conduct a sense of warmth within with their rosy tones, as do timber-clad bedroom walls, plus a 12-seater custom recycled timber dining table, seemingly slicing myriad vertical rhythms with its horizontal mass. Further teasing the inert and animated tensions at play, the sinuous curve of the roof above the lounge and dining spaces appears to float upon glass. Combined, they grant the living area an air of calming decompression, whilst drawing views of the landscaping within – from the curved walkways and crazy paving, to the amoebic carpets of grass and ripples of the pool that marry the teal sheen of the velveteen lounges.

‘We had a lot of freedom with the design,’ reflects Stanley, noting one key mandate was equipping the home with good bones for entertaining. Leaving no stone unturned, integrated technology even includes concealed multi-coloured LED strips enabling the entertaining zones to be switched into party mode.

INFORMATION

splintersociety.com

The so-called creative revitalisation of former industrial sites is a familiar refrain in Russian city-making. Moscow already counts numerous such projects under its belt – Red October, Hlebozavod and Artplay to name a few – and a few more in the making, like the 65-hectare ZilArt project, or Renzo Piano’s power-station-soon-turned-cultural-hub, GES 2.

Russia’s post-industrial landscape, however, doesn’t end on the fringes of its capital. Anachronistic, single-industry towns remain, and regions like the Middle Urals and Siberia are dotted with neglected industrial sites. Eight hundred kilometres east of Moscow, in the highly industrialised region of Tatarstan, the very topic of industrial revitalisation was recently discussed during the second Russian Architecture Biennale for Young Architects – courtesy of programme operators and urban development experts Citymakers.

Curated by Sergei Tchoban, director of SPEECH architectural office and Tchoban Voss Architekten, and directed by Natalia Fishman-Bekmambetova, aide to the President of the Republic of Tatarstan, the biennial’s theme – giving a second life to industrial sites – was presented in the format of a competition. Applicants were asked to develop proposals for the rehabilitation of two industrial sites: a former faucet factory in the capital city of Kazan, and a grain elevator in Kazan’s river port that is still operating but in a location ripe for development opportunities.

‘We wanted to give a brief that was really belonging to clear and actual problems in Russia,’ says Tchoban, who helped devised a ratio for the new site: equal parts office and housing and smaller pockets with hotel, cultural and retail functions.

The winning proposals are not guaranteed to be built – both sites are privately-owned, and the owners were not ready to commit just yet – but the topic, and the applicants’ proposals raise important questions. How do we preserve industrial heritage while catering for modern-day needs? What are the benefits of revitalised industrial spaces, and what are the challenges? The winning proposal for the factory, by Aleksandr Alyaev, seeks to make the new, mixed-use site, permeable to its surroundings while preserving all historical buildings.

Alyaev, like all other applicants, is under 35 – an age cap that underlines the biennial’s ambition to give young architects a voice. ‘In general, age is no criteria, but it’s a good criteria for a competition because this is about supporting the young,’ says Kristin Feireiss, German design curator and co-founder of the Aedes Architecture Forum in Berlin, who sat on the jury along with Dutch architect Michiel Riedijk and Shanghai-based Philip Yuan.

In fact, giving young creatives a voice has been front-of-mind in Tatarstan for a while. Since 2015, the region has experienced a remarkable growth in green infrastructure as part of Tatarstan’s Public Spaces Development Program, led by Fishman-Bekmambetova, then aged only 24, and a team of architects averaging 25.

As part of the programme, over 350 parks and public spaces have been developed through a participatory design approach involving local communities around Tatarstan. ‘It’s becoming an inevitable process, the engagement of young people, the creation of opportunities, the role of the architect,’ says Fishman-Bekmambetova.

In Soviet times, she explains, the role of the architect was diluted amidst the low-cost, mass-scale housing construction efforts. ‘What is happening now, is we’re giving power back to the architect, and we’re giving power back to the non-corrupt, young people.’

INFORMATION

architectbiennale.ru

The Russian Architecture Biennale for Young Architects ran from 24 – 26 October 2019 in Innopolis in the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia

On the seafront of Tallinn, there’s a new neighbourhood emerging. On the site of a former miliary port and shipyard which was closed off to the public for nearly a century, Noblessner has sprung up within just a couple of years. Several contemporary apartment buildings completed last year, one industrial building has been converted into a brewery, and a design store has popped up in another. Rounding off the area with a cultural offering is the new Kai Art Center, which opened last week (20 September).

The art centre is a new home for the formerly nomadic seven-year-old Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center (ECADC), led by director Karin Laansoo. After cropping up internationally at arts festivals and gallery spaces across the world such as the Whitechapel gallery in London and Performa in New York, Laansoo's happy to have found a permanent home for ECADC in which to show four exhibitions per year.

‘It’s a small building,’ Laansoo says of their new digs, ‘but it’s very important for the city. During Soviet times Noblessner was a restricted area, so you couldn’t access the sea, but now people can come here and feel that natural connection with the ocean.' Outside, children are jumping off the edge of the pier and skateboarding across the smooth new paving stones of the public realm. Soon there will be two restaurants opening up on the ground floor of the building. ‘Last year there were no roads in the area. It has been a rapid development.'

The Noblessner area, owned by Estonian shipbuilding company BLRT Grupp – which opened a real estate arm to redevelop the land, features 12 original industrial buildings dating back to the early 20th century. A few have been restored, some are used for pop-up theatres and raves, while a few look dangerously close to collapse, with facades hanging off. The Kai Art Center’s new home is within a two-storey former submarine-making warehouse.

This particular brick and reinforced concrete building was built in 1913 by Danish engineers Christiani & Nielsen. It saw 12 submarines to completion between 1913 and 1917 for the Tsar when Estonia was part of the Russian Empire, and when the country gained independence in 1918 it started being used for shipbuilding, until 2018 when the area started regenerating.

Laansoo describes seeing horses being used to transport heavy submarine parts in archive photographs of the building – yet the architecture reflects the early twentieth century embracing modernity. Slender concrete beams support a gracefully arching roof that spans the whole breadth of the building – leaving a void of 6m high ceilings for the Kai Art Center to play within on the first floor.

‘The same Danish engineers who designed this building also worked on the nearby Seaplane Hangar – when that was built, it was the world’s largest free-standing dome. The concrete structure is really thin, beautiful and avant-garde,’ says Margit Aule, architect and one of the co-founders of KAOS Architects, who was commissioned to renovate the Kai Art Center building.

While architecturally advanced for its time, the building still required a ‘total makeover’ says Aule. ‘In some places you could see through the wall.’ Luckily, KAOS are well versed in the restoration of Estonia’s heritage buildings – and on good terms with the Tallinn Planning Department. Aule describes the whole restoration process as a ‘dialogue’.

‘The company [BLRT Grupp] were looking for an idea for the building for three years. They wanted all the architectural details to be displayed – so it made sense for it to be an exhibition space. It’s an open solution. We divided it with offices at one end, the exhibition space in the middle, then an auditorium at the other end,’ says Margit Aule. Gallery space stretching 450 sq m, an auditorium seating 100, and an office for 16 people including meeting rooms and a kitchen for Kai are planned across the whole first floor.

What the design reveals is that as well as restoration, KAOS is interested in contributing to a contemporary conversation about architecture too. ‘We know how to preserve old buildings, but what we add is always contemporary – we are not replicating,’ says Aule of their work.

The touch is sensitive, but the expression echoes the clarity of the original architects. Balancing functionality with preservation, contemporary divisions float within the architecture. Office cubicles neatly seal off meeting rooms and a bathroom, while new timber and plasterboard walls rise two thirds of the way up the original walls. Heating and ventilation is hidden, yet views of the original factory windows that cast shafts of ‘spectacular’ light into the gallery in the afternoon are left visible.

Additions are discreet, yet not without careful aesthetic consideration. Corner strip lights illuminate the new concrete and steel staircase, echoing the existing industrialism, while the slim concrete beams of the roof have been painted a light grey colour, and layered with acoustic panels to soften the sounds.

Meanwhile other elements have been left admirably in their original state. A huge skylight in the middle of the gallery casts shifting patterns of light into the space throughout the day. One structural wall in one of the offices has been left partially unpainted, revealing layers of patterned and decaying wallpaper.

It's clear that KAOS embrace the old and the new alike. The two founders – both named Margit – are currently working on the remodeling of a 13th century castle in Haapsalu, western Estonia – ‘The medieval period was a long period in Estonia so we have a lot of well preserved stone buildings.’ Here, they are inserting contemporary elements such as new Corten steel staircases and concrete slabbed exhibition spaces into the original architecture.

Their passion for merging the past with the present rings clearer still with Aule’s dream project. An old church just around the corner from their office in the Old Town of Tallinn, a walled medieval settlement protected as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site. ‘There was a fire that left it in ruins,’ Aule says of the church, ‘but in these ruins people started building their own private houses. Part of it is still used as a church and concert space. You couldn’t rebuild it, but thinking about how to solve it would be amazing.’

INFORMATION

kai.center

kaosarhitektid.ee

ADDRESS

Kai Art Center
Peetri 12
10415 Tallinn
Estonia

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With its rows of workers’ cottages, Bauhaus swimming baths, factories and power station, Luckenwalde near Berlin was once a sleepy yet productive suburb in what was then East Germany. Beyond industry, nothing much happened. When the Berlin Wall came down 30 years ago, nothing much became nothing at all. The E-Werk power station closed and became a centre for post-unification reintegration. Locals were educated in labour laws, service culture and home economics, and moved away. Luckenwalde fell into slow decline.

For Stuttgart-born artist Pablo Wendel, Luckenwalde’s proximity to Berlin and its many listed buildings presented an opportunity. In 2017, he purchased the defunct power station through his not-for-profit arts organisation Performance Electrics, and this September will turn it back on. Only this time round, it will be fuelled by wood chips recycled from cable drums instead of coal and will be reborn as a contemporary art centre, offering studio space for artists to rent and an annual exhibition programme.

That Wendel came to own an old power station is no coincidence. For the past five years, he has produced electricity from wind sculptures and guerrilla-style appropriations of electricity supply points using mobile battery packs. Pylonia, the 65m-high pylon he constructed in Stuttgart two years ago, powers his headquarters and two dozen houses in the city and has become an icon of rebellion. E-Werk, with 10,000 sq m of empty space and potential to become a functioning power station, proved irresistible to Wendel. The 39-year-old artist’s CV and his patented Kunststrom (art electricity) impressed the former owner of E-Werk, who, keen for it to benefit the local community, sold it, fully renovated, at a discount.

Wendel developed woodchip-burning machines that are compatible with the power station’s pre-existing mechanics. ‘At first, people were sceptical, but Kunststrom has moved far beyond an idea. We forget to talk about how much energy is needed to make art, how much energy museums use through lighting, cleaning, conservation and transport. They spend much more of their budget on this than they do on young artists. I’m offering art as a power supply.’ Wendel also stocks his studio in E-Werk with welding kits, milling machines, lathes and drills, which resident artists can access.

For the September opening, entitled Power Night, Wendel will roam among the labyrinth of pipes, ladders and furnaces that make up the power station’s engine room, filming as he goes. His journey will be projected on a screen to an audience in E-Werk’s Turbine Hall. In two of the three galleries, artist Nicolas Deshayes will exhibit Thames Water, a series of sculptures made of pipes through which water, heated on site, will flow. Artist Lucy Joyce created flags and photographed locals brandishing them in key spots near E-Werk. These images will go on show in Gallery 3 and the artworks will be displayed at the building’s front entrance. London’s Block Universe is bringing a roster of performance artists to the Turbine Hall and the Stadtbad (Bauhaus swimming baths) next door.

In the grounds, an 18m geodesic dome by Stuttgart architecture collective Umschichten will host events. It’s the first of five pavilions that Wendel and Helen Turner, his co-artistic director and life partner, have planned as part of the year-long E-Pavilion architecture series. Next up, next year, are structures by German designer Samuel Treindl and students from Berlin’s Universität der Künste.

‘I’ve always been interested in ephemeral art, self-destroying sculptures,’ says Wendel, who studied sculpture at London’s Royal College of Art. ‘But I struggled to make a living from non-commercial art, so I decided to industrialise myself, to set up an autonomous infrastructure. Now I can use art to power the washing machine.’ Turner, who left her position as chief curator at the UK’s Cass Sculpture Foundation to run E-Werk, adds: ‘Pablo can solve any problem with his hands.’

Initially, about a quarter of the plant will be in use, producing enough energy to power 200 Luckenwalde households. Leftover heat produced through the pyrolysis system will feed back into its eco-system to heat the space and, in future, power an agricultural programme that includes a brewery, a coffee roasting facility, aquaponic fish cultures and vertical farming.

E-Werk’s eight studios were snapped up by artists who are being priced out of Berlin. ‘There are so many artists there, it’s crazy,’ says Wendel, who had no idea where he’d go when his team of five outgrew his Stuttgart studio. ‘I came to Luckenwalde to view the Stadtbad as a studio space, then heard about E-Werk. I never expected to buy a power station!’

‘One day we hope E-Werk will power the whole of Luckenwalde as it used to,’ says Turner. ‘We see huge potential for cultural regeneration through its listed buildings beyond the Stadtbad and Hutfabrik [the 1920s hat factory designed by the German expressionist Erich Mendelsohn]. We would love to activate these buildings, too.’ 

As originally featured in the October 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*247) – on newsstands now

INFORMATION

kunststrom.com

ADDRESS

73 Rudolf-Breitscheid-Strasse
Luckenwalde

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Compared to cosmopolitan Prague and the industrial powerhouse of Brno, Zlín was just a sleepy provincial Czech town before local entrepreneur Tomáš Baťa founded his shoemaking business there in 1894. With his help, the small Moravian town played a crucial role in the former Czechoslovakia’s journey towards prosperity and innovation, which led to it becoming one of the most developed countries in the world in the 1920s and 1930s – not least thanks to the spread of modernism, a movement that dominated the architectural discourse in the country at the time, and helped inspire a series of economic and social changes.

Soon, thanks to Baťa and his Zlín-based company (spelt Bata), Czechoslovakia became one of the world’s leading footwear exporters. An admirer of Taylorism – the progressive management theory of the time, which focused on economic efficiency and worker productivity – Baťa saw huge potential in modernist architecture and embraced it for the construction of his company’s spaces. He collaborated chiefly with two architects: Vladimír Karfík, who apprenticed at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin before designing most of the Bata stores during the 1920s and 1930s; and František Lýdie Gahura, who developed standardised structural systems to design factories and employee housing for the company. Gahura would change the landscape of the city, which was admired even by Le Corbusier, who visited Zlín in 1935.

Le Corbusier arrived three years after Baťa’s sudden death. The Czech pioneer crashed in his private plane while on the way to Switzerland, throwing an entire nation into shock and mourning. While his business was taken over by his half-brother Jan Antonín, Zlín’s local authority decided to create a memorial to its hero. Gahura was commissioned to design the monument, on a prominent site overlooking the city – much like a modern Acropolis. Gahura designed the building according to modernism’s strict functionalist principles, following Baťa’s personal and business values of modesty, purity and simplicity. Inspired by the structural design Gahura developed for the Bata factories – a modular construction system based on a 6.15m x 6.15m grid of reinforced steel, infilled by bricks – the memorial is a sharp, minimalist glass box with a flat roof. It features rows of circular, load-bearing columns and a central staircase that connects its three levels. The space housed busts of Bat́a, his brother Antonín, a company co-founder who died in 1908, and their mother Anna. At the memorial’s launch on 12 July 1933, the interior was dominated by a Junkers F13 plane (the model in which Baťa crashed). The ground floor was filled with memorabilia related to Baťa and his company, while the first floor was reserved for a footwear exhibition, and the top level remained empty.

The following years were tough for the Bat́a family. Jan Antonín escaped to Brazil in 1939 as the German army moved in, while Baťa’s son Thomas moved to Canada. In 1948, communists came to power in Czechoslovakia and labelled the Bata company a capitalist enemy of the country. While Jan Antonín and Thomas continued to develop the brand abroad, the Communists nationalised the factories in Czechoslovakia. Zlín was renamed Gottwaldov (after president Klement Gottwald) and the memorial was transformed into an art gallery. Changes and additions made the monument almost unrecognisable.

The Zlín municipality started discussing restoring the structure in the 1990s. In 1995, British architecture historian Kenneth Frampton visited the city and shared his disappointment in a letter to Czech architecture historian Rostislav Švácha, saying ‘the only disillusionment was Bat́a’s memorial, which apparently did not receive good treatment’.

In 2011, the city approved the restoration project and moved the art gallery to a new space. Architect Petr Všetečka, of the Brno-based Transat studio, was tasked with the job and works finally began in 2016. ‘The memorial is an architectural gem, but the reconstruction work that took place in the 1950s ignored all of Gahura’s principles,’ he says. Všetečka worked with archival material and detailed technical research to achieve as authentic a restoration as possible. He stresses how important it was to work with Gahura’s original spirit of simplicity, while ensuring that the new structure adheres to contemporary requirements.

All later additions to the structure have been demolished. Glass sheets were reproduced to the original design, the concrete staircase had to be rebuilt, and original details, including doors, sockets and the window opening mechanisms, were repaired or replicated.

After decades of neglect, the Tomáš Baťa Memorial has now been restored to its former glory, and is due to reopen to the public in May. A replica of the original Junkers plane is being made in Canada and will take its place in the memorial to complete this sensitive and culturally important project.

As originally featured in the June 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*243)

INFORMATION

pamatnikbata.eu

ADDRESS

Nám TG Masaryka 2570
Zlín

A three-storey Georgian townhouse in London owned by a musician and a furniture designer has received an uplifting renovation filled with natural and reclaimed materials, craftsmanship and joinery from HÛT architects – an emerging London practice with a specialisation in ‘urban re-invention’.

Located in the De Beauvoir neighbourhood, the two-bedroom house is tucked within a terrace, yet with HÛT’s help, it has become one of a kind: ‘The project had to do more than provide a good looking, functional house for a young couple. We wanted to reimagine the everyday and familiar home, making it unique, possessing design integrity and establishing its own identity,’ says Rachel Eccles, Associate Director at HÛT.

Opening up the freshly painted and restored forest green front door, you’ll now be greeted by a slim light-filled entrance hall with a graphic tile flooring underfoot – instead of a cramped dark corridor. Instead of a wall, HÛT used steel-framed glazing to divide the entrance hall and living room.

The light, airy feeling continues throughout the whole open-plan ground floor. Light streams through the house from the double window at the front, all the way through to the extension out back with its roof lights and steel-framed glazing, echoing its use at the front of the house.

The layout of the house was completely reconfigured by HÛT to create the ideal space for informal entertaining – the kitchen and dining space is now much larger due to the extension and the architects cleverly made some room for the new downstairs WC along the way. The back doors swing wide open into the garden for even more space, weather permitting.

Craftsmanship has been woven into the architecture. The ‘Kolumba’ handmade black stack-bonded Petersen bricks, used for the extension and internally, were selected because of their handmade technique – shaped in wooden moulds by hand, dried and fired following craft traditions that are centuries old. Douglas fir flooring, also used to clad the staircase further adds to the lightness of the design, and in the bathrooms, a patterned terrazzo tile is a characterful design feature, as well as a practical choice.

The handcrafted ground floor fireplace is an example of how craft, architecture and design have come together in happy union at this townhouse. Reinstating the original, which had long been removed, the fireplace was designed by Granby Workshop out of a terrazzo made at their Liverpool workshop out of recycled building rubble. It’s a statement to the thoughtful beauty of the whole renovation.

‘The newly formed home encapsulates HÛT’s mission to the dedication of beautiful robust materials that stand the test of time both aesthetically and practically,’ says Eccles.

INFORMATION

hutarchitecture.com

Bracken House’s atrium roof has been altered by John Robertson Architects to bring more light into the building – just one of the respectful updates to the building designed by Sir Albert Richardson and Michael Hopkins.

In the City of London, just down the road from St Paul’s, Bracken House is a machine of an office building with a split personality. A vast metal concertina of bay windows on Friday street is countered by vertiginous red brick façades either side. Designed by Sir Albert Richardson in 1959 as the headquarters for the Financial Times (FT), the building was extensively remodeled between 1988 and 1992 by Michael Hopkins. Bracken House is what happens when a classicist meets a high tech modernist on Cannon Street.

Picking up the baton for the 21st century, John Robertson Architects (JRA) was enlisted by the owners, the Obayashi Corporation, to bring the office up to contemporary standards with a sensitive refurbishment. Instead of adding more personality to this giant, JRA approached Bracken tentatively, with respect and awe.

You can hear it in the voice of David Magyar, director at JRA, as he describes Hopkins’ central atrium as a ‘moody gothic’ version of Pierre Charret’s Maison de Verre. Here, layers of concrete and glass-brick walkways collide cinematically into a futuristic factory. It’s an architecture of productivity, imagination and industry. This personality earned Bracken House Grade II* listed status twice, first in 1987 when it became the first post-war building to gain a listing, and again in 2013.

Yet JRA weren’t afraid to rethink and redraw either. It’s easy to romanticize Bracken House, in all its gothic modern glory, yet it needed to be more functional, low energy and flexible, equipped to new standards of City working. So while restoration played an important role, ‘enhancement’ was the better way of describing JRA’s interventions. ‘It’s a balance between conservation and progression,’ says Zemien Lee, associate architect at JRA, of the interventions.

While Hopkins’ jewel of an atrium might have had the ambition of high-tech, it has the heaviness of Westminster underground station. Light only marginally penetrated through the weighty glass brick roof, suppressed further by more layers of concrete clad glass bricks. JRA had to find a way to bring more light into the magnificently dystopian, yet somewhat gloomy central atrium.

A major intervention to the ceiling grid of glass-bricks seemed unavoidable: ‘I have to be honest, we changed our minds two or three times internally on whether it should be clear outside, clear inside, fully clear, we agonised about it,’ says Magyar. So after consultation with Historic England, JRA decided to carefully cut out space for new glazed panels within the existing grid of thick glass bricks. While the intensity of the original design has decreased, the spirit echoes in a continuing rhythm, and ultimately it disperses much more light through the atrium. Elsewhere, broken glass bricks were replaced with originals from a leftover stash, but as the exact type of bricks are no longer made, replicas replace broken bricks in some places – ‘it’s the devil’s own job to repair them,’ says Magyar.

The Kahnian material palette of concrete, stainless steel, timber, portland stone and terrazzo, was preserved and built upon across the whole design. Externally, the Hollington Staffordshire pink sandstone cladding – chosen to reflect the colour of the FTs salmon pink pages – was repaired and cleaned up, while lanterns and copper roofs were either restored or faithfully replicated. In the reception, expanded by JRA into a more welcoming space, new matte finish American Cherry handrails are a more contemporary alternative to Hopkins’ original polished handrails of the same material. Limestone replaces portland stone while bringing the same colour and hue. Bronze screens have been replicated yet subtly redesigned to fit the enlarged space.

The glass lift cars that whisk you through the core of the atrium were carefully dismantled to be updated, ‘a bit like servicing an old motor car,’ says Magyar, who picked apart the ‘antediluvian’ lift buttons and controls. Lee designed new signage for the lifts with an arrangement of geometric metal extrusions that echo the cadence of the Hopkins façade. ‘It was about modernisation, but nothing screams at you,’ says Magyar.

The listed status of the building meant that every move JRA made was under scrutiny from Historic England, the City of London, and the 20th Century Society. The toughest cookie however was the surveyor to the fabric of St Paul’s, the fervent executor of the St Paul’s Heights Grid. He demanded verification to the 100mm across every inch of the roof design – not even a plant could grow higher above the grid.

‘It’s not loud architecture, it’s a quiet but confident architecture’

Despite these constraints (all architects love a good constraint anyway), the roof is where JRA have made their most bold contribution to the design. A rooftop garden had been part of Hopkins’ original designs, yet it was never realized, which gave JRA the opportunity to move beyond ‘enhancement’ into the realms of pure creation (albeit under the beady eye of the St Paul’s surveyor). Palazzo Carignano by Guarino Guarini in Turin was chosen as a starting point, for its architectural influence on Richardson’s first building design. Yet instead of looking at the rational plan or the austere brick façade, Lee stepped into the Sala del Parlamento Subalpino and looked up to the decorative baroque ceiling. The characterful and coiffed curves found there were stripped back and simplified into a sinuous and softly sloping promenade and planting bed scheme – 21,500 sq ft of sleepy Roberto Burle Marx with panoramic views.

The rooftop will be a lunchtime destination for FT employees who, after setting up camp in Southwark for 30 years, have now made a triumphant return back to the building filled with history – the FT was once printed on site at Bracken House in the age of the Richardson design. A lot has changed since then. Perkins and Will was in charge of the interior fit-out for the offices (capacity 2000), working to a subdued colour palette of greys, in collaboration with JRA’s restoration and the history of the building.

Much of JRA’s work in the offices was about creating better links between the Richardson and Hopkins parts of the building, and interestingly, redesigning a Hopkins lighting scheme that was listed for its effect on the exterior view of the building by night. All the bespoke fluorescent lights were replaced with standard LED ones, and the orientation of the lights was shifted to create a similarly dynamic effect by night and still express the structure of the building. ‘It pays to investigate the detail,’ says Magyar.

JRA has developed an eye for a restoration – elsewhere within the Square Mile, the team recently refurbished the Grade II* listed Daily Express building on Fleet Street and were in charge of re-cladding Chamberlin Powell and Bon’s Grade II listed Great Arthur House on the Golden Lane Estate. Bracken House was more of an architectural challenge, mainly because of the high architectural esteem and legacy of the building.

‘As a firm we do take quite a contextual approach, but we do like to be original and respond to it in some way – sometimes you respond in a more flamboyant way and sometimes you pay respect. What we’ve tried to do here is pay respect. If there’s anything that I hope we’ve achieved is that nothing jars, that it enhances the space, and what we have cut off here, we hope it breathes a little more there,’ says Magyar. ‘It’s not loud architecture, it’s a quiet but confident architecture.’ 

INFORMATION

For more information visit the John Robertson Architects website

A derelict industrial building in the Scottish capital has been redeveloped by Page \ Park architects for the newly expanded print-making studio Edinburgh Printmakers. From repurposed materials, exposed structures and considered interventions, the design finds a balance between preservation, adaptation and new ideas – all preparing the institution for a whole new chapter of creativity and production.

As the only surviving structure of the 19th-century Castle Mills industrial complex, the building has a fascinating history that was worth celebrating. It was once the headquarters of the North British Rubber Company (NBRC) – known as the birthplace of the Hunter welly boot, where over three thousand people were employed at its height and mills worked around the clock to supply rubber boots for the army during the First World War.

In an act of respect, the architects used the vast original building as a template from which to build on – carefully extending and creating within it new spaces for two galleries, a shop, café, education space, staff offices, environmentally controlled archives and eight creative industries units – as well as a large print studio that forms the core of the Edinburgh Printmakers activity.

In fact, many parts were left as untouched as possible – the print-making studio takes pride of place in the triple-height former joinery workshop of the NBRC where the original muscular cast iron structure and timber trusses have been exposed, and historic joist pockets and traces of paint have been retained.

Materials found on site were repurposed or redesigned – old glazed bricks discovered in the basement now serve as the café servery counter, and tables have been built of salvaged timber doors. In these details, history comes to life again.

A series of subtle adaptations follow the spirit of the industrial design, yet dramatically improve the building for its new function. The addition of a new central courtyard brings people together at the heart of the design, while a new circulation strategy helps people to navigate, allowing them to explore the whole structure.

Meanwhile some ‘precise interventions’ were also necessary, and symbolic, for the Edinburgh Printmakers’ new chapter – and to mark the start of a new life for the NBRC building. The entrance, for example, needed a bold new design to attract people in, revealing the café and shop to the street.

No public institution is complete these days without a tantalising art commission. Here, Page \ Park worked in collaboration with visual artist Calum Colvin to design the ‘EPscope’ – a synthesis of a periscope and kaleidoscope made up of images of products made by the rubber company that create a collision of patterns across the space. 

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Page / Park website

‘It’s definitely a bit of a tardis,’ says artist Conrad Shawcross of his working studio and family house in Hackney, which he has conceptualised slowly over 15 years. Tucked between an old four-storey building and a low terrace of houses, the land – which harboured an unlisted ramshackle Victorian shed with no street access – was purchased cheap. ‘I bought it in 2007 as a ruin when this area was ‘murder mile’ and I never looked back,’ says Shawcross. After obtaining a small alleyway off a neighbour to connect the site to the street, his aim was to make as much of the site as possible, while also preserving the history of the existing Victorian structure ‘built in 1899 as a stable for horses for the number 38 bus, when it was horse-driven.’

‘I was ruminating for a while on what to do with it. To fully understand a space and do something really well, an idea really takes years to evolve,’ he says. Numerous sketches and a 3D model later, Shawcross enlisted one of his studio staff, a Part two architecture student at the time, Richard John Andrews to work on the plans for submission. When Andrews graduated and set up his own studio, the pair continued to collaborate.

The site has transformed over the years – in all directions. It has buried down into a basement with a modular moveable ceiling. Up into a double height studio with a huge pulley system, and out into a five-bedroom family home – for his wife and three children – with outdoor terraces, bespoke carpentry and traces of Shawcross’ geometric designs everywhere, often in Corten. ‘There was no way we could have got more space out of the site,’ he says.

Creative resourcefulness is what this project is built of: ‘When you build a house, the amount of materials that go into it is terrifying from an environmental point of view – the number of lorries that arrived... So I had this guilt about destroying it,’ says Shawcross of the Victorian shed, ‘but I had to build a home for my family.’

Shawcross took every opportunity to save materials from the original site and offcuts from his own work to reuse as material for the design. All the old timber and bricks from the shed were repurposed where possible. Original cobble-stones slowly transition to smooth concrete flooring, salvaged oak sleepers form a cantilevering stairway up to the first floor, and an exterior brick wall was left standing as a divider between studio and home, and a reminder of the past.

Tawny-coloured wooden doors and storage shelves line rooms and corridors: ‘I work with builders who are here all the time, so a lot of it was done along the way – it happened quite naturally,’ says Conrad of the timber joinery. ‘I found a really good carpenter from Somerset, Rob Griffin, who was staying with us and we built all these doors – otherwise we found it all in scrap yards or bought it from wood recycling centres. All the doors were made by hand by him, unless they were already here, and he worked on the reclaimed beams.’

Shawcross also used his own studio and its tools as a resource – the Corten tiles that line the roof of the brick building, for example, were all designed, fabricated and weathered in-house. This also put the designs in the local council's good-books. ‘[The studio] uses metalwork, fabrication and design work all day long, and that’s reflected on the outside of the building. All of the bespoke elements within the space have had the same rigour and process as Conrad would apply to his sculptures, and that was really successful with the planners and the local council,’ says Andrews.

The planning permission process was consequently fairly smooth: ‘What they really liked was that it was an unusual proposal – splicing an old building with a contemporary building. It was about retaining history, but also about building a family home, and a studio increasing employment. It’s a Hackney success story for makers,’ says Shawcross.

The studio is the busy, beating heart of the site. A vast northeast-facing skylight makes the double-height space feel like an open-air courtyard – light is diffused and constant throughout the day but never direct, says Shawcross. Here you’ll find an assortment of experiments, models and art works in waiting – a design for one of the 1960s letters on the top of Centre Point auctioned for homelessness prevention charity Shelter, three models of the Dulwich Park sculpture, and a maquette of his Crossrail commission for Liverpool street station titled A chord falling into silence.

The tiled studio floor doubles up as a modular ceiling, that can be lifted up and rolled back to create a triple height space bringing flexibility to the fabrication process: ‘If you want to build something 9m tall and 6 tonnes heavy, we could do it – it just has to get out of the door. The actual constraint is the gate, which is 3m wide, but you can’t really put anything more than 3m wide on a lorry anyway, so it’s a good constraint,’ says Shawcross.

In the basement, there’s a vast CNC machine for cutting organic shapes bought in an auction in Glasgow, storage and trolleys of tools. Two studio staff, Bob and Sam, are busy grinding and welding at work stations separated by plastic curtains. While in the staff kitchen, a few studio workers sit for a cup of tea at a long central table flanked with benches. Here, the flooring tiles are made of offcuts from Shawcross’ work for the Royal Academy courtyard, The Dappled Light of the Sun.

‘Lots of echoes of my work have gone into the building.’ says Shawcross. Once you see one, you’ll be able to see subtle variations of his mathematical, geometric, and often Corten, stamp everywhere. His Moiré effect pattern – seen in works such as The Optic Cloak in Greenwich – has been used to construct the front gate, while a patterned first-floor balustrade of a balcony overlooking the studio is layered with distinctly Shawcross-style motifs.

As well as artistic, the house is personal too. The master bedroom is a floating mezzanine reached by a wooden ladder in a larger space where his wife, textile artist Carolina Mazzolari, is busy at work on several creations. Climbing up to the top, one emerges to a huge wall of glazing overlooking a small terrace and a view across London – waking up here must be a special experience. ‘The sunrise is perpendicular to this window – it really gets the morning light coming in. I’m not someone who likes darkness in the morning,’ says Shawcross.

While the site is a mesh of history, contemporary art and personal desires built of a wide material palette of concrete, Victorian brick, cobbles, reclaimed timber and Corten tiles, the consistency lies in Shawcross’ aesthetic that is present everywhere, wrapping up the architecture of the studio and house that seems to unravel and expand organically as your explore it.

INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Conrad Shawcross website and the Richard John Andrews website

An art nouveau villa in northern Italy with a history of varied uses and architectural amendments has been redesigned by Oasi Architects into a house for a young family with three children.

Once surrounded by green parkland, the decorative ‘Liberty’ period villa in Busto Arsizio, built in the early 1900s, gradually shifted from suburb to centre as the city expanded. While its grounds were given up to urban infill with a warehouse and a neighbouring building added in the 60s, it retained its poise in the face of change.

Multiple interior modifications over the years as the building changed hands and functions meant that to return the house to its former glory, Oasi Architects had to take a tough approach to bring it back to residential use. For a period of time, it had been used as a rehabilitation centre for teenagers so much of the interior had been remodelled.

‘The biggest challenge of the project was the attempt to bring to life the hidden spatiality of the house through a subtracting process,’ say the architects, who also had to convince the client that a partial interior demolition was the best way to approach a restoration.

Architects Pietro Ferrario and Francesco Enea Castellanza worked to ‘open, remove, cut, peel, remove, and unveil’ parts of the building to create the modern and functional design now found inside – that also celebrates the gracious character and elegant architectural details of the original villa.

The space across the three-storey house was stripped back to reveal the original wooden roof structure, then remodeled vertically to create a wide central corridor. The floors were re-cut to define new light-filled interior spaces, unique in shape at each level and connected with a renovated central staircase with new steel handrail – just one of Oasi’s trademark artistic twists.

Each floor has its own identity, brought to life with new material details. Industrial cement was cast across the whole ground floor, which becomes a canvas for communal activity. Meanwhile, the first floor, featuring bedrooms and bathrooms, brings richer colours, carpets combining reused and new material and mirrors to expand the perception of space.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Oasi Architects website

Handling the relationship between old and new can be a tricky task in architecture and achieving the right balance between the two is an often elusive goal; yet the masterful approach Hasa Architects took in its latest residential project, an apartment interior design in a listed terrace in London's Mayfair, ticks all the right boxes. 

When Hasa directors, Mark Stevens and Charlotte Harris, were called upon to refresh a space within a Grade II-listed Georgian building in one of London's most affluent districts, they knew they had a real challenge on their hands. ‘It can often be difficult working with old structures, especially listed buildings’, says Stevens. ‘Understanding the history and context is fundamental. We always look to retain and repair the original fabric and our approach to any alteration is limited, with subtle changes that can be reversed'. 

The relatively new studio was pleased to secure the commission, having pitched against several other practices. ‘The property was tired and in a state of disrepair,’ explains Stevens, ‘so we knew that any intervention would make a significant transformation. We were particular interested in the generous floor-to-ceiling height on the principal floor and by the level of the natural daylight. We wanted to remove the intrusive alterations that had been introduced and to return these rooms back to their original proportions'.

The project, commissioned by owner Sundip Vyas, who also acted as the developer, revolved around the transformation of a first floor flat into an elegant, modern private home. Keen to work with the existing character of the architecture, the team worked hard at removing years’ worth of paint and restoring original details and decor, such as mouldings and the dentilled cornice.

Now, a restrained design enriches the space by working with the historical elements, rather than trying to upstage them. Refreshed original features sit side by side harmoniously with contemporary, minimalist cabinetry and marble and metal work. ‘It was important that the programme of inhabitation not dominate the architectural space', explain Hasa. ‘This is successfully achieved through the use of minimal interventions in the form of freestanding joinery, panelling, and sliding and folding planes.‘

By inserting a mezzanine floor and a sharply designed staircase, the architects capitalised on space by placing the master bedroom, which is lined in solid American oil-finished white oak, upstairs. Directly below is the kitchen and dining area (featuring an Arabescato marble island), leading through to a generous entry hall and the majestic, high ceilinged living room beyond. Off the bedroom on the mezzanine is a walk-in wardrobe and en suite bathroom. The staircase also connects to a second, smaller bedroom at the rear of the property. 

The new elements can be read clearly as such, while an overall pared-down approach and neutral colour palette underline Hasa Architects' delicate touch. The apartment is currently on the market.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the website of Hasa Architects

The Belgian band, GOOSE, see their surroundings as an integral part of their music making. Their new headquarters, Safari Studios, designed by architect Steven Vandenborre, occupies a former garage building in the centre of the city of Kortrijk. Carefully restored and converted into a modern space for music production, this new multi-use interior now comprises three recording studios, a kitchen-living area, and an expansive ground floor dedicated to exhibitions and artistic performances.

The project emerged as a close collaboration between the musicians and the architect. Both inside and out, the design concept draws on the character of the original building – the industrial nature is preserved and elements from the former garage have been given new, unexpected functions. ‘We fell in love with the building immediately, and it was very important for us to keep its spirit instead of invading it. We wanted to explore its potential and create something very personal at the same time,' says Mickael Karkousse, the lead singer of the band. ‘The way the studios turned out is, I think, a good metaphor for who we are, and how we work, the four of us.'

The upper levels are where the band members – Mickael Karkousse, Dave Martijn, Tom Coghe, and Bert Libeert – work. Rendered in a muted colour palette, inspired by Bauhaus, the interior retains the original structure, while any new details and furniture are highlighted through the use of carefully composed contrasts. Light penetrates every space, and a large window overlooks the main recording studio from the kitchen.

There is something theatrical about the way the levels are composed, and Vandenborre refers to Lars von Trier’s film, Dogville, when talking about the organisation of the spaces and how they relate to one another. ‘We removed parts of the ceilings in some of the spaces, and although independent from one another, they remain interconnected and create something very abstract,' he explains.

There is appropriate distance between the workspaces and the exhibition area, but GOOSE sees no borders when it comes to creating. On the ground floor, a wide sliding glass door acts as a façade, and this space is seen as an ‘urban stage’. ‘One day, we will put a food truck here, and with the glass door open, there will be no distinction between the street and the interior,’ says Mickael. Here, the former garage is enclosed in glass, and acts as an expansion of the exhibition space.

Safari Studios seem to be the perfect home for the band’s impressive collection of musical instruments and technical equipment, which inhabit the new space so naturally. Known for their avant-garde sound, the four musicians have been deeply engaged with today's cross-pollinating cultural scene, and their new studios further express this philosophy. With its distinctive glass façade, Safari Studios is welcoming and open, hinting at all the exciting things about to happen there. 

The architect carefully restored the existing structure into a multi-use space focusing on music production.

The architect worked in close collaboration with his musician clients during the design development.

Safari Studios comprises three recording studios, a kitchen-living area...

...and an expansive ground floor dedicated to exhibitions and artistic performances. 

The space features a muted colour palette, inspired by the Bauhaus School.

Meanwhile, the interior retains the original structure, as well as some details.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the website of Steven Vandenborre

When diehard modernists dream about country life, they tend to conjure images of Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House outside Chicago and Philip Johnson’s iconic house of glass in Connecticut. Harry Allen, a multidisciplinary New York-based designer, appreciates the allure of those particular archetypes. For years, he nurtured the fantasy of escaping to the city to a sublime modern box nestled discreetly in an idyllic glade.

However, Allen’s path towards Miesian splendour took an abrupt detour when he met his partner, John Holm, an estate gardener in upstate New York. Holm’s 19th-century cottage in suburban Bedford was charming to be sure, but modernist rigour was not among its virtues. When the time came to renovate the erstwhile schoolhouse, Allen entertained the idea of a radical architectural intervention, but he ultimately eschewed that strategy in favour of a more subtle approach.

‘This house has great bones and integrity,’ says the designer. ‘We didn’t want to do a traditional renovation, but we also didn’t want to blow out the back of the house and put in a glass wall. If you go down that road, you can wind up with a really bad hybrid.’ Allen chose to nudge the house in a modern direction by maintaining the basic structure and exterior but tweaking the character of the interior spaces with plays on colour and material. He gave each room a different atmosphere and personality by emphasising one particular surface material or colour.

In the dining room, for example, Allen abstracted the familiar elements of American farmhouse vernacular. He applied the same red oak planks to the floors, walls and ceiling, created an effect along the lines of a pristine Japanese sauna. He then underscored the room’s peculiar quality, at once familiar and unfamiliar, with a dramatic play on scale – a French farm table dwarfed beneath a monumental Japanese paper lantern.

As a final gesture to punctuate the highly personal, over-the-rainbow ambience, Allen hung a sculpture by Norwegian artist Rune Olsen of two stag heads – one licking the other – made of masking tape wrapped over a wire armature. ‘It’s our riff on the traditional hunting lodge theme,’ he says.

The entry to the house has a more ethereal quality, with walls and ceiling painted in pale sky blue. The floor is paved in bluestone, an abundant local material that was used to construct the existing patio. ‘I brought the stone inside to establish an indoor/outdoor connection,’ Allen explains. ‘The tiles in the entry are honed, as opposed to the more rustic ones outside. I like the juxtaposition of the raw and the cooked.’

Allen’s palette swings towards the scuro end of the spectrum in the living room, which is bathed in various shades of brown. Once again, he nodded in the direction of the traditional country style but then subverted the aesthetic with modern flourishes. Midcentury Danish chairs, for instance, are unexpectedly upholstered in plaid fabrics. Wainscoting runs along the walls, but it is applied in a non-traditional pattern of panels rather than strip to give it a ‘more abstract modern flavour’, in Allen’s words. The colourful striped carpet that anchors the room echoes the striped business-suit fabric by Paul Smith on the custom sofa.

Like much of the furniture, the artwork that hangs in the living room is an idiosyncratic assemblage of pieces inherited from the couple’s families, and includes a painting by 19th-century French artist Rosa Bonheur and a 1920s English pastoral scene of undetermined pedigree. ‘This is our Old Masters room,’ Allen says with a laugh.

The decorative pendulum swings back to chiaro in the master bedroom, where the brick walls and beamed ceiling are coated in white paint, and the floor is covered in blond wood. A 1960s addition, the bedroom projects out from the original structure into the garden. Allen’s serence, neutral palette and avoidance of strong patterns defer to the garden views, as does his choice of artwork – a large digital print of a moth by photographer Douglas Scheer.

The new kitchen, which was the catalyst for the renovation, is a symphony of metallic tones and materials played out in stainless-steel tiles and appliances, pewter-coloured Corian surfaces, and a crown of copper pots that belonged to Holm’s mother. Like the gardens, the kitchen is the domain of Allen’s partner, who was a classically trained French chef before he turned his attention to flowers and trees. ‘I never even had a plant before I met John,’ Allen confesses. ‘I’m all about the design of the container, and he’s about what goes in the container.’

So in the end Allen may not have acquired the sublime glass box of his dreams, but his good standing in the fellowship of modernists remains intact. ‘The house feels like an expression of my sensibility as a designer,’ he says, ‘but it’s more than that. It represents the grounding that John has brought to my life.’ §

As originally featured in the January 2009 issue of Wallpaper* (W*118)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Harry Allen Design website

Danish structural engineer Povl Ahm worked on some extraordinary projects in his lifetime. After joining the London office of Ove Arup & Partners in 1952, he collaborated on Coventry Cathedral with Basil Spence and St Catherine’s College in Oxford with his countryman Arne Jacobsen; later the pair worked together again on the Danish Embassy in London.

One of Ahm’s greatest, though lesser known, achievements is his own house in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, which has won a Wallpaper* Design Award for Best Remastered. Ahm built an exceptional home designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, whom he got to know during the early design stages of Utzon’s Sydney Opera House, which also involved Ove Arup & Partners. Ahm asked Utzon to design a house in England and the architect obliged, sending his plans over in the early 1960s for his friend to work with.

The original Ahm House – Utzon’s only completed project in the UK – was gently pushed widthways into the modestly sloping suburban site. From the street, the house is enigmatic, with the garage and entrance forming a buffer between the public and private realm. But as you step inside the entrance hall and ascend a series of steps, Ahm’s pavilion dramatically unfolds. This linear lodge of brick, concrete and glass turns its back upon the neighbours to one side but opens itself dramatically to the rear gardens.

The relationship between the living spaces and adjoining terraces is reminiscent, along with the materials, of Utzon’s own family house near Helsingør in Denmark, which the architect completed in two phases during the 1950s. The highlight of the Ahm House – which reveals itself as you step around the central brick hearth and chimney breast – is the generous sitting room. Here, floor-to-ceiling banks of glass connect with the gardens and throw natural light on the brickwork, the tiled floors and the coffered ceiling, which combines concrete beams with strips of pine.

‘We loved the character of the materials as soon as we saw the house,’ says its new owner, who shares it with her husband and their young child. ‘For us it was also about the connections to the greenery and the trees. It does feel like a secret garden.’ Having acquired the house and immersed themselves in Utzon’s history, the owners approached architecture and design studio Coppin Dockray to work on the interiors and a super-sensitive restoration. Founders Sandra Coppin and Bev Dockray have experience of heritage commissions such as apartments in Berthold Lubetkin’s 1938 Highpoint buildings in London, and a 1960s house in Wiltshire, designed by architect David Levitt for another Arup partner.

‘Anyone who comes into this house responds to it in a very intuitive and emotional way,’ says Coppin of the Ahm House. ‘You don’t need to know the back story to realise that it is special. The building was in good condition, so for us it was more about the interiors. The main challenge was responding to the living room as a space, and furnishing it in a way that gives you that all-important primary reading of the house.’

Coppin Dockray saw the room as a combination of ‘a major and a minor space’. The major area is around the  replace, where they created a snug seating zone around the hearth. The minor is at the opposite end, two steps up, where they created a secondary seating area looking into the garden, partly defined by a bespoke circular rug by Michael Boyd and a selection of Danish pieces, including twin ‘Egg’ chairs by Jacobsen. ‘Because the house is orthogonal and linear we wanted to introduce curved elements that read within the grid,’ says Dockray, ‘curves that the eye can glide around.’

The Danish theme continues into the dining area and kitchen, where the table and chairs are by Hans Wegner. The kitchen itself is largely original, with Coppin Dockray having taken the gentlest of touches to lighting updates and occasional restoration. The same is true of the spaces beyond, including the sequence of four original bedrooms, where any missing joinery was carefully reinstated.

Coppin Dockray also worked, in a similar vein, on the wing that Ahm added in the 1970s to a sympathetic design by Ulrik Plesner. Creating an L-shaped formation, orientated towards the garden, Ahm built this part of the house for his two teenage sons. It now houses the master bedroom and bathroom, complete with a sauna, and a dressing room. An underground link between the two portions of the house, added by the previous owners (the house was sold by Ahm’s widow a few years after his death in 2005), has been redesigned as a playroom and a library.

Warm and welcoming, the Ahm House now serves as a family home once again, a place where architecture and nature coincide, as they do in the best of Utzon’s work.

As originally featured in the February 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*239)

See more from the Wallpaper* Design Awards here

INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Coppin Dockray website

Late period modernism didn’t make many inroads into British residential architecture, which is why this courtyard house in south London is such a find.

Blending in a combination of Scandinavian scale and atmosphere with a Californian relationship to the outdoors, the house is small but serenely finished and decorated, thanks to the extensive intervention of a design-savvy new owner.

Designer and interiors specialist Jason Maclean has a broad portfolio. After developing a number of upscale interior projects, including a couple of major collaborations with Eley Kishimoto, Maclean branched out into The House at Hautefage, a small-scale ‘creative retreat’ in Lot-et-Garrone in France featuring specially commissioned wallpaper by Eley Kishomoto and a scattering of iconic pieces of modernist furniture. (We liked it so much we named it Best Rural Retreat in our 2006 Design Awards.)

After returning from a scouting trip to Palm Springs, where he got ‘totally inspired by the architecture’, Maclean struggled to find a suitable house to buy in the UK until a friend urged him to check The Modern House, the online estate agency that specialises in 20th century architecture. ‘I saw this house on the website on Friday and went to look at it on the Saturday,’ says Maclean. ‘I knew then that I had to have it.’

The property was an anomaly. Set high on Denmark Hill, it was a classic piece of infill architecture, built by the architect Martin Crowley for his own use in 1979. Crowley, long since retired to France, was a diehard modernist of the old school, who trained in the 1950s at the peak of the International Style’s global influence, before working with designer Robin Moore Ede on projects like the refurbishment of Mayfair’s Curzon cinema. Crowley designed his own house to be compact and modest, filling a small plot behind a Georgian townhouse.

Carefully planned down to the last square foot, it was arranged around a structural grid to create three identically sized bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and a living area. This was ascetic retreat, accessed from a backstreet and looking inwards onto a verdant courtyard garden.

By the time Maclean arrived, most of the original charm had been lost. ‘It was really tired and had been badly updated.’ While all the doors and light fittings were the original items, a ‘bad 1990s kitchen’ and slate floors had diluted the precision of Crowley’s original vision.

Seizing the opportunity, Maclean got to work. ‘I made sure I started from scratch and got rid of everything,’ he explains. Along with a new kitchen, hand-built by Maclean with typical precision, the designer also made a new dining table and reinstated the original terracotta floor tiles. Then it was time to call on his contacts to bring some new pieces into the rooms. ‘I’ve been doing interiors for years and I have quite a network of friends in the trade,’ he says. The result is a treasure trove of unexpected items and pieces of furniture, from a wall-mounted model of a 1950s housing estate, found on London’s Brick Lane, to objects by Jean Prouvé, Charlotte Perriand and George Nelson.

The compact square room houses a Prouvé daybed from the 1950s, while the living room contains a string chair, a once fashionable mid-century accessory, by American designer Alan Gould – this was sourced, unsurprisingly, in Palm Springs. There’s also an early chair by Cees Braakman, the Dutch designer who brought Eames-inspired bent ply to a European audience through furniture makers Pastoe. The neat rolltop desk in the study next to the entrance courtyard is by George Nelson, while the kitchen features a set of bent steel wall-lights by Charlotte Perriand. The living room sofa is by Kho Liang Le, the man responsible for the original furnishings at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport when it was fitted out back in 1968.

Despite this treasure trove of pieces, the house is not a sterile shrine to midcentury modernism. The restoration and new additions benefit from Maclean’s easy touch and the light that pours in from the courtyard garden. Outside the floor-to-ceiling glass of the living space and master bedroom is a thicket of dark green bamboo, which helps screen the towering Georgian terraces that march up Camberwell Grove behind the house. The garden is framed by a sculptural arrangement of black I-beams that extend out from the structure, Case Study-style.

From the outside, the house could hardly be more different than its grand near-neighbours. The front façade is nearly non-existent, and the single-storey structure effectively disappears behind the high front gates and brick walls. To the casual observer, the site looks like nothing more than an extension of the scrubby garages that accompany the piecemeal post-war development on the other side of the road. But that could all change: the original plans included a second storey, which was thwarted by lack of funds. However, it’s a project that Maclean hopes to undertake soon.

Right now, though, all his energy is being directed at the next instalment in a projected series of new The House at locations, a highly serviced Belle Epoque villa in Cannes that will be stuffed full of Boffi, B&B Italia, maids, chefs and helicopter access. It may be a world away from co-ordinating a new form of Riviera high living, but the London courtyard house plays a vital role in keeping Maclean sane. ‘It’s like a little retreat,’ he says. ‘I love coming back here.’

As originally featured in the April 2008 issue of Wallpaper* (W*109)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Studio Maclean website

What hutongs are to China, hanoks are to Korea. These clusters of traditional low-rise family houses have evolved over centuries, tailor-made to the cultural and climatic needs of their particular territory. In recent decades, though, they have been rapidly disappearing to make way for modern developments.

Among Seoul’s urban mix of scales and styles, few hanoks remain intact after the city experienced – like many of its Asian counterparts – a century of wars and rapid urbanisation. As a result, a historic wooden hanok house is an extremely rare property to own, and the old, upscale neighbourhood of Bukchon is one of the few examples of hanok clusters still around.

Savvy locals know that when the opportunity comes up to buy a hanok – or land within a hanok cluster – it’s a once-in-a-lifetime project. So when Seoul-based designer Teo Yang was approached by a client with a plan to rebuild a hanok in Bukchon as a modern home, he understood the importance of working with such precious architectural heritage.

‘Even though Korea has lost much of its heritage over time, the studio’s goal is to find innovation and space based on our tradition,’ he says. ‘And hanoks are a key source of inspiration, where we can bridge present and past, especially in a country where forward-thinking and cutting-edge development is celebrated. I believe preservation and further study of hanok houses are crucial to keep our original local spirit alive.’

The project involved reconstructing a hanok that once sat on the site but was demolished in the early 2000s. The client, a businessman, property developer and keen art collector, spotted the plot in Bukchon and jumped at the opportunity. His aim was to use the land to build his own contemporary home, while maintaining the old structure’s footprint and traditional Joseon dynasty style. ‘The client wanted to enjoy the tradition, but made it clear that he did not want to live in an 18th-century house,’ says Yang.

‘We had to create a space where tradition and present coexist. So we generated a very distinctive design for the two different floors, creating a traditional atmosphere for the upper floor, and a more Western, modern atmosphere for the lounge downstairs.’

The central courtyard is one of the most prominent areas of the house. As is traditional, the space is an extension of the ground floor, blending indoors and out. Here, Yang gave history a modern twist, steering clear of the customary heavily decorated courtyard doors and opting for clean, floor-to-ceiling glass openings, highlighting the visual connections between the interior and the outdoors.

This transparency brings in natural light, and also encourages self-reflection, says Yang. ‘Confucius believes that the house is a reflection of its owner. By looking at one’s house, one gets the chance to think about one’s own behaviour and by having full-height transparent glass windows, the house allows its dweller to look at it from all angles.’

A reading room was added off the courtyard, as a nod to the historical ‘men’s quarter’, a part of the house where Joseon dynasty nobility would retire to study, write poetry and relax. The remaining rooms surrounding the courtyard on the ground floor include a study, a master bedroom, an open-plan kitchen and dining area, a bathroom, a living room and the entrance foyer. The basement contains a media lounge, a wine cellar, a walk-in wardrobe and a garage.

Expert artisans were employed to carry out the house’s intricate woodworking – and everything, from treating and drying the timber to the final, meticulous sizecutting and joinery work, was done by hand.

The architect also favoured more traditional finishes and detailing where possible, such as using handmade black and patterned tiles when constructing the garden walls, leatherwork for the door handles, and flower motif-decorated doors, all produced by specialist carpenters.

The owner’s personal art collection, ranging from historical Korean earthenware dating from 5AD to a painting by Julian Opie, is carefully framed in various parts of the house. The crown jewel, a series of abstract Dansaekhwa paintings from the 1970s, is located on the lower level, where celebrated minimalist Korean artist Lee Ufan’s painting From Line also hangs.

Offering a balanced blend of Korean history and modern comforts, this hanok’s rebirth is a rare treat – and part of a growing trend among Seoul’s culture-savvy crowd. Yet, simply owning a hanok is not enough to truly bring this architectural legacy back to life, cautions Yang. ‘It is important to know and study the originality of the hanok and respect its roots before renovation starts,’ he says. An approach he has followed to the letter in his Bukchon masterpiece.

As originally featured in the October 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*235)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Teo Yang Studio website

Although the 21st century has been leaving its stamp on Rome – think the Ara Pacis Museum by Richard Meier & Partners Architects, and Zaha Hadid’s National Museum of 21st Century Arts, not to mention a posse of spiffy new bars, restaurants and boutique – Romans remain, for the most part, an intransigent bunch of traditionalists.

Yet, when a 15th-century building's apartment interior design, a stone’s throw from the Spanish Steps, was in need of a contemporary makeover, Italian architects couldn’t have been keener to make suggestions. The owner, Franceso ‘Cecco’ Bandini, the raffish son of an Italian engineer and a Peruvian diplomat’s daughter, threw open his doors and listened to their ideas.

‘One architect suggested erecting a fountain in the centre of the living room. I said, “OK, and thank you for coming.”’ Recalls Bandini, who didn’t object to radical, as long as it was modern. Enter Michele Mole of Nemesi Studio, whose early drawings for the property looked like a set for Star Trek. Bandini was looking for something to reflect his bachelor-boy, hard-partying lifestyle. ‘Until I moved here, I was living in my parents’ home, which is very traditional: floral patterns, parquet floors and lots of wood panelling. I knew I wanted to live differently and Michele helped me do so.

The project took the best part of four years to complete, testing Bandini and Mole’s client-architect relationship. ‘The hardest part was explaining the concept and finding the workers who would build it. Every part of the project had to be individually designed and realised by hand,’ explains Mole, whose Rome-based practice has created the interiors for a select clutch of apartments and buildings in Italy, and also worked as consultants with such luminous international firms as Santa Monica’s Morphosis, Foster + Partners in London and Rem Koolhaas’s OMA in Rotterdam.

Mole’s first step was to divest the 320 sq m apartment of its old-fashioned look: a warren of rooms with wall-to-wall carpeting, a mirrored gazebo dining room and a kitsch gold bathroom – the vestiges of 1960s interior design courtesy of Renzo Mongiardino. Then Mole installed stainless steel for the floors, ceilings and walls over three levels. No two pieces of steel are the same and the folding, jack-knifed, squiggly surfaces were all custom-made on site. The staircase, perilous, floating and angular, turns into what Bandini calls his ‘own personal catwalk’ and took six months to build. ‘I wasn’t happy with the time this project took, but it was offering a very particular way of living. It was experimental,’ explains Mole. The only off-the-shelf element he allowed was the windows.

Throughout the space, abstract shapes function as furniture. In the kitchen, the sink and the job rise from the steel floor like giant crystals, as does the dining table. Surfaces cross one another, folding and bending in complex ways that are at once calming and disorientating. The main living area is vast and open, and leads out on to a spacious roof terrace with views over this picturesque part of the city. It provides the perfect setting for Bandini’s frequent large-scale entertaining, such as last summer’s 100-guest after-party for Valentino’s 45th anniversary celebration.

Socialising is really the point of ‘Cecco’s Republic’, as his friends have dubbed his apartment. The doorbell is constantly ringing. ‘I love being able to hear my friends laughing in the living room while I’m cooking in the kitchen,’ says Bandini, who worked as a tax consultant for years before realising it was the cause of his permanent bad mood. These days, he manages the family’s property portfolio – everything from offices to garages in and around Rome that his late father built – and fills his distinctly non-nine-to-five life with playing tennis, tinkering with his old Ducati and jetting between Rome, London, Ibiza and Thailand.

‘I’ve seen many lofts in my life,’ says Bandini, ‘but it’s the materials that make this one special.’ He lets the space speak for itself; hi-tech gadgetry aside, he has few possessions and virtually nothing in the way of art or design. ‘I don’t care much for furniture. Give me a sofa, a table, an ashtray. The apartment is the artwork. So what more do I need?’ he ruminates. ‘My father would never have understood it.’

As originally featured in the October 2008 issue of Wallpaper* (W*115)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Nemesi Studio website

Most of London's handsome townhouses have gone through many different lives; often originally built as majestic, several-storeys high single family houses, but then subdivided into apartments, shops and offices as times and need changed in the ever-evolving British capital. This also pretty much sums up the story of a canalside property that Emrys Architects recently completely transformed from a neglected and fragmented old building, including retail and flats, into two generous and contemporary homes. 

Canal House, as its name suggests, sits right on one of London's key waterways, Regents Canal, in north London. When new owners acquired three floors of a four-storey town house with a view to renovate, and their upstairs neighbours swiftly followed suit, appointing the same architects, Emrys found themselves in the fortunate position of having to redesign the whole structure; which helped them to address both structural and design issues in a consistent and holistic way. 

Canal House is a transformed historical waterside property in London, designed by Emrys Architects.

A key priority was allowing plenty of light into the building, and especially the fairly dark basement. This was achieved by placing large glazed openings in key areas – a strip window that overlooks the lower ground floor, a shopfront style facade towards the street, and glass doors that open onto balconies towards the canal. Thecarefully chosen opacity and placement of the glass ensured the owners' privacy was not compromised.

Inside, working with often narrow and awkward spaces, the architects used intelligent spatial arrangement and divisions such as sliding partitions to make the most of the available room. Now, the design reads as a coherent whole, contemporary and warm, featuring bespoke joinery and exposed ceilings. An open-plan living space on the first floor looks out towards the water, celebrating the house's picturesque positioning and characteristic London views

INFORMATION

For more information visit the website of Emrys Architects

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is to undertake a renovation of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas Galleries (AAOA), overseen by Los Angeles architecture firm Why.

The three regional collections, which were founded almost 50 years ago, are hosted within the museum’s Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, which is to be completely reimagined. The overarching aim of the redesign is to reintroduce the collections with a refreshed voice, engaging them in a new dialogue with the rest of the museum’s offerings, which stretch back over 5,000 years.

LA practice Why is no stranger to rethinking museum spaces. The firm, led by creative director Kulapat Yantrasast (who walked us through how he uses Apple’s iPad Pro), has completed projects for the Harvard Art Museums, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Samurai, to name a few.

‘The team at the Met visited our previous works at the Harvard Art Museums and at the Art Institute of Chicago,’ states Yantrasast. ‘I believe something must have spoken to them about the clean-line aesthetic, focus on the collection, and its installation.’

The concept for the $70 million project is to divide the 40,000 sq ft wing into three individual spaces, transporting visitors across the respective regions’ histories through art. ‘These areas cover more than three quarters of the world, yet there is not sufficient distinction given to them in most museum presentations,’ says Yantrasast. ‘In the new design, each region is given its own access portal and sense of place – inspired by an architectural impression of the region, as well as strong visual connection to other regions and other collections at The Met.’

Commencing in 2020 and slated for completion in 2023, AAOA’s curatorial team sees the architectural refit as a driving force for its research department. ‘AAOA’s curatorial team has been presenting groundbreaking exhibitions of non-Western art that reflect new research, and this direction needs to be reflected in our current installation,’ states Alisa LaGamma, Ceil and Michael E. Pulitzer Curator who heads the department. ‘Our thinking for the new galleries centres on the importance of reframing each of the specific regions of the world represented.’

‘We will be seeking to illuminate their artistic brilliance by invoking a sense of place through referencing architectural vernaculars relevant to each segment while also tethering these aspects to historical movements.’

INFORMATION

For more information, visit The Metropolitan Museum of Art website and the Why website

Frank Lloyd Wright once said: ‘Tip the world on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.’ The famously autocratic architect and philanderer may have pooh-poohed the city as a cultural wasteland, but it was there, under the glaring Southern Californian sun, that he built some of the greatest houses of the 20th century.

It was also in Los Angeles, under the same unforgiving sun, that Frank Lloyd Wright Jr attempted to step out from his father’s shadow and establish an independent identity as an architect. He wasn’t very successful. The feeble gesture of dropping the ‘Frank’ and ‘Jr’ from his name failed, predictably to distinguish Lloyd Wright from his grandiose progenitor. Furthermore, throughout his long career, the younger Wright never managed to define a personal style that did not echo, in both sensibility and detail, the work of dear old Dad. It’s no wonder that local LA lore frequently confuses houses designed by Wrights père et fils.

In the early 1920s, Lloyd Wright served as construction manager on three of his father’s classic Mayan-flavoured, concrete-block houses – the Storer House, the Freeman House and the Ennis House (which notably appeared in Blade Runner as the set for Harrison Ford’s apartment). A few years after the completion of those landmarks, the younger Wright made an architectural splash of his own with a daring homage in the LA neighbourhood of Los Feliz.

The Sowden House of 1926 gives a nod to the ancient temple references of its forebears, but makes them decidedly more explicit. With its symmetrical façade crowned by a prow of heavily worked concrete and its grand entry stair that leads from the street through a jungle landscape, the structure emerges like a ruined temple nestled in a primordial forest – Angkor Wat by way of Hollywood Boulevard. The formal entry progression leads through a set of copper gates, up another internal staircase and eventually arrives at the threshold proper, where the architectural drama unfolds in one theatrical sweep of space: two peaked pavilions, made of stepped concrete blocks, connected by two low arcades, wrapped around a lushly planted courtyard cloister.

Like so many of Los Angeles’ architectural treasures, the Sowden House had fallen on hard times by the close of the last century. When LA-based designer and developer Xorin Balbes acquired the property in 2001, the immediate need for structural repairs forestalled any questions regarding decoration or aesthetic direction.

‘It was a ruin in more than just a figurative sense,’ says Balbes. ‘We spent two years re-solidifying the porous concrete block, rebuilding the foundations and perimeter walls, and replacing every building system. The enormous amount of work makes you understand why people are often reluctant to undertake this kind of rescue project. But this house called out to me from the moment I stepped inside.’

Balbes worked with Paul Ashley and Norm Wogan, his design partners at the aptly named firm TempleHome, to prepare the house for a meaningful existence in the 21st century. In addition to remedial work on the structure, the team made significant changes to the plan to reflect the needs of a contemporary household. The servants’ wing was transformed into dining, kitchen and lounge spaces, and connected to the courtyard through new openings between the concrete columns. At the far end of the courtyard, under the prow of the second pavilion, an erstwhile studio space was turned into the master bedroom, which, elevated on three broad steps, appears to be the high altar of this temple fantasy.

As for the interiors, Balbes confesses that his original decorative scheme was a bit tame and deferential. ‘I was really intimidated by the pedigree of the house, which suppressed my own creative energy,’ he says. ‘I lived here for six years after the first renovation and over time my sensibilities changed and my confidence grew. I finally felt like I could create interiors that has as much presence as the architecture.’

Confidence, indeed. Much to the consternation of stern preservationists and Wrightophiles, Balbes (once again working with Wogan) served up a tangy olio of periods, styles and moods – a mix the homeowner describes as ‘sexy, rich, masculine, modern, deco, Asian, spiritual and industrial’. These typologies have obvious correlations. Asian notes, for instance, are struck by the gilded peacock chairs and repurposed Japanese door-cum-coffee table in the living room, and the tansu chests in the master bathroom. Ubiquitous metallic velvets and vinyl upholstery fabrics qualify as either rich, industrial or masculine depending on one’s point of view. For sex appeal, there’s the master suite’s platform bed with illuminated, leather-wrapped steps, which has a very 1970s, Eyes of Laura Mars quality about it.

It is in the area of spirituality, however, that Balbes truly brings his idiosyncratic sensibility to life. Consider the abundance of crystals and geodes. ‘They are anchoring elements that connect the house to the energy of the earth. They give off a frequency and vibration that supports the spirit of the house,’ he says. The same New Age spirituality informs the designer’s description of the large oil painting that dominates the dining room, Unity: The Unification of Humanity, by Alexander Rosenfeld: ‘It depicts people of different religions and vocations coming together as one. The composition reminds me of The Last Supper, buy the mood isn’t about masculine energy, it’s about the divine feminine,’ says Balbes. ‘When I stumbled on it at an antiques show, I felt like it belonged to me. It reminds me that I should be doing all I can to create unity in humanity.’

Balbes, who is planning to open a spiritual retreat in Maui, has codified his design philosophy in a book called SoulSpace. ‘Your environment must be connected to the deepest parts of yourself. It should contain reminders to keep you focused on your dreams,’ he explains. ‘I am incredibly fortunate to have a house that is both so inspiring and restful. I realise that I am the steward of this space and that I must pass it on to another generation. The responsibility feels that sacred to me.’ A temple to living, indeed.

As originally featured in the March 2010 issue of Wallpaper* (W*132)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the TempleHome website

Most of us might be familiar with The Modern House’s work, as the speciality estate agent that looks after some of the world’s best designer homes; but where does a business that deals exclusively with great design call home? Enter London architects TDO who have just completed the company’s brand new headquarters in the capital’s borough of Southwark.

Set on the ground floor of a former church hall, St Alphege Hall, the new space sits within a mid-rise brick building that dates from 1931. The office, spanning 231 sq m, offers ample space to accommodate The Modern House’s growing staff – they are up to 20-strong at the moment. The property now also allows for flexible use and the company’s developing cultural programme.

The interior is refined and contemporary, yet still holds a sense of place and history, subtly referring to a past life through specific features and its overall atypical – for office use – setting.  

At the heart of the design lies a strong, yet fairly simple concept. The main workspace’s bespoke demountable desk structure can be adjusted in ‘a sequence of simple moves to completely change the interior’, explain the architects. This essentially means that the desk can be configured in different ways, or can be folded up entirely and hung from the walls, mimicking wood panelling.

Mixing this ingenious piece of product design – created especially by TDO – with select art pieces and furniture such as a meeting table by Max Lamb and a dining table by Faye Toogood, The Modern House’s workspace is a light-touch, yet carefully planned and completely tailor made renovation that makes a reimagined space masterfully fit for its new purpose.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the website of TDO and the website of The Modern House

The streets of Grove Park, in Camberwell, South London, are a residential oasis. Large Victorian villas and terraces, mature trees and – for a lucky few – far-reaching views to the city define this little enclave, set behind the grand Georgian splendour of Camberwell Grove and fiercely protective of its conservation area status. Over the past few years, the Bermondsey-based architect John Smart and his team at Craftworks (previously knows as John Smart Architects) have made a notable stamp on the area. A decade ago the firm completed the DKH building, an award-winning modern apartment block just a short walk from Grove Park, and in the years that followed has built a number of radical refurbishments and restorations in the streets of Grove Park, creating contemporary apartments and bringing grand houses back into use.

Smart’s latest project continues the trend. Sandwiched between two of the studio’s larger developments, St John's Orchard and St John's Villas, set back from the road, is a former place of worship (known locally as a chapel albeit never actually consecrated). Abandoned for many years, Smart’s clients sought to transform the modest brick building into a modern family house, all the while retaining the qualities of space and the memories of its former use. The site was a challenge from the outset, overlooked on all sides and with strong local opinions as to its retention and eventual use.

Eventually an approach that suited everyone was agreed. The shell of the original building has been retained, while a new lower ground floor was carved out of the sloping site. This space is home to four bedrooms, one ensuite, and a study area, with a run of new window openings to the garden. A muscular, wood-clad staircase is suspended from the ceiling, its dark form creating the feeling of ascending up from a crypt.

This ecclesiastical edge is strengthened by the treatment of the main living space above, a soaring piece of modern gothic that is dominated by a faceted, angular roof. An entirely new structure, the roof appears to be stitched together from a colliding parade of angular planes, with a run of triangular roof-lights tucked into the ridge. As the sun moves across the sky, the facets appear to shift and change, creating a shimmering and luminous interior.

If that lofty vault wasn’t enough, Smart has also installed a modern take on the altar/pulpit/pipe organ in the form of a mezzanine level set atop a twisting wall of fluted wood and brass. The architects point out that this lofty study space is effectively up in the ‘clouds’, a heavenly void that contrasts with the earthier feel of the living/dining space below. The work was carried out by Smart’s in-house construction team, with the kind of craftsmanship and attention to detail that has characterised all the studio’s work to date, whether it be speculative developments or for private clients.

The excavations also allowed for the creation of a spectacular new garden landscape, with an angular terrace formed from slabs of rusted steel flanked by wild planting. Designed by Jane Brockbank Gardens to complement the interior of the house and the original reclaimed bricks, the entire ensemble adds up to a spiritual, cloistered retreat from the city.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the website of Craftworks

Dublin-based GKMP Architects has redesigned an existing small cottage house and shop structure into a family residence in the city's Sundymount district. The resulting design not only completely transforms the original structure into a modern home, it also presents it with a distinct architectural identity, using a few, key materials, such as concrete and timber, in their raw form within a new brutalist composition. 

One of the team's key aims was to maximise space. They wanted to open up and brighten the interior, however at the same time maintain a sense of the different functions in the large open-plan ground floor. So each of these different uses – kitchen, dining, living – should be able to have its own feel and identity. 

A generous extension at the rear of the plot adds square footage to the whole, allowing for the necessary space to breathe. This leads out to a green garden and several smaller courtyards and outside niches 'hidden' between the old and new parts of the structure. 

Inside, old and new are seamlessly connected through a common approach throughout. Terrazzo flooring on the ground level flows across areas, unifying everything and referencing the material's historical use in the original dwelling. The ceiling becomes another unique feature in the design, with large naked concrete vaults spreading over the living spaces on the ground level, defining different zones. Poured in situ, the concrete was mixed with a lighter hue in mind, in order to make the space appear brighter.

Timber cladding and built-in furniture and fittings, as well as metal detailing make this residential interior a labour of love and a truly bespoke space; it's no wonder that it has already scooped several awards, including first place in the house category at the Royal Institute of Architects Ireland awards and the Irish Concrete Society Awards. 

A new steel and oak staircase connects the ground floor and the ‘lighter' upper floor spaces. Upstairs, white plastered rooms contain the bedrooms, bathrooms, and a master suite that occupies the extension's top floor. There, white painted timber beams add a sharp linearity to the interior and a large window looks out to the leafy garden beyond. 

‘We believe that this project successfully demonstrates the beauty and variety of concrete as a material while simultaneously celebrating its structural and aesthetic properties throughout the different elements in the project', say the practice's principals, Grace Keeley and Michael Pike. GKMP have crafted a space that offers a careful balance between comfort and robustness.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the GKMP Architects website

Transforming a spec house into a personalised, lived in space, perfectly fitted to the owner's needs and personality is no mean feat; yet it is one that Los Angeles-based interior designer Jamie Bush achieved with flair for his latest residential project in San Francisco.

The commission came from a young tech entrepreneur with an interest in the arts and design, who wanted to include both in his home without the space appearing too ‘done' or perfect, explains Bush. ‘He wanted a feeling of a curated life with a selection of pieces which all had a story to tell', he adds.

Bush often takes his design cues from art and nature. ‘So much of my work is about natural shapes, patterns and textures', he continues. ‘In this project the screening room features one of my “TOPO” rugs, which was inspired by the eroding shorelines of the coast. We also designed a dining table shaped like an oblong pebble with a highly textured wire-brushed finish exposing the grain of the blackened oak.’

The existing architecture also provided inspiration. The striking three-storey stairwell was transformed into an atmospheric dark space with a blackened-steel-and-ebonised-oak staircase. The dark walls draw the eye up to the rooftop which features a new garden and the custom-designed viewing room that frames long vistas towards the San Francisco hills beyond. The green spaces were one of the project's most challenging elements, since the original building was not designed to accommodate them, so specialist engineers were brought in to make the necessary adjustments. The bathrooms and kitchen were also completely redesigned, while the third bedroom was transformed into a home office and library. 

Bush took extra care in selecting the right furniture, so that it would reflect the owner’s philosophy and lifestyle. The space is now an orchestrated balance of historical pieces juxtaposed with modern art and contemporary design. 

‘I feel the “key driver” for the project as a whole was to create a language of contrasts throughout the home', he explains. ‘Matt surfaces with polished and gloss finishes, light against dark, geometric forms next to organic shapes, highly textured woods against smooth glass and stone, soft against hard, handmade against machine made, fresh and new against old and worn.’

The client remained engaged throughout the process, keen to learn about design and the history of the objects involved. Bush and his team accompanied each find with books and further material to keep the client informed about the origin of the pieces included, which made for an unusual and positive collaboration. ‘He loved the project, it gave him more of a personal connection with his environment’, he says. 

INFORMATION

For more information visit the website of Jamie Bush + Co

The architecture and construction industry in Spain was booming in the final two decades of the 20th century. The country was riding a wave of bliss and – perceived, at least – prosperity, with new projects springing up everywhere, from housing blocks and single family dwellings to museums and civic buildings of all shapes and sizes. Then, a few years into the 21st century, things drastically changed. The worldwide financial crisis hit the Mediterranean country hard, leaving it with a number of unfinished works and even more that remained disused, unsold and empty. The Spanish Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale depicted just that, winning the year’s Golden Lion as a result. 

New York and Barcelona-based Lluís Alexandre Casanovas Blanco is all too familiar with this situation. The architect has been researching the current state of the industry in his native country for a while, looking at the housing bubble as a period of ‘frenzied economic growth’. His latest renovation project, the ‘Real Estate Boom House’ is a direct result of this exploration. 

‘The so-called “Spanish housing bubble” collapsed in 2008, leaving behind a huge housing stock which reflects the societal transformation of most of the country’s population from lower middle-class to upper-middle class', says Casanovas Blanco.

A single family house built in the booming 1990s in the Catalan village of Cardedeu, a short drive from Barcelona – became his case study. ‘The house can be considered paradigmatic of the aesthetic fostered by this financial phenomenon for at least three reasons’, he explains.

Casanovas Blanco led a series of interventions in the house that highlight three key points about the building – the design, material and construction that make this house typical of its era, its views of the village, fields and surrounding urbanisation, and the domestic interior typology of its generation.

The staircase was carefully ‘excavated’ and became a key feature in the new design. Different areas were given a refresh and treated with a mix of new techniques and traditional crafts. The project includes, for example, the development of a textile prototype using Castilian bobbin lace, which was woven by the client and resident of the house.

Casanovas Blanco also aims to highlight through his artistic work a generation of architects who ‘constructed their practice as a foray into alternative forms of architectural production such as performance, criticism or curatorial work’, he adds.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the website of Lluis Alexandre Casanovas Blanco

Azulejos, or patterned tiles, have adorned Lisbon’s churches, palaces and houses since the 16th century. They are as central to the Portuguese capital as salted cod and custard tarts, and provide a visual guide to its history, each decorative style indicative of a particular decade. Businesses small and large, from side-street ateliers and stall holders at the Feira da Ladra flea market to established dealers such as Cortiço & Netos (which has more than 900 vintage styles in its collection), trade in the celebrated ceramics.

On the crest of a hill in the salubrious district of Lapa, one particular tiled façade shines brighter than the rest. It’s covered in striped tiles that, when their corners are put together, form multicoloured squares and stars. They are from the 1930s, and the same designs appear on the Elevador da Bica, the funicular station in downtown Lisbon. These, though, look as good as new thanks to a renovation last year that transformed what was a shabby apartment block into a family home.

In many districts of Lisbon, word of mouth or a plain white sheet of paper in the window indicate when a property is up for grabs. Local architect Inês Lobo heard the block was for sale and she took her clients, a Portuguese couple with three children, to view it. They fell in love with its splendid views and with Lapa’s sleepy feel and bought it straight away.

The renovation was set to begin when a chance meeting changed everything. The owner, on a work trip to São Paulo, stopped by Galeria Leme to see some art. There he was introduced to the gallery’s owner Eduardo Leme and its architect, Paulo Mendes da Rocha. When he heard Lobo was involved in remodeling a house in Lisbon, Mendes da Rocha agreed to collaborate. The pair have been friends for 20 years; he was familiar with the schools and civic buildings that Lobo has won prizes for, and was keen to work on a Lisbon project together. (His last there, in 2015, was the National Coach Museum in Belém, which houses a vast collection of historical carriages, a stone’s throw from Amanda Levete’s Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology.)

‘The owners asked me if I would mind working with Paulo,’ says Lobo. ‘I said, “What? Mind? Of course I don’t mind! It will be incredible. I know all his projects and he’s a real gentleman”.’

They stuck to the classical Portuguese apartment block blueprint, where quality and height are interlinked. ‘The best, most expensive apartments are always on the top and have higher ceilings,’ says Lobo. They used local materials: concrete, tiles and limestone with a pinkish hue, which is found all over Lisbon. The only wrangle they had was over the position of the pool. ‘Paulo wanted it on the top floor, but I said no because there are lots of buildings with pools on the roof. It’s the third floor, not the fourth, that feels most connected to the Tagus River.’

As such, the house is upside down: the living room and its sweeping east-facing terrace are on the top floor; the kitchen and pool terrace are on the floor below; the second floor houses the parents’ study and bedroom; and the first floor belongs to the children. On the top floor is an origami-style corner window, created specifically to offer views over Mar da Palha, the Sea of Hay. With its shallow waters and shimmering yellow sands, this particular spot in the Tagus estuary holds a special place in the hearts of Lisboetas.

At a recent lecture in São Paulo, Lobo compared the house to a Brazilian SESC. The non-profit Serviço Social do Comércio, or community centre, is a wholly Brazilian concept, created in the 1940s by a guild of businessmen to provide their workers with health services, sporting and cultural activities. ‘SESCs are very important in Brazil,’ says Lobo, ‘and like this house, each level offers a different programme.’ (Last year, Mendes da Rocha and Brazilian architects MMBB completed the 14-storey SESC 24 de Maio in a disused department store in the centre of São Paulo.)

To complement the work of the 89-year-old master architect, the owners sourced much of their furniture from Brazil. There are stools by the late Joaquim Tenreiro, a ‘Multidão’ chair by the Campana brothers, a ‘Petalas’ coffee table by Jorge Zalszupin, Carlos Motta’s ‘Astúrias’ armchairs and a ‘Paulistano’ armchair by Mendes da Rocha himself, as well as a work by local artist Miguel Ângelo Rocha, and a chandelier by Italian designer Mario Nanni.

With its architectural pedigree, the house could feel like a show home, but each space is created on a deliberately domestic scale. ‘The family live together in a very informal way,’ says Lobo. ‘It’s a functioning home, not a site of architectural pilgrimage.’

Taking in the views from the terrace, it’s impossible not to notice the hundreds of cranes punctuating the rooftops of Lisbon’s pastel townhouses. Thanks to an injection of EU money and a property boom fuelled by a preferential tax regime, huge areas of Lisbon are under construction or renovation. But not all projects will be as striking or successful as this house, a future-facing space in an old-fashioned shell. ‘We preserved the patrimony of the building and its façade, while modernising the interiors,’ says Mendes da Rocha. ‘Finding new uses for buildings in ancient, historical cities around the world is something architecture students should be taking a great interest in today.§

As originally featured in the July 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*232)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Lobo Architects website

When Greek-born, New York-based architect Lydia Xynogala was called upon to update, introduce light and a sense of the outdoors to an apartment in a Victorian London property, she knew it was a renovation that required some careful handling.

The home, which was in a listed Victorian house in the upmarket Knightsbridge area of the British capital, almost ignored the lush gardens it faced and featured a dark, awkwardly placed kitchen underneath a heavy staircase. The solution lied in meticulously removing all the unnecessary ornamentation and existing details that had been added to the interior over the years, to reveal a lighter, cleaner space that focuses towards the entrance and the gardens. 

The original staircase was replaced with a new version made from streamlined, white perforated steel plate. This allowed plenty of light to flow through and into the compact kitchen behind it; when the light shines through the perforation, the stairs appear delicate and almost ethereal. On the mezzanine nestled above the kitchen, a set of shutters made from the same material as the staircase, reveal a guest room when opened. 

The entrance to the house also received a thorough refresh, opened up towards the outside and the green spaces beyond. Further perforated steel plate details, such as shelves, seating and indoor planters, were added, creating sharp geometries and much needed visual continuity, while adding extra storage space to entry hall. All the new details were painted white to respond to the retained checkerboard floor. 

Everywhere else, Xynogala refreshed and lifted the interior using subtle moves that opened up spaces, tidied up corners and smartened details, using bespoke fittings, streamlined cabinetry and a new, soft colour palette. The result? A subtly luxurious interior beaming with cleverly designed details that coexist comfortably within their Victorian shell as a coherent, contemporary whole. 

INFORMATION

For more information visit the website of Lydia Xynogala

Locals have welcomed a new architectural landmark and cultural hub in the Flemmish city of Aalst, designed by KAAN Architecten. Puzzling its way through the centre’s irregular streets and stray squares, Utopia (as the building has been named) comprises a sprawling 8000 sq m structure extending from the shell of a former military school, which now serves a dual purpose as the city’s library and performing arts academy. Outside, it blends into the urban fabric through its unassuming red-brick façade; inside it makes a bold architectural statement on the benefits of shared-space learning.

Utopia is so-titled after Thomas More’s acclaimed 16th-century book of the same name. The socio-political satire depicts a fictional island society and its monastery-like customs. Like its namesake, the new building is a relaxing haven, achieved by KAAN Architecten’s use of light walls, raw concrete and impressive room-by-room dimensions. The surrounding city and inner ‘utopia’ are intimately connected by a patchwork of vast windows; often as high and wide as the rooms themselves.

If books support Utopia conceptually, the aim is that they appear to prop it up physically, too. Inside the library atrium on the first floor, the bookcases are pushed up against concrete discs which allow the floors to cantilever out without extra support, giving the impression that the ceilings are supported by a wall of publications.

Floating concrete floors slice across the space, offering the shelter of semi-private reading spots in an otherwise completely open-plan hall, a key feature of which is the centralised, 11.5 m high bookcase, filled with books donated by each Aalst resident.

The performing arts academy – which comprises a ballet room, rehearsal studios, an auditorium and teaching spaces – flanks the library, separated by carefully placed sound barriers like reinforced wooden doors, insuring music and student bustle doesn’t leak into the library.

The renovation has been so sensitive and seamless that it’s difficult to know if you’re standing in the new extension or the old schoolhouse; but outside the distinction is subtly marked by the direction of the ‘Red Aalst’ brickwork – long flat bricks are laid horizontally across the new extension, to counter the vertically-oriented bricks of the old school façade.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the KAAN Architecten website

The architecture in Charleston, South Carolina owes much of its unique charm to the myriad of historical styles that punctuate the city. On Bee’s Row, a particularly elegant stretch that is distinguished by terracotta-cast pediments, fences and elaborate interior moldings, the stylish brownstones and their accompanying carriage houses are not only lovely to look at, but steeped in Civil War history as well.

In one such carriage house, the Brooklyn-based design studio Workstead has brought a sophisticated, contemporary touch to its storied interiors. Working with 2,000 sq ft of living space, the intimate two-floor space, which boasts three bedrooms and three bathrooms, is the latest demonstration of the firm’s Southern Modern aesthetic – a design philosophy that it has applied to other projects in Charleston, like the Workstead House in the same neighbourhood, and the Dewberry Hotel.

‘The design aesthetic is still in the canon of work we have done in the South, which we refer to as Southern Modernism, but it is of a smaller residential scale – one that is warm, inviting, and intimate,’ says co-founder Robert Highsmith. ‘The materials are impactful – brick, plaster, wood, caning – but they are executed on a small scale, which lends a lot of charm and warmth to the project.’

On the house’s first floor, a living room is flanked by two gas fireplaces that were originally used for cooking and laundering. Newly installed wood and glass windows bring an airiness to the interior and open out towards an exterior brick courtyard. Surrounded by exposed brick walls and cypress wood paneling, the warm, textural space quickly transitions to the kitchen, which boasts a monumental, 15-foot long island that serves as a central point for life in the house. Elegant cabinetry with turned wood accents has been neatly tucked under the staircase. The adjacent dining room is one of the house’s high points – entirely clad with cane and cypress cabinets, the space features a neatly framed window seat that makes the most of its south-facing façade.

Workstead’s fusion of past and present continues upstairs where a master suite, second bedroom, and an anteroom that could function as an office or library, with an adjoining bathroom, are situated. In the master suite, exposed brick walls that have been purposefully left as is create a romantic tension with the seamless cypress paneling that continues as a theme from downstairs. A balcony looks over the brick courtyard below which has been planted with green hedges for extra privacy.

‘Our approach was centered around a conversation between old and new elements of the building,’ explains Highsmith. ‘We uncovered many original finishes during the renovation of the Carriage House, and designed modern interventions to complement and play against the plaster, brick, and wood tones uncovered during the project.’

Many architects design a house as their first solo project, so in that sense Jake Moulson’s case is not unusual. But far from being a typical residential conversion, Moulson’s renovated Georgian townhouse is a true one-off: an intricate collage of different materials and atmospheres that has been carefully orchestrated to feel almost like several different projects folded into one. The resulting home is a real architectural treasure trove that begs to be explored and experienced.

As elaborate and extravagant as the space may seem, there is a surprisingly pragmatic thinking behind it and a method in the madness of its London-based author. Before setting up his own studio in Hackney, Moulson worked at practices known for their considered, material-led and hands-on attitude: he was with Carl Turner Architects for almost two years and, straight out of the Royal College of Art, worked for Peter Salter on his fantastically idiosyncratic Walmer Yard housing project. Both architects have a distinctive, tactile and craft-led approach that resonates with Moulson’s ethos. ‘I have always been intensely involved with the testing and making of things,’ he admits.

Moulson also served time with Gerrard O’Carroll, and was designing a house in Ireland with him when O’Carroll passed away in 2010. The project involved the transformation of a cottage in Glendalough into a weekend home for Adrian and Jennifer O’Carroll, Gerrard’s brother and his family. ‘This was the beginning of developing a language with Adrian and Jennifer, and an understanding,’ Moulson recalls. ‘We kept in touch on and off over the following years. Then, out of the blue, they emailed and said, “Do you want to come and visit us in Dublin? We’ve got something we’d like to show you”.’

What they showed him was an old townhouse in the heart of Dublin 2, part of the city’s untouched Georgian fabric. It had been used as office space and at the time was completely run down, although retained its grand character, beautiful light and large windows. ‘What really surprised me was discovering an overgrown mass of green to the rear of the house in this part of Dublin – an oasis among a barrage of car parks and offices. And then, crossing to the end of it, finding the ruined classical façade of a coach house, like a real-life Piranesian vision,’ says Moulson. ‘Seeing this amazing building and knowing Adrian and Jennifer’s interest in design and their taste, it was an offer I couldn’t turn down.’

The O’Carrolls gave him lots of design freedom, remaining involved and supportive throughout the project, and the result is a meticulous sequencing of spaces that spans five levels (one is underground) and unites the main house and the coach house annex through a garden designed by specialist horticulturalists Liat and Oliver Schurmann of Mount Venus Nursery.

‘The design is multi-referential; it draws on diverse sources across disciplines and eras,’ explains Moulson. ‘I was thinking very much about the flow through the house, the dilemma of how much to open up or separate and what leads onto what. In getting to know and uncover the spaces of the house I was drawn to historical precedents where each room has a distinctive quality, material and atmosphere, according to inhabitation and routine. In some cases, these might come together over time, designed by multiple architects. I wanted a rhythm of hiding and revealing, and of coming into unexpected places. As it’s a protected building, we couldn’t, and didn’t want to, impact on the historic structure so we used bespoke elements throughout to work with, amplify or modify the qualities of the rooms and light for different moods and times of day. Having the variety of spaces to stimulate and facilitate this approach has been amazing.’

The main entrance leads into the kitchen, made of undulating Corian, and a deep blue breakfast room clad in brass and leather to the right, or through a dark timber-panelled corridor to a light-filled, double-height art gallery and formal dining room at the rear of the house. This sequence from darkness to light was deliberate for dramatic effect. The tall, almost cathedral-like gallery room ends in an inverted curved bay looking out into the foliage, where ‘you can practically walk into the view’. The floor is lined in etched steel sheet in a pattern designed by Moulson to reference Georgian plaster ceilings.

One floor up from the corridor, a glazed roof, uncovered during the works, shelters a winter garden. Above it, a small volume hanging off the main house, which used to be an old asbestos construction, has been replaced by a lush Azul Imperial quartzite-clad toilet with a structural glass floor and wall, as ‘a sort of inhabited window’. One flight up leads to the master bedroom, with its large dressing room and bathroom space full of hidden cabinetry; it is a cross between an upmarket fitting room, a bathroom and a club. ‘It needed to work on a practical level but I also wanted there to be theatre in using it,’ Moulson admits.

The top floor contains the four brilliantly white children’s bedrooms, brightened further by pops of colour and seamless white Corian bathrooms. The basement is dedicated to a more moody lounge and spa, while the coach house has been converted into a guest studio with a garage underneath.

The main living space is on the first floor, next to a dining area featuring a ceiling piece by artist Morag Myerscough. This was Mouslon’s clever way of adding drama to the room, but with minimum architectural intervention. ‘Morag’s painted artwork gave us a chance of switching traditional plasterwork for a contemporary ornate ceiling. Besides, the best Georgian examples often used colour with plasterwork, which is lost in the monochrome presentations of today’, he says. Elsewhere, new plasterwork references the original house’s decorative spirit, mixed with arches and round openings that soften the interior while highlighting its expressive character.

While variety and individuality prevail, everything comes together effortlessly in a space that is more family-home-with-a-twist than architect’s folly. The owners seem to agree: ‘It has been exciting to bring family life back into this building, mixing so many ideas into a harmonious outcome, thanks to Jake and his team,’ they say. And who will argue with a happy customer?

As originally featured in the June 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*231)

INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Jake Moulson website

After a five-year-long restoration, the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew has reopened Temperate House, the largest remaining Victorian glasshouse in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Covering 4,880 sq m and housing a staggering 1,500 species from temperate regions around the world, this is one of the most striking centres of plant research today. Donald Insall Associates was the project’s conservation architect, as part of a multi-disciplinary team charged with repairing, restoring and bringing the historical building back to life.

Originally designed by architect Decimus Burton in the late 1850s, Temperate House served as a place for the preservation and display of the British horticultural collection that was expanding at that time. Influenced by the Industrial Revolution, this large glasshouse project was executed in wrought and cast iron and glass, and took almost 40 years to complete. Through essential new interventions, the restoration process has returned Temperate House to its original design, equipped with electrical systems that are connected to a weather station and internal monitoring network in order to provide the best possible atmospheric conditions.

‘The restoration of the Temperate House has been a complex and immensely rewarding project, recalibrating contemporary understanding of Victorian architecture and the development of past innovations’, says Aimée Felton, associate at Donald Insall Associates and lead architect on the project. ‘New glazing, mechanical ventilation systems, path and bedding arrangements all took their founding principles from Decimus Burton’s own drawings, held within Kew’s archives.’

Composed of 45,000 sheets of float glass, the 180-metre-long structure is organised into five interconnected spaces designed in the form of a dream – a vision of different places, spectacular forms of nature, and threatened wildlife species that existed long before humans. Featuring a 12m high circular mezzanine, the central hall is for the largest plants, bridged by two lower octagonal side wings – the Mexican House and the Himalaya House – and their annexes. A variety of trees and rare species such as Dombeya mauritiana and Encephalartos woodii, in addition to other exotic plants, grow within. Soft light and fresh air fill the space. Creating a place that feels serene and intimate, this beautifully orchestrated building stands within 132 hectares of landscaped gardens overlooking the flowing Thames nearby. 

‘It’s been amazing watching this project unfold, the building emerge gloriously and some of the world’s rarest plants safely reach their home,’ says Richard Barley, director of horticulture. ‘this is world class horticulture, science and design working together to create something truly impressive.’

Historically, aside from their practical function, winter gardens have also served an important representational purpose, celebrating plant life and introducing valuable information to the wider public. Today, while more common, they still play an essential role in the exploration and preservation of extinct species, and have always provided us with moments of enchantment through their magnificent appearance and unusual contents. Just as unique in this way, the elegant silhouette of the Temperate House floats on the landscape, shedding new light on the importance of nature and its fragile beauty.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the website of Donald Insall Associates

Up-and-coming London architects SODA have turned 50,000 square feet of derelict brutalist architecture into a magnet for creatives. Built by Irish architects Munce & Kennedy in 1964, the Silver Building in the capital’s Royal Docks was formerly a brewery. Its reincarnation is the brainchild of Nick Hartwright, a social entrepreneur who sets up affordable workspaces for businesses, artists, designers and creative SMEs around London.

Two of the Silver Building’s biggest spaces are occupied by Block9, set designers for Banksy, Lana Del Rey and Gorillaz, and award-winning young fashion designer Craig Green. Part-funded by the GLA’s London Regeneration Fund, the Silver Building – whose closest neighbour is a flyover – will only appeal to those who embrace the industrial aesthetic and gritty surroundings.

‘It had been squatted and was riddled with asbestos,’ says SODA director Russell Potter, ‘so as we peeled back the building’s layers. Then it was about having a light touch and focusing on the key spaces.’ That light touch included exposing ceilings, getting rid of some partition walls, cleaning up the existing light fittings, and retaining the terrazzo stair and parquet flooring.

The main entrance opens on to a reception and café area, whose bar is formed of chunky concrete slabs. Block9’s 5,500 square foot workshop is next door. Upstairs, a mezzanine level doubles as a gallery and event space, and the architects punched two windows in an internal wall, to let light in and offer views of Block9’s industrial-scale creativity.

Most of the 34 studios are housed in a long corridor on the first floor. These raw rooms sit behind Carlsberg’s original hardwood office doors, and many have views over Emirate’s Air Line cable car nearby.

As a so-called Meanwhile Space, the Silver Building has a seven-year lease. After that, Hartwright’s intention is for the building’s tenants to inform the flavour of the area’s future redevelopment, which will include 200,000 square foot of workspace as well as 5,500 new homes.

INFORMATION

For more information visit SODA’s website

A brace of brutalist landmarks at London’s South Bank Centre have been given an upgrade by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios. The architects were tasked with improving the experience for performers and audiences at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and adjoining Purcell Room, both of which were designed by the Greater London Council. ‘Our job was to strip them back to the original 1960s design, while adding modern equipment,’ says FCBStudios architect Chris Allen.

Given the buildings’ age, most of the £35m budget went on modernising their services. But there is a handful of architectural interventions that help make the two arts venues – and all their famous mushroom columns – sing again.

The QEH’s foyer, which in recent years has become a venue in its own right, has been reconfigured with windows cut into one concrete wall, to let light in from the terrace. Archer Humphryes Architects, who were responsible for the foyer’s interior design, have installed Ercol-designed butterfly chairs, Louis Weisdorf pendant lights, and tables and bar stools from Aram.

Meanwhile, the back-of-house artists’ areas have been expanded. FCBStudios have taken a piece of dead space that was open to the elements, given it a glass roof, and reinvented it as an artists’ break-out space. ‘Previously, none of the back of house spaces had windows,’ explains Allen.

Only regular visitors with beady eyes will spot the clean-up effort. That includes the restoration of the board-marked concrete, which is a signature material of much of the 17-acre arts complex; the cleaning and French-polishing of the auditoria’s timber wall paneling – which suffered from tobacco staining – and the reupholstering of the auditoria’s black leather and aluminium seating.

The reopening of these two venues follows on from FCBStudio’s redesign of next door’s Hayward Gallery, which is showing German photographer Andreas Gursky’s vast images of modern life until 22 April.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios website

A first glimpse inside Julian Opie’s studio in Shoreditch, East London, does not reveal much about its recent architectural transformation. Its battered floorboards and hefty timber roof trusses could have been there for centuries.

In fact, hardly anything in this refurbished old furniture workshop, which has served as the artist’s base – and, for a while, live/work space – since 1987, screams ‘new’. Yet new it is, following a complete overhaul by Carmody Groarke in a process that lasted over four years. It is testament to the London practice’s masterful sleight of hand in merging old and new.

The idea for the project was born when planning permission was granted for a big new hotel in a plot just feet away from the studio’s back wall. Concerned about privacy and changes in light, Opie decided to take the opportunity and start a project of his own. The plan was to extend his workspace – outgrown by his studio team – adapting it in response to the construction next door.

Kevin Carmody and Andy Groarke were already his go-to architects and this would be the latest in a series of collaborations with the artist, the first being Opie’s London home back in 2006. ‘I appreciate Carmody Groarke’s straightforward approach and brilliant understanding of space, so they seemed the obvious choice of architect,’ Opie explains.

It was not just their established relationship that made the young London practice the perfect partner. Groarke and Carmody met at David Chipperfield’s office while – rather fittingly – working together on another artist’s studio, this one for Antony Gormley. They joined forces and set up shop soon after, and their independent practice turned ten years old in 2016. Yet their portfolio shows a maturity and diversity rare in an emerging practice. Indeed, ‘emerging’ hardly seems an appropriate tag. While it is not uncommon for a new practice to take the better part of ten years just to complete its first flagship project, Carmody Groarke has already had plenty of attention-grabbing commissions, including a temporary nightclub, a collaboration with Carsten Höller for Fondazione Prada, and timber pavilions for the Frieze Art Fair.

The pair have a knack for creating experiences and navigating different typologies and scales, especially when it comes to projects merging arts and architecture. Their affinity with the arts has been key since the practice’s inception, their output ranging from large-scale galleries to artists’ ateliers and exhibition design. ‘Our first project, and the springboard to set up our practice, was a competition win, the Coney Island Parachute Pavilion,’ recalls Groarke. ‘It combined culture, pavilions and temporary architecture, art, and our desire to seek and create opportunities. All seem to be themes that became recurrent in our practice.’

Their work often straddles creative disciplines and they are fascinated by artists’ take on the environment, built and otherwise. ‘Artists have very precise ways of seeing and experiencing the world, which enriches the discussion of what an architectural project can be,’ explain the architects. ‘We also admire artists’ ability to maintain a conceptual clarity throughout a body of work. Making exhibitions for fine art or museum collections has always been a great source of research for the studio. It forces us to think of how to make sense of our culture and our times.’

The Opie studio project called for a complete reimagining and extension of the four-level, mid-19th-century brick building, increasing space while safeguarding privacy. The architects’ solution was topping the existing industrial building with a profiled anodised aluminium sheet structure that captures and reflects daylight. The new design’s skylights ensure the studio’s creative operations remain out of sight from its neighbour, while light can flood in.

There is a playful contrast between brick and aluminium, a nod to the architects’ ongoing interest in material experimentation. Their choices always respond to each project’s needs, so there’s huge variety in their work, from the structural bricks of the 2016 Highgate House, to the sculptural concrete volumes of a house and studio in Lambeth, one of their upcoming works. ‘We like to manipulate materials and light in a way that increases your awareness of your surroundings,’ says Groarke.

Inside, working with the building’s original character was important to Opie. ‘I did not want to lose the inherent mid-19th-century industrial qualities that remained; the wooden floors and beams, the steep, open staircases and tall windows,’ he says. The architects obliged, employing a soft touch and some skilful architectural handling. Any new floorboards are reclaimed, the roof and external openings were maintained and, while the interior was almost completely gutted and cleared from additions and tweaks spanning decades, the current composition feels remarkably organic and natural. The steel-beam addition at the back manages discreetly to increase overall floorspace by some 100 sq m.

Each floor was opened up to create spacious studio rooms and open-plan desk areas, and circulation was streamlined. Hints to the building’s past live/work use were carefully removed, and domestic areas were transformed into functional workspaces – the place is usually buzzing with up to ten employees.

Opie’s studio is just coming out of a busy period with the opening last year of two major solo exhibitions – one in Suwon, South Korea, and the other at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Next up are shows at London’s Alan Cristea Gallery in April, and at Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria in November. Careful planning of the layout was essential in order to boost efficacy during the most demanding times.

The architects have been just as busy. They are currently putting the finishing touches to a summer pavilion for the White Cube gallery at Glyndebourne in East Sussex and working on a spectacular new suite for the Burgh Island Hotel in Devon. One of their largest buildings to date, the Windermere Jetty Museum, will open later in 2018, while future work includes the renovation and extension of the Dorset County Museum in Dorchester and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.

But for now, they can enjoy the appreciation of a satisfied customer. Opie, meanwhile, hopes his new studio will provide a model for other developments in his area. ‘We deal with the building almost exclusively from the front and inside, and the new extension exterior is at the back in a narrow, graffiti-covered alley,’ says Opie. ‘I only recently went out there to take a look and I am proud of how my building looks both cared for and dynamic and ready for work. It’s a good mix of 19th- and 21st-century industrial functional design with no frills but with good materials and sensible generous proportions. It looks like much of the street will soon follow suit.’

As originally featured in the January 2018 issue of Wallaper* (W*226)

INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Julian Opie website and the Carmody Groarke website

Polished concrete and buckets of sunny paint have helped give the lower-ground floor of a north London flat a new confidence. The lower reaches of the Victorian terrace duplex in Stoke Newington were suffering an inferiority complex. While the upper-ground floor was all period features and high ceilings, the floor below was a muddle of small, cramped rooms and corridors.

London design consultancy Russian For Fish (which is pronounced ‘riba’, a neat pun), reconfigured the 74 sq m space by taking down a wall between the hall and the corridor, and replacing a WC with a shower and utility room. In addition, an existing side return extension now has a roof light.

They then got to work on the aesthetic. The client was after a minimal, industrial look, so ‘we took references from commercial and gallery spaces, as opposed to residential interiors’, says RFF founder Pereen d’Avoine. ‘Not only to create the contrast with the upper-ground floor, but to allow for the client’s furniture to breathe.’ Hence the polished, light-toned concrete, which was used for the floor and the living room wall.

In contrast, the walls, ceiling and units of the galley-style kitchen and the stairwell have been coated in a vibrant yellow, which ‘not only brightens the space, but highlights the warmer tones of the natural concrete floor’, adds d’Avoine, who runs the business with co-director Nilesh Shah. What’s more, the owner intended to fill the place with houseplants, ‘so the yellow was a natural continuation of the colour range. The grey and yellow will harmonise with the greens, creating an ever-changing colourful landscape.’

The flat is typical of RFF’s work: making the capital’s small homes function better for their inhabitants. It now has three reception rooms, which act as a fitting backdrop to some very smart mid-century and contemporary furniture.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Russian For Fish website