This Clerkenwell house represents the near-complete remodel of an existing property - the keen-eyed reader might recognise it as the home of designer Roksanda Ilincic ten years ago. Now reinvented for a family of three with a passion for travelling and art, the building was fully redesigned by architect Pauline Gidoin of MM Studio Interior.
The current owners had been living in the home for eight years, using a mix of the furniture they owned prior to purchasing it, and the original project's existing structure. Over the years, they realised they needed to fine tune the space and upgrade it to their own personal needs. They called upon Gidoin to optimise and tailor design their space for their specific purposes.
'Although the architecture was very strong, the rooms didn't necessarily feel connected to the scale or character of the house. In the large open-plan ground floor in particular, pieces felt as though they were floating within the space rather than defining it,' the architect says.
'Just before they contacted us, they had completed two infill extensions to the upper bedrooms, creating two much more usable rooms that now needed to be properly designed. It felt like the right moment to look at the house in its entirety.'
Gidoin developed a design working closely with Tate Joinery, who worked on all the bespoke storage elements throughout. The aim was the balance the property's bold looks with functionality, and bring warmth to the strong architectural interior.
She explains: 'We described the design language early on as Brutalist and minimalist. I didn't want to fight the architecture or fill the house with objects. Instead, the idea was to work with a relatively restrained number of pieces, but make each one count through proportion, texture and materiality.'
'Spatially, each floor presented almost the opposite problem. The ground floor was extremely generous and needed to be broken down into distinct living, dining and music areas without introducing walls. Upstairs and on the lower-ground floor, the challenge was much more about making every centimetre useful, incorporating storage and responding to very different qualities of natural light. We used furniture placement, rugs, lighting, art and bespoke joinery almost architecturally to define those spaces.'
It was this challenge, the need to rebalance and fine-tune between large, flowing and cosy spaces, that helped define the project, the architect explains: 'I think that contrast ultimately became one of the strengths of the project: some spaces needed to be given more definition, while others needed to work much harder within a smaller footprint. The bespoke elements helped us solve those very different conditions, while the consistent material palette and the clients’ art collection create continuity throughout the house.'
Natural materials throughout, particularly travertine in both refined and rougher finishes, oak, walnut, limestone, leather and chrome, were used in an honest way, exposed and left 'brutalist' to add texture to the spaces. Instead of using lots of different finishes, the team worked with a restrained family of materials repeatedly, simply altering their scale, texture and application from room to room. This allowed the whole to feel consistent but also varied and truly bespoke.
