Good morning, how are you? Nice to see you. you're all right? Good to be here. Nice to have you here. A light, sunny morning. It’s absolutely beautiful. I'm dying to have a look. OK, do you want to start? This is the hallway, great window there out into sort of London and it's a half a mansion block, so you get the light that you don't normally get in a mansion block. It's an incomplete mega- structure. It feels quite New Yorky actually looking out there. It's the fire escape. Yes fire escapes – it's quite gritty, quite grainy. But across the road, the block is complete and therefore the inside is getting no light and you're looking across at your neighbour, whereas because they never bought the Georgian properties, it's like an incomplete mega- structure. So this is where actually most of family time is spent. North- facing but the benefit of north-facing is you get lovely light on to the buildings opposite, which we're currently cleaning up and doing up but they're beautiful terracotta, Edwardian-looking but actually late Victorian, 1897. But we've been restoring that. You can see all the rather nice details. I mean conventional wisdom says north- facing is no good. What do you think about that? I think conventional wisdom is often wrong. I mean at least a quarter of the world faces north. I mean the nice thing is you're not getting sun into the windows, it doesn't show the dirt on the windows and then you're looking out on to if this was you know, if this was the countryside you’d be looking out on to sunny fields. So in fact it actually can work very well. Nothing is quite as it says it in the books. I obviously have to mention your art collection. Tell me about some of these things. Basically my parents, my father's an architect, and they were collectors in the 50s and 60s so they bought stuff they like when they liked it and then over time I inherited it all when my father died 25 years ago. They sold the house and it all came to me rather luckily I was the architect one. So that's a Joe Tilson. And then of course the reality is it looks very nice now, this is the reality of our life. The kids love the pretend idea that we look intellectual. But actually Joe Tilson disappears into the corner. That's the real action. I noticed you’ve got storage under here so I mean it's obviously very clutter-free. So what's going on in there? What have you got in there? So, in there is actually surplus debris of of Hi-Fi, WiFi and all that kind of stuff. And also there are some speakers, so hence the speaker covers. It's about the bric-a-brac of life being on display, but at the same time you do need there is junk in life. And obviously you you want. Exactly you want to see the things that look good and not the things that don't. And then, all this glassware up here, what's the story with that? That's just glassware collected over time and actually I think there's a light that comes on. My wife say we have too many switches but one of these will turn a light on and then it lights up rather beautifully then reflects. The television gets turned off, see she's right we have too many switches. It's the last one is it. No, that's that one. There you are. So you just get
a nice ... I was always brought up with the Charles Eames' aesthetic of objects being out and enjoyed and then people give you stuff over time you collect it, the rich mix of colours kind of appeals. I don't fancy the dusting, though. Then this is the all-action room, where we eat there at that end of the table. So this is a kind of purpose made kitchen. My builders who I have worked with for 15 years on this project, which has been 10 projects. So we made made a kind of big, robust kitchen with big robust plywood doors because we've done a few kitchens in our time. And this is metal on top? It's an acid washed brass finish. Really nice. And then chose some nice historical paint colours. And then this is a kind of hard wearing. Of course when you first put it in, you worry about it's leathered rather than – see it’s not honed or shiny, it's got a really nice finish called leathered because it feels a bit like leather. A very nice Portuguese marble guy I know, he kind of buys it, splits it, does all the grains, the grain run through quite nicely. And then spatially, I'm interested. So you all gather around this end here so someone's cooking. Well yeah, someone's cooking you're eating here. There is a dining table there, you pull out. It's you know a very nice simple one, but it has a double width so it can get 14 people around it. But of a weekday, we tend to eat Here. And why is that? Why would you be here and not there? How would you describe that? It's kind of a bit more – we're chaotic. There's two 12-year-old girls, a 10-year-old girl, and there's a bit of homework being done there and there's stuff here. And then we all eat here and it's kind of of slightly less formal and because
we are a family of five you get two, two and one rather than four, four and one at the end. It just also gives a ritual to weekdays versus a more formal Sunday, when someone might come around for dinner kind of thing. It's a remarkably quiet street in an incredibly urban area. It is an incredibly busy, noisy area but it’s kind of pretty good up here. You know, we always think it's like having a house in the sky. So you come to the front door this is the ground floor, tiny balcony – not huge amount of use. But, then we've got Regent's Park, Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Holland Park, you know, you've got everything around you. We're very lucky, London's a pretty green city anyway, but we're right in the heart of that greenness here so it's good. Alright, let's have a look at your living space. This is a room where we do sit or I might sit, if you want quiet. And, there's a fire that we connected to the historical flue around there, which is a very nice Danish fire. You've basically used this rug to kind of demarcate the space within a space haven't you? Yeah, Matt Bourne who runs Christopher Farr and I went to school together. So all the rugs are little projects that I've sketched out and then he's had made for us using the handmade techniques they have. So I wanted a big black border, holds it all together. And then this is again furniture I inherited. So this is like 50 year old, nicely worn pony skin Corb – so it's a mixture of the old and the new. That was a second-hand table off my sister so stuff is all moved around. Then that is the great Jean Prouvé chair which is actually modern and comfortable. So I live in Eames but I've now started to live in Prouvé because actually, the head rest is lovely and actually you know a lot of modern furniture is low and uncomfortable but that one's remarkably good. You can sit there reading. I think it's so interesting that you, in one open space, you've got so many different functions. As you say you've got kind of family dining, more formal dining. You've got a sitting area where you can sit quite formally or, as you say, you can sit in a more relaxed way. We created a kind of working larder in there. So the oven, the fridge, the freezer, and a working sink, are there. So we do use this, but this is more – we talk about being tidy or not tidy – this allows this to look slightly better. Everything gets shoved. We went to someone's house and it was like a scullery and Fiona said they've got scullery. It's a brilliant idea. When people come you, just dump everything in there and then I started designing this with her and she started saying well why are you putting all this marble in there? I said it's a scullery to you, but to me it's a pantry, where I can put ham and cheese out. And then it's got the drinks cabinet, which is kind of you know, part of the life of the building so it does double up. You can dump all your stuff there. There's two drawers and a dishwasher, two dishwasher drawers and then your microwave, oven, fridge and freezer. So it's actually quite a hardworking space and it borrows light from the room beyond. So it's got a clerestory light, which again was something I was brought up with in a modern house where my parents lived in the country. So clerestory light actually works incredibly well and so this even though this is quite robust, it's also quite pretty. And then that's a beautiful if you like details ... So if someone wanted to replicate that what would you call it, fluted? Yeah it's a concave fluting, a concave fluting, and it's this is same behind the fire. But there it's got a doric top, no end. A doric column always goes all the way through. And again, that's the reality of life. When I was younger I used to be slightly more optimistic and say let's have the wall flowing through now I'm a bit older I'm a bit more like, I know that it will look terrible in a year or two. And then that's the same with this hallway. This was added, because school bags, hockey sticks,
football boots everything. This hallway is like a transit yard of things coming in going out – you know what I mean ? So we've tidied it for you. But normally there's three bags going to the charity shop. There's three school bags, there's sports bags. Then that gets hammered. And actually, we
decided that mirroring that with a staircase actually kind of completed the room, anyway. I've grown to like cellularisation of space and acoustic privacy, but I didn't want a door here because it's a door to nowhere. So that fire curtain allows that to shut down in the event of a fire. This used to be a door here when it was rented then I move the door there. Well, also I noticed you have a glazed door. Yeah that that just gets some light into the hallway. And again, I quite like borrowing vistas. So that's a vista into this room, the long dimension here and then in here you get another long dimension through there. This is obviously a very big flat. It used to be, when we lived upstairs, which is now our bedroom, it was a very small flat and that was all about trying to make a small flat have a generosity in a dimension or indeed volume. And again, this is 2.9 so it's got a good height. This is the top of the mansion block and then those, where we'll go later, were added in the late 70s, early 80s. So you know the block ended with the pepper pots. Then there was just a roof and plant room and maybe a few servants’ rooms. But then in the '80s, they built what they call the penthouses, which is the original flat I bought. Then we drilled down to this flat. I've got to ask you about your Eduardo Paolozzi collection here. I grew up with this in London, in the 60s. This is the 'As Is When' series which is the life of Ludwig Wittgenstein. I inherited it and I always had it in storage, ready and cleaned up. Then I got it all out when we had the space to hang it. You need a big space. Now some people say it's quite dominant. I tried it without it, but I actually think it sort of became the theme of this room. Hence the two cabinets that kind of play off it. We went to the Sorrento hotel by Ponti. The
Parco del Principi hotel. Exactly and a mate of mine discovered the original people who still hand make them and he now imports them. So I got him to import them for me and then he now imports them. Then these are five spares that the model shop framed up to make somewhere to put stuff. A fruit repository. So nothing is wasted, everything's been properly recycled. It's really good. [Music] [Music] You end up with a with a dead wall. So I ended up creating a little storage for the table leaves, some spares in there. So this is basically kind of kids homework, art room. I mean it looks as it sounds. It's just a product of we have more space than we thought we'd ever have because we never thought we'd connect the two flats up and take all of it but we did. So if you got it, we don't have a second home, you might as well enjoy it. And it does give you a kind of chance where one can be in here, one can be in there doing piano, one can be in there. There's a lot of television being watched in here. You can balance all those things out really nicely. So I see you've got a pivoting door here. Yes. Why? Because I like the idea that this door would be open a lot more and therefore, again the idea of you can close it all down but you can have the door open. You can be borrowing vistas. But somehow a door, I mean that is not pivoting door, that door's closed a lot more. A door on a pivot without handles feels more like a plane, rather than a door with handles. Because this one is very much the door that's closed into another room with there, so that's the stop. And then, this is much more of a flow and so we’ll be in there, one or two of them will be in here. You know so it all kind of connects much more. And there's the clerestory, borrowing light into that kitchen scullery. Very modernist, isn't it. It's a great thing actually that high-level light. I mean in my Mum's house you just get views of trees. Here you get views of artwork. Light fittings. Exactly that. And like many architects you're a devotee of the Dieter
Rams Vitsœ. Yeah I am a big fan. I mean Mark Adams is an old friend of mine. It's a fantastic idea that this German product designed by Dieter Rams is now made all over England and then assembled in Leamington, and endlessly refined. And what I like about it, is it's sort of invisible. Once you put the objects on, it so this is supposed to be for magazines. But then they put all their art on it. This hides all the rubbish – and the whole thing is a sort of invisible system, which is really very neat. If they're here with their friends, they can all come in here. And then if they're staying over, you can move that sofa to there. This again, which is something inherited, folds away and then that flips down and there's a bed in there. Then you get these amazing views. You talk about New York. I mean I call it the Mary Poppins' view of London. It's churches and chimney pots and the old tower in the background. But I'm always unsure about what to do with the kids' stuff and photographs of the children and things. But what's nice about a room like this which is sort of for them, it feels right. I've been to houses where there are photographs of the family everywhere, which I find extraordinarily not what I would ever do. And why is that? Because I just think: you're there. You're there. You don't need photographs of yourself looking happy. I mean but this is more fun. The girls produce lots of stuff and they make lots of thank you cards and they go out and they're gone. I do have boxes of their drawings, I do tend to keep them. I like drawings. And then this is the staircase we drilled through. So we bought, we lived upstairs, we bought the roof, developed
that. Then we bought this. Then we let it out for seven or eight years. Then because the kids were getting older, it a bit like well, if we're going to make all this space into one let’s do it now. So this is the staircase built by the builders. This is the secret cupboard. Oh, that is excellent. And I think this about three-and-a- half years old now and it still hasn't failed. You know I live in a world where failure is a possibility or even a likelihood, but there, they've done it beautifully, the door still there. It's proper muscular hinges, and a beautifully made plywood on plywood form. It's like a bi- plane, and that's where the kids shove all their junk. It's very satisfying. What kind of timber have we got here? It's oiled American walnut. So you've got American walnut oiled, you've got doors that I've recycled which, were American walnut polished. Because the original flat was more like a boat on the roof, because another friend of mine, Roger Zogolovitch,
has a house in Poole with his wife, Carola, and the house is the interior of the Mauretania, the ship. So the bedrooms are cabins with portholes. Literally the guy bought the second class ladies lounge and four cabins and built a 30s house around them. So I like the idea that the original flat was more like being in a boat in the sky with porthole windows everywhere, with uncut timbers. It's all modulated. They're actually to the non-purist, there are 42mm and 44mm planks that allows them to modulate because you've obviously got a longer one wider than on your tread and dimensionally they don't match. And this is all done on site, in situ, worked out.
I had a sketch but then we used to work out every morning, work out how to do it. Because we were living upstairs while this flat was done and the staircase was taken up and then stopped. Then we moved downstairs and then they took back over that flat. So it's kind of, it was logistics. It was a three-year project that you know, almost broke all of us – me, the builders, the kids. But you see there, the idea was to pull that back, and get a void and get a light. And again get this invitation to walk upstairs. And again get that volume going in the house. Let's have a look. That's definitely inviting me up. [Music] So that's the old front door. So we used to live here. This was nothing to do with us. Then we bought it when Orla was born or just before she was born because it was available. I used to joke it was my flat, cause this flat I lived on my own, then Fiona moved in. Then we had three kids. But before she moved in, we bought upstairs and added a room so that helped. But I've kept the old front door so people can come and visit here, can drop downstairs and go straight up that staircase, where I have an office. So often on a Friday or midweek, when I'm in the West End, rather than get back to Clerkenwell, I'll have some meetings here then you know make the whole day work around home and the office. Can you leave my book out as well. Yeah I know, I've got your book out, yes and I left some of my books out. Your book's been there for quite a long time and then there's
Gio Ponti. I don't buy big books but actually he's one of the few people who's good enough to fill them. Our own books we make quite small. Yeah exactly yeah,
apologetic book. Exactly, whereas Ponti can fill a big book. Exactly This used to be the family living room. This is where we lived. And then what happened in the 80s, when they built this penthouse, as they call it – shed on the roof – they floated the new floor over the neighbours below so as not to make too much noise. There are certain steels that hold the building together. So when we bought downstairs and when we decided to connect them up, I took this floor off and dropped it down So it's slightly New York. There are two benefits: one, you get more volume but I also quite like – although I've now done my knee in – but I quite like the stepping down into the room. And that frames a bed space and that's a bath space. So there are lots of level changes. [Music] Before the kids came, I did the flat up. Then Fiona moved in, then we bought upstairs, then the twins came. So we moved the bathroom and put it where the staircase is now. Then Orla came, so we re-did the kitchen. We've lived too much with builders. But, we've managed to remain friendly with each other and the builders. So this is our room now. So it's quite ridiculous – what we used to live in as a family has become our bedroom suite. That used to be a balcony, that we've turned into a dressing room. This is really nice, the sort of window seat. Yes exactly, it does take the weight. And talk to me about the Gio Ponti tiles.
Do you want to come in? So there's the bath, those are the tiles, they're the spares from all the different bathrooms. So Ponti always made compositions with them, so I looked at his compositions and made a composition of the different tile types. So that tile is the different layering of this circular tile, just laid in a different way. And then that one is the is the same tile but with the circle reversed with the dark on the outside. So actually it was quite an interesting essay in the simple geometry of tessellation. There's a theme emerging here though, isn't there? Which is that, you've used it and then you've discovered where the high-wear areas are and done something about it. Yeah exactly. I mean the theme is, I got it right 70% of the time. But my other one is, don't try and do everything. Get the basics right and then get the spatial arrangements right and then add the detail where you need to rather than finishing it. Wherever possible, trying to extract volume out the space and allow the journey to be kind of interesting. And, this is a hanging office above that I've hung into this space because there was the opportunity to do it. So you can't, in a highly complex project, you can't solve it all. We do, in a real-world situation of a proper job, we have three-dimensional bin models. But in a domestic project, I think part of it is allowing it to emerge. Is this your dressing room through here? Yeah my dressing room, yes this is it. I mean the girls laugh because this used to be a bathroom. Then there was two children in this room. And that's the old fireplace, so I recycled the fireplace. So that was sitting there. That's the plan of Le Corbusier’s Pavillon Suisse, which is my old man's favourite plan. So he had that printed, again many, many years ago, and so they all come together as a piece. Out of interest, why do you think this is your father's favourite plan? I think during the postmodern row, he he had to give a talk and he just said find me plan that is more beautiful than that. I think he meant is both a visual but also if you look at the kind of the softness of that space, the folding nature of the staircase. And that wall, the kind of gabion wall, does not align with that wall. Just the plastic twisting of space and obviously, it was the famous early pilotis through which you walk to enter the Pavilion, that was sitting outside the Pavilion above. So just I think it just became important to him as as an architect. So and then you know I've kept it, because obviously I went to see the Pavilion Suisse 30-40 years after him, so there's a bit of history there. So the bathroom became a bedroom, that was a bedroom for two kids, now it's my dressing room so it's spatial luxury. Again, trying to open the vistas up and playing with the mirror there. Obviously, the cameraman doesn't want to see the mirror. He's not here. What cameraman? Exactly. I don't have boxes full of stuff. I have everything out. Everything I like is out to be enjoyed. Cigarette cards, stamps, letters. You know so it's just kind of trying to surround myself with fun things. That’s the theatre recently completed above Tottenham Court Road Tube Station. HMS Belfast. I never had train kits as a kid but I'm a football nut. And a Sheffield Wednesday nut and I bought myself the Sheffield Wednesday 1933 locomotive from Hornsby. I do actually have the track and I put it up once or twice but I just like the fact I've got it and it's out now. This is obviously quite a personal space to use, it's got a lot of personal things in it and yet it's a dressing room. So how does that that work in terms of the kind of conceptually and sort of emotionally? So at the end of the day, I come here and I dump everything for the next day on this top. That's a job I've got to do which is to rewire some lights. And then this just means I'm surrounded by a little bit of history. So that's my late sister who died 25 years ago. You know, pictures of people you know, it’s so architecture. People I knew, so it's just kind of comforting, which is what a home can be at its best you know. And I wouldn't want that out in the, we talk about pictures, I wouldn't want that out in the public realm. You kind of, it's more like this is a private space so therefore you can kind of surround yourself with life's memorabilia. I got rid of doors, generally. But that's the other bond of one of the circular tiles which is the way he used it most which I really like the way the diagonals run and the straight lines run through it. It's really great, really works in it. So it feels quite nautical, right, the porthole window. Yeah, the porthole window has been moved twice. That was once somewhere else but it just again frames these strange views of London. A balcony we never use, they're too thin. It again goes back to Zogolovitch’s house and the idea of little portholes. And you know all this polished
walnut just kind of gives you a kind of warm, honey-coloured backdrop. And that also picks up the light and fades differently and then the skylights open, lift up and ventilate. This is again a very modest thing, isn't it? There's one of these at Willow Road, for example. This is quite a good trick, actually. This is simply a square, cheapish roof light that opens but massively oversized. And then the circular hole which reminds me of James Turrell. You don't see any framing but it's actually bog-standard polycarbonate. The birds have not such a good view
of it, but no. They might stand on it, and shit on it, but that's part of
the maintenance. This is a luxurious bathroom. Yes, so I'm intrigued by this. So there's two sets of shower heads and shower fittings. So you're genuinely sometimes both in the shower at different ends. And if we're not in it, our daughters will have come up and use the shower and taken the shampoo and taken the towels. And generally, as in any house, you’re like you've got your own space downstairs, in your own rooms, get out of ours. But then children kind of gravitate towards you. Why do they want to use yours? Cause it's yours. Right. Not because it's any better than theirs, they just want, children seem to want, to take whatever you have and remove it from you – your spirit, your morale, everything. (Laughter.) I don't know what you mean. This used to be a double- height space. It was very, very nice but I wanted more space upstairs for an office. We've got enough space now. So we made this. I don't do glass floors but this does actually allow that porthole up there to shine the way through here and give this space some light. It's obviously landlocked space so that pumps light into here. And then we have the youngest child lives here next to us. And then you’re talking about details, she thinks she's special because she's got a sliding door. The reason she got sliding doors, I couldn't make any other door work. And then also, she's got also next to her, a little art cupboard so you can store all the pictures that are due to be framed or reframed or whatever, so it is actually quite a neat little thing. And I noticed she's written ‘Keep Out’ on the door. Yeah, she does. Children always do that don't they? Slightly less offensive than some of her notes. No entry. There's been much worse versions. [Music] So this staircase used to fold up there around the double height space as a sort of ladder staircase. Then we turned this into a spiral was the only way to get up satisfactory into that room without destroying the room. you could have dog-legged it but the spiral was much neater and tighter. The oak which is the flooring as the stair. And then you got the walnut again, uncut modulated to work coming around making a circle, disappearing into the wall there. And then you come up the same orange handrail into the office. So this was our bedroom. And this staircase moved around during the project. The dog-leg was too big. So I wanted to have two spaces. So this is where I work. So, mirror kind of view of London through the key clamps. Safety and security. We get quite nice distant views. These are my architectural books which are continuously thinned out, but you know I'm 61 now so the collection is quite big. But the rule is they're books that I I would like to look at it. It’s an aspirational bookshelf. Exactly, exactly. More of the Vitsœ shelving, which
you don't really see and then the stuff of life. Cameras that are too beautiful to throw away. Someone made for my 60th this spun thing which is my profile, quite a fun thing, I didn't realise what it was. That's excellent. [Music] Then this is a desk from my father's office, but I had to cut off a little bit and then re-lip to get in here. But my view is I'd rather adapt it than not have it. And I've gone for the Adolf Loos idea that everyone has a different chair. So you know all the chairs here are slightly different. So you've got a Eames chair. I've got a Danish chair from 60s. And, it's a very low desk. It was designed for drawing on. So it's 660 rather than 720. And then this is a piece of furniture I made to divide the room up slightly. That's a bit of useless space if I'm being honest. so I made a big unit. You know when you go to school to get you know, the full lowdown from the teacher about how your child's doing and they diminish you by parking you on one of those tiny, tiny chairs. It's all a kind of power game, I think. This is the opposite. This maximises you. You feel tall and powerful. You can stand in front and face the teacher. So this is where people come and I'll have a meeting, so I'll work there I might draw here. People come here. And again there's all my notebooks, all FRS Yorke’s drawings/photographs from The Modern House are all archived here and kept there. So it's an amazing collection all the originals. And then it mixes up with Humphrey Repton’s gardening book. That's the Frank Lloyd Wright set, mixed in with some Pete McKees. It was for my 60th that someone in the office organised it. He listened to this story of my life. That's the camper van we went traveling through Europe in 1969. That's me as a 15-year-old. That's the only stand that's in Pevsner, the North Stand. And then there's a quote from my daughter when a client was driving me mad. She was full of swear words. She was allowed to put on a quote to kind of make me smile. Then there's a power room that drives the whole house. You know all the kit that drives the house. And this is a little kitchenette. So I've got the wine that I don't want people to drink in error. I'm not a wine collector but you do find you get a very nice bottle of wine that's then being used in the spaghetti bolognese and so anything that's any good gets moved up here which I then bring down for consumption. That's a good idea. That's a mock-up which I now use as a trivet. A trivet exactly. And then there's a little bathroom here. We think of this really as a little flat. That’s so sweet. We have too many bathrooms. But the idea is that this one it's, I think it's Fiona’s idea, if I can't get up that staircase, then we could put a carer in here and this is a flat for me. She's so romantic. Exactly [Music] And that's the amazing view. There's the new Renzo Piano Cube but it's kind of London's living skyline being endlessly, rather densely, mapped up around the Edgware Road. And our own pepper pots which we've been restoring. And the chimney which we repaired
which always slightly worries me in wind, because it's a 14-foot high chimney, if it goes we're gone.
