Subterms
Interior design practice Universal Design Studio has incorporated seating areas and terrazzo tracks into the lobby of an office building on the former site of a railway station at 100 Liverpool Street in the City of London. More
Nimtim Architects has added an extension called Fruit Box to a 1970s townhouse in Forest Hill, London, which is loosely divided by adaptable, semi-open partitions. More
Architecture practice Sam Jacob Studio has built an office, bar and events space for the ArtReview magazine in London that includes a pair of revamped Mies van der Rohe armchairs. More
Dezeen promotion: bathroom brand VitrA has opened a showroom in London’s Clerkenwell, where it will present its latest products and host design events. More
Tigg + Coll Architects has revamped the common spaces of a student housing block in east London, to create areas where students can feel comfortable being around others. More
London studio SODA based the bold interiors of The Office Group’s Liberty House offices on Regent Street on the colourful prints of the adjacent Liberty London department store.The studio created the interiors for two separate, flexible workspaces in the same building, called Liberty House and Liberty Rooms.
While the designs vary in the two areas, both were informed by the classic fabric Liberty prints produced by the department store next door.
Above: warm terracotta hues were used for the interiors. Top image: arched doorways decorate the rooms
The larger workspaces of Liberty House features a calmer, more neutral palette of colours and materials than the bold event spaces and meeting rooms in Liberty Rooms.
The department store originally traded out of Liberty House, before moving one door down.
“The relationship with the Liberty’s department store was the starting point for the graphic identity and the interior concept,” SODA architect Parvathy Vipulendran told Dezeen.
“The iconic Liberty prints inspired the colour palette of the design, while the mock-Tudor building inspired the high-end retail aesthetic and crafted objects positioned throughout the scheme.”
The building hosts two contemporary workspaces, Liberty House and Liberty Rooms
The studio wanted to ensure that the interior had a coherent design language, something it thought especially important for “a building of this grandeur.” Liberty House is a Grade II-listed building.
In order to keep the interior design coherent, the studio chose to remove a number of non-load bearing walls to open the space up and create an “appropriate” sense of scale for the rooms, which include meeting rooms, focus booths, breakout spaces, lounges, private offices and a kitchen and dining area.
Cold and warm colours are mixed in the kitchen and dining area
SODA used a colour palette of neutral warm beiges for the office spaces and bolder colours, such as dark petrol blue hues, bright yellow and warm terracotta, for the more public spaces, the meeting rooms and the bathrooms.
The material use and form language inside the building was also informed by its well-known neighbour as well as by the Liberty House building itself.
The colour palette was inspired by the building and by Liberty London fabrics
“We built a core material palette that was inspired by Liberty House and the Liberty fabrics, which comprised of scalloped panelling, tiling, oak joinery and floors, reeded glass, and more functional materials such as vinyl,” Vipulendran said.
“The scalloped surfaces can be seen in the facade of Liberty House, so it was a really nice way to bring the language of the exterior internally and apply it on key joinery elements.”
Terrazzo adds pattern interest to a kitchen in warm neutral colours
The scalloped design of the house’s facade was also referenced on some of the doors inside Liberty House.
“The routing on the upper floor tea points and doors has the same rhythm as the scallop and elevate these doors above a standard office door,” Vipulendran said.
“The rhythm of these vertical lines are beautifully complemented by the lines of the curtains through the scheme.”
SODA creates contemporary MYO offices inside 1970s London building
In some of the spaces, including tea points and bathrooms, SODA chose to use Altrock and Durat terrazzo material to create more striking patterned interiors. The studio collaborated with Altrock to create bespoke coloured surfaces that would match the design.
Handcrafted objects decorate the space
As well as informing the colours and shapes of the office space, the Liberty department store also lent some of its in-store aesthetic to the interior, which features a number of hand-crafted objects throughout as well as pieces that nod to display cases.
“This is expressed most clearly in the main lounge and reception, where we used light, bright tiled surfaces to highlight key joinery objects,” Vipulendran said.
“These were inspired by the craftsmanship and the display of high-end items in Liberty. These jewel-box cabinetry pieces are arranged through the reception and lounge to create islands of social activity along the length of this open space.”
Large period windows allow light to fall into the lounge
SODA’s branding for the project also plays off Liberty London’s typeface, with an abstract pattern derived from the letters “Liberty” used to create prints on both textiles and surfaces inside Liberty House.
While the final design encompasses many different types of rooms, one stands out to Vipulendran.
“The lounge is particularly spectacular as from this space you can really appreciate the richness of Liberty House and its prominent location along Regent Street,” the architect said.
“The room comes to life in the afternoon when the sunlight falls through the big period windows and illuminates the variety of surfaces.”
SODA recently designed the interiors for a flexible workspace in a gridded 1970s building, while The Office Group’s latest London workspace prior to this one was designed by Note Design Studio.
Photography is by Ed Reeve.
Read more: More
Alexander Owen Architecture has added a marble-clad extension and garden room to this Victorian mid-terrace in East Dulwich, London, to accommodate a home office and a well-stocked bar.The owners, a couple with three young sons, wanted a place to entertain and ample space to spend time together as a family.
Top image: the garden room houses a bar and home office. Above: the kitchen extension looks out at the garden and annexe
In response to the brief, the architects created a single-storey rear extension that adds 13.3 square metres and accommodates an open-plan kitchen, utility room and toilet, plus a 16-square-metre annexe that serves as a work and social space.
Separated by a paved garden, the facade of the extension and garden room are clad in two types of precision-cut marble – a lighter version with hazier veining called Arabescato and a dark grey Bardiglio marble with a more structured finish.
Alexander Owen Architecture clad the kitchen extension in different kinds of marble
“We wanted to create a holistic flow to the house and garden and a certain mimicry between the extension and garden room as new interventions,” Richard Bridges and James Webster, founders of Alexander Owen Architecture, told Dezeen.
“The marble cladding on the extension and garden room has been designed to have similar cut lines and panel formations but the arrangement of the two marble types is reversed.”
The marble is cut so that it wraps seamlessly around the glazing frames
The marble has been mitred around the doors and windows and digitally cut to create precise, 90-degree junctions between the individual slabs. This allows the cladding and the cut lines to seamlessly wrap themselves around the glazing frames.
“The wider site context provides an abundance of trees and greenery, which as the day progresses cast an ever-changing array of light and shadow across the site,” said the architects, who both previously worked at Foster + Partners.
“The final selection of marble was informed by this layering of dappled light on top of the veining, colouration and movement inherent to each type.”
The kitchen is finished with stainless steel worktops
A set of sliding doors with Accoya wood frames opens the kitchen and dining space up to the outside, while the garden room is glazed with a set of bi-folding windows and a pivoting door.
Alexander Owen Architecture chose robust, low-maintenance surfaces for the kitchen extension, including a poured concrete floor, stainless steel island unit, shot-blasted pewter brick walls and a timber ceiling.
Pewter brick walls are contrasted with timber ceilings
“Each material was selected based on how it would sit against the other materials and its ability to sit in an almost ‘raw’ state – the very engineered precision and sheen of the stainless steel and geometric texture of the pewter blocks versus the natural, organic strength of the marble and warmth of the timber,” Bridges and Webster explained.
“The palette tries to create a very calming balance between the organic and the engineered.”
Dallas Pierce Quintero arranges small London home around four courtyards
The steel island unit also incorporates a bench seat for the dining area while a linear skylight lets in sunshine from above.
The same black, wire-cut bricks that pave the garden are used on the floor of the annexe to create a seamless connection between indoors and outdoors. In the garden room, walls are clad in yellow Valchromat MDF and birch ply, as are the built-in desk, bar and storage cupboards.
The garden room offers a “grown-up” space for entertaining
According to the architects, who established their studio in 2013, the home’s layout is carefully divided into various zones tailored to the family’s daily routine.
The utility room and toilet are located in the mid-section of the property so that the kitchen and garden room at the back can function as a peaceful, “grown-up” area that can be kept tidy for dinners with friends.
It also houses a home office
“The rest of the house can effectively be shut off, with the utility space playing a key role in storage,” said Bridges and Webster. “The family snug in the front part of the house means the owners can read books and listen to music on their record player while their children can watch TV or play in the other end of the space.”
The garden room serves as a home office during the week and helps the couple maintain a boundary between work and family life. It also has an expansive bar that can be used for small gatherings.
Bar seating runs along the bi-folding windows
According to Alexander Owen Architecture, there has been a marked increase in clients wanting to create an office space in their home.
“We have had a lot of interest in garden rooms since the start of the pandemic, with some new clients even prioritising this ahead of developing the main house due to the need for home working, schooling and simply more space,” explained the architects.
“It’s undeniable the impact that the last 12 months have had, not only on how much time we spend in our homes but on how we use them as live-work accommodation.”
Covid-19 has forced companies around the world to embrace remote working, with many predicting that working from home will be here to stay long after the virus has been brought under control. Last month Dezeen rounded up 10 products to improve your home-office setup.
Contractors for this project were Create Bespoke and photography is by French+Tye.
Read more: More
Dutch architect Anne Holtrop has remodelled Maison Margiela’s concept store in London adding walls cast in textile moulds to reflect the brand’s garment construction techniques.Located at 22 Bruton Street, the boutique is laid out across 190-square-metres and displays Maison Margiela’s Co-Ed collections, with men’s and women’s ready-to-wear alongside accessories such as shoes, jewellery and eyewear.
Gypsum partition walls separate the retail space
The store features a pale, tonal colour palette in keeping with the Parisian label’s all-white studio, with the plaster walls and ceilings retained in their natural finish and floors and fixtures made from travertine.
A number of the store’s walls and columns were individually hand-cast in textile moulds, leaving behind folds and dents to create the illusion of fabric billowing in the wind.
Floors tables and shelving are made from carved travertine
This unconventional casting method is intended to reflect a garment construction technique used by the fashion house that is designed to disrupt the “anonymity of the lining” and reveal the inner workings of a garment.
Wooden curtain drapes around a lift inside Maison Margiela’s Milan store
“The gypsum casts in textile formwork translate the ‘anonymity of the lining’ concept into an architectural element,” explained Maison Margiela.
“After removing the textile formwork, the imprint of the textile remains visible on the surface of the walls and columns, together with the pleats of the textile and volume of the gypsum that pushed the formwork out. The walls and columns are turned inside out – we look at the lining, the interior of the wall.”
The Bruton Street store houses clothing as well as accessories
Holtrop, who founded Amsterdam-based Studio Anne Holtrop in 2009, installed items of “misfit” furniture throughout the space. Featuring familiar forms that have been warped and skewed, these were designed to lean and fold around the interior.
To lighten the store’s travertine floor and carved fixtures – including shelves, display tables and seats – Anne Holstrop Studio developed a technique that involves filling the stone’s natural indentations with colour-contrasting epoxy resin in optical white.
The gypsum walls are cast in fabric moulds
“Normally the porosity of travertine is carefully filled with an epoxy in exactly the same colour as the stone,” explained the studio. “With an infill of white epoxy, the porosity of the stone adds an accurate drawing, a staining of the material itself.”
The finish was inspired by another of Maison Margiela’s characteristic techniques called décortiqué, where haute couture technicians cut through the layers of a garment in order to reveal its construction.
“All that remains is the skeleton, the core components, which enable you to recognise what the item once was,” explained Maison Margiela. “It entails cutting around the seams to emphasise the structure and detailing.”
Indentations in the travertine were filled with white resin
In contrast to the rest of the store, the walls and ceilings of the fitting rooms are coated in layers of hand-brushed, high gloss paint reminiscent of Japanese lacquer cabinets.
According to Maison Margiela, the store reflects its “evolved visual language” which was developed by John Galliano after taking the helm as creative director in 2014.
Changing room doors are finished with a high-gloss lacquer
Holstrop’s gypsum-cast design was first introduced during the label’s Artisanal AW 2018 show, in which Galliano revealed the structures, interlinings and inner padding of clothes that would normally be concealed.
Photography is by Henry Bourne.
Read more: More
