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      Sella Concept brings retro feel to Sister Jane Townhouse in London

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      Fringed furnishings and velvet walls feature inside the west London headquarters that design studio Sella Concept has created for fashion brand Sister Jane, which includes a showroom, restaurant and roof terrace.Sella Concept said it drew upon “untapped maximalist style” to design Sister Jane Townhouse, which takes over a prominent corner property on Golborne Road in the affluent neighbourhood of Notting Hill.
      Having outgrown their old studio on the nearby Portobello Road, the fashion brand had been keen to move into a larger space that could offer a more immersive retail experience.

      The ground floor of Sister Jane Townhouse has a restaurant called Cha Cha’s
      The three-storey townhouse incorporates a restaurant, a showroom and an office where employees can plan and design future clothing collections. On the roof there is also an outdoor terrace where visitors can gather for drinks.

      When it came to developing the interiors, Sella Concept sought to reflect the retro style of Sister Jane’s billowy blouses and dresses. The studio’s co-founder, Tatjana Von Stein, particularly found herself referencing the aesthetics of the 1970s.

      Furnishings in the restaurant feature fringed detailing
      “I must admit that I am always inspired by the ’70s forms, shapes and use of space,” Von Stein told Dezeen.
      “There is a movement and warmth in its design history that I love to employ with a contemporary twist.”

      A collage wall in the restaurant displays campaign photos by Sister Jane
      On the ground floor of Sister Jane Townhouse is the restaurant, called Cha Cha’s, which serves up a roster of Latin-fusion brunch dishes.
      The space has peach-coloured walls and is dominated by a huge hexagonal, brass-edged bar counter. It’s surrounded by a series of Deja Vu stools by Masquespacio that boast tiers of mauve, cream and beige fringing.

      Sister Jane’s clothing showroom is on the townhouse’s first floor
      Fringing also skirts the burnt-orange seating banquette that winds around a corner of the room, and runs along the edge of the six-sided dining tables. Mustard-yellow lamps with fringed shades have additionally been dotted throughout as decor.
      Cha Cha’s includes a collage wall which will be plastered with different striking images from Sister Jane’s fashion campaigns.
      The wall runs directly beside a brass-tread staircase – the steps had previously been closed in by a partition wall, but Von Stein knocked this down to encourage diners to explore the showroom on the first floor.

      Garments hang from bespoke walnut rails in the showroom
      Upstairs in the showroom, surfaces take on a pinkish hue.
      Some clothes are displayed within a veiled pod that sits at the centre of the room, enclosed by sheer white curtains. Other garments hang from custom-made walnut rails or are presented on mannequins which perch on a curvaceous platform covered in teal-blue carpet.

      An adjacent showroom will display Sister Jane’s Ghospell clothing line
      A short walkway leads through to a room that showcases Sister Jane’s Ghospell line, which offers pared-back clothes with sculptural silhouettes.
      This space has aptly been given a slightly more minimal finish – walls here are either clad in steel or upholstered with buttery yellow velvet, while the changing room is entirely lined with mirrored panels.
      Wooden flooring that runs throughout the rest of the townhouse has also been replaced here by micro cement.

      Walls in this showroom are clad in steel and yellow velvet
      Above the showrooms are the offices for Sister Jane staff, followed by the roof terrace dressed with comfy cushioned benches and green wire-frame chairs.
      Guests can alternatively relax in the secret ground-floor garden room, which is accessed via a door disguised as an antique armoire.

      The customer changing room is entirely lined with mirrored panels
      “We have a true inclination for concept spaces which indulge in all the senses and offer the design challenge to seam together a variety of experiences and brands,” explained Von Stein.
      “But it was tricky – in essence, we had 2-3 clients on one building.”

      An antique armoire hides a door leading to Sister Jane Townhouse’s secret garden room
      Sella Concept was established by Tatjana Von Stein and Gayle Noonan. Previous projects by the studio include Public Hall, a plush co-working space that occupies the former office of the UK secret intelligence service, and Night Tales, a pink-tinged cocktail bar.
      At the end of last year the studio also debuted its first furniture collection, which comprises a series of curvaceous stool seats.
      Photography is by Genevieve Lutkin.

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      Bureau de Change inserts bronze lift into 1920s art deco office block

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      Bronze laser-cut sheets wrap around the lift shaft that extends up through this building in central London, which has been updated by architecture studio Bureau de Change.The elevator links together all four floors of The Gaslight, a mixed-use development that’s been created within an art deco building in central London’s Fitzrovia neighbourhood.

      Originally constructed in 1929 as offices for the now-defunct Gas, Coke and Light Company, the building has recently been completely renovated by dMFK Architects to include a series of bright, airy rooms.

      Bureau de Change was tasked with developing the interiors, which are meant to have a contemporary feel while still showing hints of the building’s art deco heritage.

      “We enjoy working with existing buildings, transforming them for a new purpose but doing it with a kind of nostalgia at the heart of the designs,” said Bureau de Change’s co-director, Katerina Dionysopoulou.
      “It was a pleasure to explore these ideas for The Gaslight and ultimately enrich a building so that it can take on a new meaning.”

      The Gaslight building is accessed via a lobby that’s illuminated by a trio of large spherical pendant lamps.
      At its centre is a striking lift. The shaft of the lift is made from concrete which Bureau de Change has wrapped in two layers of bespoke bronze sheeting.

      The first bronze sheet is flat and has been laser-cut to feature an intricate art deco-inspired pattern. Laser cutting has also been done to the second bronze sheet, but this has been folded to feature concertina-style pleats.
      Layered over each other, the sheets create a moiré effect that obscures the concrete underneath.

      The second pleated bronze sheet turns at a 90-degree angle to clad the underside of the lobby’s stairs. This eventually “peels off”, leaving just the flat bronze sheet to cover the lift shaft on the building’s upper levels.

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      “Industrial materials and fabrication techniques were therefore explored in a more artisan-like manner, with laser-cut bronze panels folded to create an intricate framework,” added the studio’s co-director, Billy Mavropoulos.

      The white terrazzo that covers the floor and stairs of the lobby has also been used to line the lower half of the building’s bathrooms and hallways, a modern interpretation of the wooden panelling that the studio thinks would have appeared in the original building.
      Surfaces have otherwise been painted in cool grey or sage-green tones.

      Some of the glazed partitions in the building have been overlaid with shapely patterns that match the cut-outs on the lift shaft.
      Other unique details include the building’s entrance door handles, which have been hand-carved with a series of grooves. The Gaslight’s address number has also been shaped into the metal spokes that run along the top of its restored front gate.

      Bureau de Change is based in Clerkenwell. The studio has previously created a barn-style home in the Cotswolds with an ombre-effect timber facade and added a texture brick building into a century-old London terrace.
      Photography is by Gilbert McCarragher.
      Project credits:
      Architects: dMFKInterior architects: Bureau de ChangeStructural engineer: Michael Hadi AssociatesM&E engineers: WB ShielsProject manager: Alford PorterQuantity surveyor: Alford PorterMetal fabricator: John Desmond

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      ARC Club is a London co-working space for people wanting to escape working from home

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      Architect Caro Lundin took a less-is-more approach for the creation of ARC Club, a fuss-free co-working space in east London for those struggling to work from home during the coronavirus pandemic.It took just six weeks for Lundin and her self-titled studio to complete ARC Club, which takes over a formerly characterless retail unit in the neighbourhood of Homerton.
      The co-working space is meant to cater to the growing number of individuals who, according to surveys observed by Lundin, are finding it tricky to efficiently do their job from home during the pandemic due to lack of proper workspaces.

      Its “starkly beautiful” interiors have been decked out with a selection of low-cost and durable materials that Lundin felt reflected a climate where co-working is “a necessity and not a nice-to-have”.

      Designing a more modest space also meant that membership would be cheaper for those interested in working at ARC Club according to the architect.
      “Intricate details and indoor gardens are fun, but they come with a big price tag – and they’re a lot harder to keep clean,” said Lundin, who founded ARC Club alongside Hannah Philp.

      “When designing ARC Club, I asked myself ‘what do people need to work?’ A comfortable seat, natural light, thoughtful acoustics; the physical and emotional space in which to think,” she told Dezeen.
      “Functional doesn’t have to be boring, it’s a neutral space that enables the people who visit it to be their best professional selves.”

      At the centre of ARC Club, which measures just over 232 square metres, are a pair of boxy, sound-proofed pods crafted from birch plywood.
      Inside, they accommodate a handful of private meeting rooms, storage cupboards, printers and a kitchenette complete with silver-metal cabinetry.
      Lundin chose to house these services inside a pod-style system so that it can be scaled up or down to suit different-sized branches of ARC Club that open in the future.

      The pods are surrounded by various work areas. A few of the furnishings, like the birch-ply tables with the arched legs, were made by Lundin’s studio while some of the chairs were sourced second hand.

      “Offices are going to get much smaller” after pandemic says Sevil Peach

      Pops of colour have been introduced to brighten up the space. Heavy orange curtains are used as room dividers, blue cone-shaped pendant lights have been suspended from the ceiling and bands of yellow paint have been made on the concrete structural columns.
      Yellow tiles also clad surfaces in the bathrooms.

      Further branches of ARC Club co-working spaces are planned to open in 2021.
      Like the Homerton location, they will occupy vacant high-street commercial units in popular residential areas so that members can do what Lundin has monikered “WNH” – work near home.

      “A neighbourhood workplace like ARC Club allows people to retain the best of what the office has to offer – full functionality, work-life separation and human interaction – without having to get on a bus or a train,” Lundin explained.
      “In essence, it’s an accessible flexible option for a new breed of remote worker who has grown used to scheduling their work around their day, instead of the other way.”

      The global coronavirus crisis has forced many to re-think offices and the way in which we work.
      Interior designer Sevil Peach predicts that, post-pandemic, companies will scrap working in corporate towers and instead opt to have central “hubs” where just a small per cent of staff will gather.
      Architecture practice Weston Williamson + Partners also released a series of graphics that illustrated how businesses could create socially-distanced offices. Tips included wrapping screens around desks, having touch-free doors and employing a cook so that employees don’t have to use a shared kitchen.
      Photography is by Andrew Meredith.

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      Tsubo House in Hackney features tiny Japanese-style courtyard

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      Architecture practice Fraher & Findlay has renovated and extended a home in east London, adding a small courtyard that offers glimpses of old and new parts of the property.Tsubo House was originally built in Hackney during the Victorian era and over the years had come to look shabby and unloved.
      The house’s current owners – the founders of Studio XAG – brought architecture practice Fraher & Findlay on board to carry out a complete overhaul.

      As part of the works, the Brockley-based practice constructed a spacious back-garden extension.

      It was key for this new living space to feel closely connected to existing rooms in the home and not too distanced from the basement level, which is often utilised by visiting friends and family.

      Fraher & Findlay decided to insert a small courtyard at ground level that would visually link together the new and existing parts of the home.

      Fraher & Findlay adds wildflower-topped extension to London house

      It draws upon tsubo-niwas – tiny interior courtyards that are incorporated into Japanese buildings to provide natural views and bring in additional sunlight.
      The courtyards are traditionally the same size as a tsubo, a Japanese measuring unit of 3.3 square metres that’s roughly equivalent to the area of two tatami mats.

      “We wanted an external environment to act as a pivot point between the spaces, whilst acting as an environmental tool to bring in lots of natural light and to aid natural ventilation,” said the practice.
      “It feels like a quiet force, providing life energy to the house.  it is visible from all the rooms in the house with the exception of two bedrooms and one bathroom.”

      The pebbled courtyard is centred by a tree and has an array of potted plants running around its periphery. Leafy climbing plants also wind up its rear wall.
      One window of the courtyard looks through to the older front section of Tsubo House, while the another has views of the new rear extension that accommodates a kitchen and dining area.

      Designed to feel “textured, calm and lived in”, the kitchen has been finished with pink raw-plaster walls and timber joinery. Some of the brass light fixtures were also sourced second-hand from eBay, complementing the curved brass handles on the cupboards.
      The extension has a slatted black-timber facade and a green roof, which the studio introduced so that, when viewed from the baby’s nursery upstairs, this part of the home would look as if it’s wearing a “hairy hat”.
      Flooring of the extension was also made lower than the rest of the home, as a mid-way between the ground and basement levels.

      Plaster surfaces continue through into the home’s living room, which the practice has updated to match the owners’ creative personalities. It’s dressed with velvet furnishings, shaggy rugs and a bubblegum-pink edition of Faye Toogood’s Roly-Poly chair.
      Decades-old paintwork has also been stripped back from the ornate cornices, ceiling roses and skirting boards.

      More quirky features appear upstairs – the nursery, for example, has a midnight blue ceiling speckled with stars, and all of the bathrooms feature graphic monochromatic tiled floors. One even includes its own fireplace and a freestanding jet-black tub.
      The project also saw Fraher & Findlay create a loft extension for Tsubo House that accommodates an additional bedroom and wash facilities.

      Fraher & Finlay was established in 2009. The practice has previously created a wildflower-topped extension and renovated a home to feature traces of its original architecture.
      Photography is by Adam Scott.
      Project credits:
      Architect: Fraher & FindlayInterior design: Studio XAGEngineer: PD DesignContractor: Steflay DevelopmentsGarden and planting design: Miria Harris

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      Aesop's London store takes its colour from the red sandstone of Glamis Castle

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      Precast stone blocks coloured with red sandstone from Glamis Castle in Scotland form the walls of this refuge-style Aesop store that architecture studio Al-Jawad Pike has created in a west London shopping centre.The studio designed the small store for skincare brand Aesop to be a retreat from the bustling aisles of Westfield shopping centre in Sheperd’s Bush.
      “We wanted the store to be a refuge from the busy mall environment, it is a sort of building within a building – using genuine masonry construction rather than applied finishes or surfaces,” Al-Jawad Pike co-founder Jessam Al-Jawad told Dezeen.

      Al-Jawad Pike chose to build the walls of the store from precast stone blocks, which enclose the space and create a feeling akin to a walled garden. The curved form of the walls is also meant to reference the undulating brickwork of Uruguayan engineer Eladio Dieste.

      “The concept was to create a kind of walled garden within the mall,” said Al-Jawad.
      “It was inspired by the ‘crinkle crankle’ wall of the English countryside as well as the structures of Eladio Dieste, which both use an undulating waveform to give rigidity to a single skin of masonry.”

      Earthy tones have been applied throughout the store. Powder from the same red sandstone that was used to make the 17th-century Glamis Castle in Scotland has been used to colour the precast stone blocks.
      The resulting red blockwork walls, which were built using two standard shapes of precast blocks, have been paired with red concrete-tile flooring and a clay plaster ceiling.

      Frida Escobedo segments Aesop Park Slope with rammed-earth brickwork

      “We wanted to use a warm colour to provide a sense of natural earthiness that reflected the red bricks of typical masonry walled gardens, said Al-Jawad.
      “The colour is called Glamis red named after the red sandstone of Glamis Castle in Scotland.”

      Set against the earthy red backdrop, Aesop’s products are displayed on stainless steel shelves. While the main space is broken up by three cast resin sinks that were produced by Sabine Marcelis.
      “We hope we created a calm ambience that enables customers to engage with the Aesop products,” Al-Jawad explained.
      “The hand-washing sinks which are a big part of the customers’ interaction with the product and the sales people are also given centre stage – being made out of honey-coloured resin they also look a bit like big bars of sculpted soap.”

      Aesop often allows its designers to create monotonal stores. For its Sydney store, architecture studio Snøhetta used granite to covers almost every surface, while Frida Escobedo used rammed-earth brickwork throughout its store in Brooklyn. Bernard Dubois also clad the walls of the brand’s Brussels store in distinctive yellow Belgian bricks.
      London-based Al-Jawad Pike was established by Al-Jawad and Dean Pike in 2014. The studio has previously used pigmented concrete blockwork for the exterior and interior of a south London home extension and combined brick, concrete and timber for an extension to a home in Stoke Newington.
      Photography is by Ståle Eriksen.

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      Yellow Cloud Studio punctuates Glyn House extension with arched window

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      A half-arch window in this east London home extension by Yellow Cloud Studio offers glimpses of the older parts of the property. Glyn House is situated in the neighbourhood of Clapton and is occupied by a young couple who are hoping to grow their family. Previously, the poky proportions of the house – which dates […] More

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      Gabriel Chipperfield gives London newsagents plush revamp

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      Gabriel Chipperfield has created an “Alice in Wonderland”-style warren of luxurious rooms behind Shreeji newsagents in central London. Shreeji newsagent and tobacconist is located on Chiltern Street in London’s affluent Marylebone neighbourhood, just a stone’s throw from the notable hotel Chiltern Firehouse. The shop was set up by Sandeep Garg in 1982, and has since […] More

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      Grove Park house by O'Sullivan Skoufoglou Architects has wooden lining and verdant views

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      O’Sullivan Skoufoglou Architects has created ash-lined living spaces with expansive windows inside a gardener’s home in Lewisham, southeast London. Grove Park is an end-of-terrace house that was originally built back in the 1980s. The wood-lined rooms that O’Sullivan Skoufoglou Architects has created are on the home’s ground floor, which was extended by incorporating a small […] More