SOUTH EAST LONDON JOURNAL
and his team, but also because Freddie and I
focussed on different aspects of it, complementing one another pretty well. I drew out how I
wanted the kitchen units to be arranged, was
pretty opinionated about the colour scheme, and was in charge of the more decorative aspects
like tiles, while Fred is pretty obsessive about the details like lighting, switches, inbuilt wardrobes
and hooks, which I really appreciate now, but at the time I think I felt life was too short!
All of the rooms work together in a calming and
aesthetically cohesive way, were you conscious to design it in it’s entirety from the outset? Not really. We knew we were
going to do up as much of it as
we could afford at once, but we never approached it thinking it needed to come together as a
cohesive whole. I think maybe that happened organically,
because it's a straightforward
expression of us – the materials
and colours we like, our furniture and possessions.
There is a grounded warmth given to the space from the
restricted pallet of both colour
and materials - the raw plaster, concrete, plywood and neutral tones - can you tell us a little more about this?
We wanted to rely on tiles (with which I have a longstanding obsession) and objects like
ceramics, my cookbook collection and flowers to introduce colour into the space, so it
seemed logical to have a neutral backdrop. Lighter colours also made sense given the limited
space – the flat is only 750ft but feels bigger, I think because of
the colour scheme we went for. We'd both always wanted a
concrete work surface, which
was one of only two things we
really splashed out on (the other was the bathroom floor tiles
from Bert and May), and the raw