An elegant west London pied-à-terre packed with clever surprises
It would be hard to find a house more meticulously designed for the needs of its owner than the West London bolt-hole designed by Artichoke for a client who split his time between the USA and London. The client, who had worked his whole life in tech, came to Artichoke founder and creative director Bruce Hodgson with an unapologetically unique vision for a pied-à-terre, one which would transform a tired flat which had been unchanged for half a century. Bruce and his team took that vision and ran with it.
The design philosophy of the house is informed throughout by ease of use, and of high-tech luxury. The client wanted “a house that you could talk to,” says Bruce, “that was as automated as possible”. The lights, television and curtains can all be voice-activated thanks to a Crestron control system, while the client wanted built-in fans to blow very gently across the flat’s ribbon windows to prevent condensation. The automation even extended to the bathroom: “You can stand in front of the loo and say ‘flush’ or ‘squirt’. It’s one of those squirty-bum loos.” This all offered Bruce a challenge: how to incorporate all the wiring – 40 kilometres in all – that the automation would entail into the structure of the listed, 1960s Brutalist flat, which was largely built out of hard- or impossible-to-move concrete slabs? And one which was Grade-II listed, at that?
Luckily, the answer lay in Artichoke’s expertise: as a joinery business turned full-on interior design studio, they specialise in the clever design of surfaces. As such, rooms and hallways in the flat were re-panelled to incorporate the wiring, while the ceilings were coffered to disguise overhead cables. “We modelled it all in three dimensions,” recalls Bruce, “using CAD software called Inventor,” which allowed Artichoke to take a 2-D cut through any part of the building to know which wires were running where. The minute lowering of the ceiling left 2.35 metres of headroom in the flat; every iota of spare space has been put to use, while retaining a classic but fresh look on the surface. “I don’t think there’s a wasted inch, and I’m not exaggerating there.”
