Holland Park

“Wise investment comes through good design and McLean Quinlan has produced another exemplary London home.” The Architectural Review

This 1900s villa had suffered years of neglect and was in need of a complete overhaul. The house would also have a number of specific purposes – to provide a home for a young family, a place from which to work and a setting to match the ambience and environment of a contemporary art gallery, as the client was a collector of Renaissance frames. More specifically, the brief included five bedrooms, a formal drawing room, a relaxed family area, a playroom for the children, a working study for each of the parents and a staff flat.

The design strategy centred on a dramatic transverse hall, creating an atrium that reached up four storeys to a large roof light that would bring light and drama into the core of the home and give the traditional villa a completely new identity.

The exterior landscape was integral to the concept both functionally and aesthetically and a grove of delicate leafed, white trunked birch trees was planted immediately outside the house at the back, to provide summer shade for the drawing room and a sculptural simplicity outside the family room below.