One thing that you can rely on life, regardless of whatever can happen? That it continues. In constant change, we find unexpected coincidences and unforgettable finds, which was the case for Tanya Grigoroglou and Rupert Worrall, the Creative Directors of the London Art Gallery Raw Editions. In 2019 they came across a London row house – but still in their favorite district of Clapham. As typical of this part of the city, it was a Victorian terrace house, just over 1500 square meters, with a high brick facade. Cool and dark, it had hardly any natural light.
Grigoroglou and Worrall wanted their home to combine living and work rooms in the best possible way and seamlessly merged the two. Your ideal home would make everyday family life easy with children and enable them to exhibit the postmodern and contemporary works that are on the focus of the raw editions. Here the architects O'Sullivan Skoufoglou enter history. The London company, which was founded in 2016, was a pronounced sense of the creation of flexible spaces and the use of a variety of materials, colors and designers able to create a hybrid, multifunctional house in which life and work go hand in hand in a remarkably balanced manner.
How the architects made work
Dynamic, creative, flexible, multifunctional – these were adjectives that used the O'Sullivan Skoofoglou customers when describing the house that the company creates for them. It should combine a gallery and a home, a family life with a passion for art. This also had to be achieved mostly within the existing footprint of the Victorian square, which was another challenge (the expansion of the building would be costly in view of the different size of the garden). O'Sullivan Skoofoglou quickly realized that the floor plan would have to be changed to improve the edition, the light and functionality of the house. The windows would also have to be repositioned.
The architects wanted to create different rooms and at the same time keep a feeling of openness. For example, the nearby study is also equipped with sliding doors, and the redesigned staircase separates the upper floors from the gallery on the floor. It offers both a necessary separation and a smooth transition at the same time. “The conversion of the two lower floors and the relocation of the kitchen into the basement may have been the most important change in the design concept,” says Amalia Skoofoglou. The new entrance now leads into the gallery area, in which room -high windows offer a view of the garden, and sliding doors form the potential for privacy.