This Hampstead home renovation in London transcends types and intervals

With this Hampstead home undertaking in north London, Belgian architect Hans Verstuyft has introduced again the soul of a listed Seventeenth-century cottage that had misplaced its unique inside. By reimagining recollections of the previous with reclaimed supplies and characterful objects, the brand new design casts an ambiguity over what’s new or previous: ‘We reinvented one thing that was by no means there,’ he says.

Tour this Hampstead home undertaking by Hans Verstuyft

The cottage is situated within the grounds of Grove Lodge, the house of Spanish designer Celia Muñoz (founder of kids’s clothes label La Coqueta), her husband and their 5 youngsters. The principle home adjoins the storied Admiral’s Home painted by John Constable and as soon as residence to famend Nineteenth-century architect George Gilbert Scott. With a lot of visiting household and associates, they required a cushty visitor home as a seamless annex and antidote to their busy lives.

On this charming historic context, the outside of the cottage and its 4 pitched roofs have been restored intact, but the inside has a brand new comfortable modernity. Verstuyft shifted the kitchen right into a curved extension, the place extra home windows have been added to open up views to the backyard. Right here, the sculptural stone and wooden fit-out is ‘extra like an object or a pleasant piece of furnishings than a kitchen’ with little ‘stone tablets’ embedded within the partitions for cabinets. Upstairs, there are 4 bedrooms, every with its personal distinctive lavatory with completely different colored stone sinks.

For the inside structure, Verstuyft rigorously selected patinated reclaimed supplies that had already lived an extended life, to ‘breathe historical past into the cottage’ – terracotta tiles, reclaimed oak beams, and stone from the steps of an previous fort in Belgium, lots of which he discovered an Antwerp reclamation warehouse. This a part of his strategy is deeply linked to sustainability, contemplating not solely re-use, however longevity, within the cultivation of timeless areas which can be each trendy and grounded up to now.

Curated objects, from classic furnishings, to artwork and even mattress linen, have been all taken care of and the results of an ‘intensive search’. The rule was that ‘nothing might look the identical’ and the color palette was impressed by the work of surrealist Giorgio Morandi.

There’s a dynamic ‘Seven’ blue chair by Mart Van Schijndel; the leather-based ‘Seal’ lounge chair by Ib Kofod Larsen; and a espresso desk by artist Carsten in der Elst. Bespoke parts such because the couch, eating desk and ‘SpotOn’ brass lights have been designed in-house at Hans Verstuyft Architecten, in addition to the open shelving methods that kind easy, dimensional frames for private items and new recollections to come back.

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