Design firm: Studio Hagen Hall
Project name: Heion House
Location: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions: 110 sqm + 38 sqm In north London, Studio Hagen Hall has redeveloped a three-storey, Grade II listed, late-Georgian house through a project that avoids extensions and radical interventions, focusing instead on the existing space. The design combines a minimalist, hand-crafted aesthetic inspired by modernism with touches that evoke the domestic iconography of Japan, where the owners have lived for many years. The new layout overturns the traditional functional hierarchy, placing on the lower floors the bedrooms and on the upper floor the living area overlooking the rear garden from above. Selective consolidation works and subtle microclimatic improvement strategies have revitalised the performance of the 19th-century building without altering its original character, whilst a warm, rich material palette brings unity to spaces that were once rigid and impersonal: from the extensive oak cladding, finishes and details (designed by the studio), to the micro-cement flooring and walls, and the mosaics in the bathrooms. A carefully balanced interplay of light and shadow, typical of Eastern design, guides the way through pleasantly shade-filled spaces where reinterpreted elements of the Japanese home peep out: from the step marking the entrance threshold (genkan), to the movable textured glass panels inspired by traditional shoji screens, to the niches (tokomoma) that house the owners’ collection of ceramics and works of art.