Nicholas’ first step was to rationalize the studio into a single house, which meant a ‘distinctive’ layout and to create usable rooms in which he could live, work and entertain. He began by turning the window on the facade facing the street toward the front door. ‘It had too grand a pediment for a single window,’ he says, ‘so it was meant to be used as an entrance.’ ‘It looks grand but on a smaller scale.’ This opens onto what was once the first studio, a loosely triangular space that now serves several roles as a hall, library. dining room and a workspace for Nicholas (his desk is tucked under the staircase and the dining table doubles as his skimming table). New French windows open onto a leafy, south-facing strip of outdoor space – once a corridor leading from the street to the back studio.
A passage lined with unfinished raw linen draws you forward from a cloth shop. ‘I wanted to create a textured pinch point before the space expanded again in another studio,’ he says. A curtain down one side in the same fabric covers Nicholas’s creative chaos while opposite, a hidden door conceals a secret workroom for James. Another double-height studio – bathed in soft glow through a large north-facing window – is now the heart of the home, with an open-plan kitchen, sitting room and fabric-cutting desk for James. Nicholas emphasized the height of the Domus by cladding the entire chimney breast in teal tiles. They take cues from Leighton House, another former art studio and one of their favorite London landmarks. ‘I wanted to approve it,’ he says.
Befitting the building’s history, such cultural references abound – it commissioned artist Will Foster to pay homage to Jean Cocteau’s fishing-net artwork in the chapel of Villefranche-sur-Mer on the walls of the downstairs shower room. There are numerous nods to Venice’s Palazzo Fortuny, where Mariano Fortuny lived and worked, such as the large swathes of fabric hanging from its ceiling, echoed here in the deliberately more modest cotton drapery hung above the dining room-cum-library. ‘It was my way of lowering the ceiling to cocoon the sitting area and prevent the space from feeling like just a hall’, says Nicolas, which mixes high and low references with ease and keeps things from feeling contrived. But his real skill is his ability to carve out a space in a way that maximizes its proportions. B.A in Nicholas Architecture From Central Saint Martins: ‘Where buildings were conceived as sculptures.’ There is definitely something sculptural in how he turned the triangular first floor into it Bedroomdressing room and the bathroomWith travertine steps leading to a sunken bath under a large cristal window. And he offset the challenging geometry of the open-plan kitchen with a faceted, marble-topped island.
