Tagged: places to visit

April 9, 2019

Blue Soho x

Iridescent turquoise bricks and art-deco-style cornice are not descriptions you expect from an industrial building in the heart of London. But the fact that the building is going to be the headquarters for Damien Hirst might explain it further…

Until you realise that Stiff and Trevillion, the architects, designed the building not knowing who would occupy it. Maybe the address being 30 Beak Street in vibrant, creative Soho is the final piece of the puzzle.

At the base, the hand-dipped glazed bricks are a deep blue, transitioning to the lighter blue as the building reaches higher.

( All pics Pinterest)

It’s enough of a statement to be shortlisted for the 2019 RIBA London Awards. And yet another reason to pay a visit to Soho.

Just wish this grim London weather would buck up…

Laters, Kate x

March 28, 2019

575 Wandsworth Road

It won’t be this year I get to see this house – visits are limited in numbers and duration and this years slots are already full – but it’s on the bucket list.

The house is the work of Khdambi Asalache, a poet and writer of Kenyan descent who also worked for the BBC and the Treasury. He started making fretwork to cover up the damp coming from the next door launderette, beginning a project that would last another twenty years. He would use abandoned wood, doors and boxes first cut to size then carved using a single knife.

(More details from National Trust and pics from Pinterest)

An extraordinary testament to patience, human endeavour, love and creativity.

Laters, Kate x

April 26, 2017

7 Hammersmith Terrace

There’s a new place ripe to visit: No. 7 Hammersmith Terrace, once the home of printer Emery Walker has just been re-opened to the pubic and proudly boasts the most complete and authentic Arts & Crafts interiors in the UK. Delights include hand blocked Morris & Co Wallpaper, a veritable smorgasbord of textiles and authentic Philip Webb furniture. Deep sigh..few houses in the world have original Morris & Co wallpaper on every floor in nearly every room…but this one does.

Walker was a key member of many of the organisations that embraced the ideals of the Arts and Crafts Movement and as such was a close friend and mentor to William Morris.

His house has just undergone an eighteen month renovation – during the process all sorts of delicious discoveries were made like letters from Rudyard Kipling used as book marks and spectacles belonging to Morris with cuttings of his hair in a desk drawer. It is a living and breathing time capsule.