Shoreditch

Shoreditch Loft Development Project

A wholly refurbished duplex loft apartment represents many of Day True’s values for progressive and simple design, in a space that blends with its wider environment and enhances both the architecture it was born into and the living space of those who call it home.

This large, open space with dual height windows – whose full-frontal aspect enables natural light to enter at high volume – showcases a highly personal design collaboration, involving the careful layering of design, colour, lighting and texture with the personal collections, biographic details and lifestyle of the artist clients it was designed for.

This large, open space with dual height windows – whose full-frontal aspect enable natural light to enter at high volume – showcases a highly personal design collaboration, involving the careful layering of design, colour, lighting and texture with the personal collections, biographic details and lifestyle of the artist clients it was designed for.

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Our brief for this project required a full renovation: to re-organise the structure of an internal space that felt out of character with its external architecture, and recreate it for a more confident style of contemporary living.

With almost wholly open living space, expertise in how to allocate and manage space is an essential starting point for the design: knowing how to tune in or tone down areas that are essentially otherwise always open for view is vitally important for the space to feel coherently planned and ready to act as backdrop for private moments, dedicated tasks, or celebratory events.

Extravagant ceiling heights and ‘brutalist’ style concrete walls provided the framework in which we were to add the decorative, the playful, and the imaginative. With the ‘front of house’ as showcase – serving dual purpose for personal or shared use – the more intimate areas could be compartmentalised ‘backstage’ into the private (bathrooms, utility) or the partially screened (kitchen and bedrooms).

Structural changes involved repositioning a staircase, increasing the available size of the mezzanine to add an additional bedroom, and creating a utility room. Fittings were to be deliberately ‘exposed’ – making them an obvious feature – taking pride in their utility.

A significant collection of personally acquired art, furniture, rugs, and other artefacts required accommodation. Walls were treated simply to provide ‘gallery’ space that would not compete with the visual or emotional impact of the artwork. A poured, smooth, resin floor – flowing across the whole apartment – provided a smoothly elegant visual sweep at base level, and spaces were subtly demarcated and cleverly lit to enable different areas to be highlit or backlit, tuned in or zoned out, over the course of a day.

The finished result is a perfect example of how design can be imagined and applied retrospectively to feel fully at home in its original skin.

Brazilian block-style bricks with punched out central holes were sourced by the client and employed as shower-screens In the two bathrooms: these screen the shower from full view without adding undue weight, add sufficient depth to contain water spray, and enable air to flow across the space.

Soft textured, waterproof, seamless Microcement, was applied across the space – a traditionally resonant material suited to retrofitted application.

Let us help – send your enquiry here >

The Living Space

A geometric grammar underpins the structural language of the whole apartment.

Mondrian-esque ‘cubular’ framings complement Mysteron–style circles, blocky industrial artefacts, and ‘A’ shaped, stainless steel, and other ‘light-weight’ feeling furnishing supports.

Kitchen

Dark, pared-back, low-lustre hardwood cabinetry is placed deep in the heart of the living space, to provide an anchoring depth to the kitchen, with the added advantage of protecting this natural material from the effects of too much daylight.

Heavy-duty, high-end professional style appliances bookend the back run, while a generously proportioned Bora ‘Pro’ downdraft hob – mixing its refined good looks with efficient extraction and induction and teppan style surfaces – enables a cook to look sociably outwards.

Decorative elements include the personal, the practical, and the unpredictable – ‘beetling’ a single wall with cement-based tiles amps up the whimsy, adds visual movement, and is carefully confined to avoid competing with more important artwork.

Wooden internals keep cutlery organised

Microcement surfaces are a waterproof, flexible, durable surface that share the good looks and properties of poured concrete – here employed on a large-scale peninsula that marries a sloping edge with the angle of the legs of the counter stools chosen to provide seating space against it.

Bedrooms

Art work leads the way upwards to the bedroom where lacquered, electric-blue wardrobes echo the colour chosen as a highlight for the stairwell, and reflect the underlying tone of a softening Persian rug and the generous view from the full wall of windows that front the apartment.

Lighting choices for the ceiling have been carefully selected for their design pedigree, supersized low profile, and the diffusing dimmable light effects they contribute to the space.

To aid air regulation and flow, enable natural light to travel through to the bedroom space, and to provide a degree of screening, bespoke, pivoting, Crittal-style windows have been added on the mezzanine floor where the principal bedroom and its ensuite bathroom can be found.

Bathrooms

Bathrooms are waterproofed with flexible, beautiful, microcement. Ceramic basins are supported by tonally sympathetic natural marble vanity units (spot the difference between the two bathrooms), and Brazilian sourced perforated, glazed blocks act as a shower screen that lets the air flow free while keeping the water spray under control.

Fittings and fixtures that control water flow, lighting tracks and other supporting elements are unapologetically and deliberately utilitarian in character.