Apollo Studios

Brief: The brief was to transform the former piano factory into an inclusive home for a family with three young children plus a nanny. With both parents working long hours within the NHS, it was important that the home created an environment to spend quality time together in. The space needed to be beautifully crafted, to create an inspiring home but it also needed to be practical to support the needs of the young family.

Challenge: The former piano factory was being used as a shell office space and needed converting into residential use, which involved a full renovation. The interior was a blank canvas other than existing Crittall windows and points of entrance. These needed to be carefully incorporated to design an interior layout that offered a flexible environment that encouraged a good family dynamic. The owners wanted as much left open as possible, but with the ability to close off areas as and when they needed.

Solution: A living area with an open-plan kitchen is arranged at the centre of the plan, with more private areas arranged off this. These can be closed down via sliding screens or opened up to function as one extended space. The dual aspect allows cross ventilation, while exposed thermal mass of concrete and brick helps to stabilise extremes of temperature.

The ceiling and beams were sandblasted to expose concrete structure, with new interventions clearly articulated. Partition walls are formed in white brick, treated as ‘positive’ elements to imply mass and volume, whilst providing bright reflective surfaces. Other defining elements are the central services bulkhead in gloss black, and the cast concrete kitchen island. Cabinets are formed in birch ply, while bed platforms in the children’s rooms are constructed from scaffold tubes.

A generative reference for the design was Aldo Van Eyck’s Arnhem Pavilion, with its ambiguous and mysterious volumes and passages. By coincidence, the original conversion of Apollo Studios had been carried out by Van Eyck’s daughter Tess, in partnership with Julyan Wickham.

The design process was deliberately open and evolving as work on site progressed, with close collaboration between client, architect and contractor. There was also an ongoing relationship with Miele, who provided appliances and the project headed up their ‘Designed for Life’ advertising campaign.