Hasta La Ideas

London practice Tuckey Design Studio has refurbished a Victorian terrace in Knightsbridge, stripping back its interiors to create a tactile yet minimalist home.

Named Bough Terrace, the existing three-storey building had suffered severe water damage and had over-compartmentalised interiors with poor access to natural light.

Tuckey Design Studio prioritised the retention of the building’s original timber lattice structure, stripping it back to its “bare bones” to reveal its textural beams and joists.

Where it was required, new timber elements have been added to create what the studio calls a “layering of timber and time”.

“This concept was conceived from early research into the Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto, Japan,” explained the studio.

“The house was stripped back to its bare bones; the tactile character of the rich timber floor joists below and roof trusses above encouraged us to revel in their imperfections rather than concealing them,” it continued.

“The existing gnarled and textural timber structure has been married with new solid timber, which by contrast is sharp and precise.”

Protruding box skylights have been inserted to allow more natural light into the home, including in the kitchen on a newly created lower ground floor and a bedroom beneath the large trusses of the home’s roof.

At the rear of the plan, the home’s stair features a curving balustrade of hand-folded plywood, fabricated by shipbuilders and stained a midnight-blue colour.

Throughout, plain white walls provide a contrast to the tactile surfaces of the original timber and white-painted brick fireplaces.

“Echoing the monastery-like space that the client desired, the expression of natural light throughout reflects a communication with nature,” said the studio.

The fittings and fixings in Bough Terrace echo this idea of rawness and minimalism, with copper pipe taps, simple exposed bulb lights and benches made from reclaimed wood.

Externally, the home’s facade has been restored to match the neighbouring Victorian terraces, with its existing PVC windows replaced with timber sash windows.

In the small paved courtyard in front of the home, the steel-framed box skylight for the lower ground floor and a thin metal canopy extending out from the arched window above the door subtly signal its transformation.

Bough Terrace is the latest of several renovations and retrofits undertaken by Tuckey Design Studio, the practice founded in 2000 and previously known as Jonathan Tuckey Design.

Previous examples by the studio include the reworking of a home in a converted chapel in Devon and the conversion of a former factory in Norway into a hotel and wellness centre.

The photography is by Fran Mart unless otherwise stated.

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