With this focus on the client’s need to make sure the whole house was fully functional on a daily basis, a huge portion on the £450,000 budget was spent on the structural changes that would afford the client’s request. Like many properties in London, this building lacks lateral space across each floor, so when Cochrane Design, visited the home, the designers decided to make the most of one of the house’s biggest benefits – its high ceilings. They cut through the floors, vertically opening up the space and bringing together the different levels and integrating the areas in the property.
Sean Cochrane, creative director of Cochrane Design totally concurred with the importance placed on this, ‘It’s important to be brave with your design, but be strategic,’ he says. ‘Try to enjoy your entire home. If you haven’t been in an area or room for a week, you need to rethink the space.To achieve this with this very tall town house, we integrated the living floors, including a double height section to bring the two levels together. On the top floor, we used the same method to integrate the master suite and dressing rooms.”
And to keep the space warm and exciting, rather than sparse and overwhelming, and also to connect all the areas visually, over sized furniture which spans whole walls and rooms has been specially created. The two levels of the integrated living areas are ‘joined’ by a two-storey-high, blue-black bookcase.