Words Cat Olley
Photography Elliot Sheppard
Production Harry Cave

When Csilla Pogány and Alastair Blayden walked into their apartment for the first time, they were won over by its abundant, even light and warehouse-like volumes. “Alastair literally said: ‘Oh wow,’” says violinist Csilla. “It was hard not to!” her partner, a cellist, replies. “You don’t see many places with light like this.” And then there was the feature that only classical musicians would clock: the splendid “shoebox” shape of the living area, which is optimal for acoustics. “It’s almost too flattering,” laughs Alastair. “Perfect for a concert, but difficult if you want to be analytical, it’s all a bit: ‘Don’t I sound marvellous?!’”

Having bought their flat from The Modern House in 2020, the move marked a homecoming for Csilla, who grew up in the Kentish Town area but had spent a decade abroad. “I knew this building from when I was a child,” she says of the former premises for the North London Polytechnic, constructed in 1929. “I remember my parents telling me it had been converted into flats in the 1990s. I must have gone, ‘Oh, that’s cool’, never imagining that I’d live here.” But it’s been three years since Alastair and Csilla got the keys and the tweaks they’ve made since have proved transformative – from razing an awkward bulkhead wall to removing old cornicing. As we return post-renovation, the couple talk microcement, mezzanines and why it’s worth driving to Wales for the right cactus.

Csilla: “We’d looked through so many listings by the time we came across this apartment. The day we did I remember being on a break from rehearsals. Three popped up in my inbox – and one of them was this place. We’d done a few viewings by that point and we’d found the listing pictures of other estate agencies had made the homes look far bigger than they were. But not this time.”

Alastair: “We were quite explicit in terms of what we didn’t want. I’d lived in a Victorian house, with all the pros and cons that come with that, such as small and sometimes dark rooms. This apartment, however, is double aspect and the light is amazingly even. There were fashion photographers living next door when we first moved in and they were always talking about the fact these flats were absolutely optimal for their work.”

“There are so many different ways you can approach a project in a building like this. Partly it’ll be influenced by what you’ve got – the bits you can’t change. If you look at the old listing images, it used to be quite clean, the surfaces were made of wood chips and there was a red theme that reoccurred throughout too.

“We started out with a brief title of ‘warehouse-gallery’. It felt kind of risky to veer away from the previous architect’s vision for the place, who had added bulkhead walls, but we decided to remove them and open up the space. We also wanted to roughen it up a little by adding industrial materials such as concrete and metal.”

Csilla: “Our apartment used to be the girls’ common room. So it had all this ornate detail around the perimeter. When we were renovating, Alastair was up there with a kango hammer, removing all the cornicing. I’m sure the neighbours loved us… We also chipped away at the internal window frames, which had been painted white. They looked lovely, but we thought it would be nice to reveal the original galvanised steel.”

Alastair: “The office was separated by a white-painted timber sliding door, which we felt obscured views of the third large window in the office. We removed it and added floor-to-ceiling Crittall doors instead. There is also a mezzanine level in there, which practically speaking lends itself to a bedroom.

Csilla: “We go to Japan a lot for work and wanted to introduce that aesthetic here. For instance, I loved the idea of a Japanese-style, solid-concrete bathtub but, we couldn’t find anyone in the UK to make one. In the end, we went for one covered in microcement, which was lighter – though we still needed five men to bring it up the stairs.

“There was a second, shallower mezzanine in the main bedroom, which we decided to turn into a full-height wardrobe. It’s now filled up to the brim with my shoes! We employed the joiner who made it to also make our bed, which contains even more hidden storage. In fact, everything we designed is bespoke – even the bin. The shelves in the bookcase and the steps of the ladder in the office, for instance, are sourced from old 1940s train carriages from Belgium.

“Most of our furniture was collected on our travels. We’ve come back on planes with lamps and stools, much to the amusement of our orchestral colleagues who we’d been away with. The Jieldé lamp and Friso Kramer desk and matching chair are from Paris. We found the Martin Visser sofa in the Netherlands and the Charles Eames dining chairs in the US. The ceramics tend to be by either Richard Batterham or Takashi Endo.”

Alastair: “The first things we bought for the place were the vintage GEC pendant lights over the kitchen, though we hadn’t yet moved in and didn’t know what the scale of the space would be. In the end, we raised the ceiling of that area, which was perfect for the lights and made the whole space feel more open and less cupboard-like.”

Csilla: “The biggest challenge was figuring out how to incorporate the ladder system in the kitchen. We knew we wanted to utilise as much storage as possible by having access to both the cupboards and the alcove above the breakfast bar. Initially we were quoted thousands for the job, but we cut the cost in half by running a track along each side and just moving the ladder ourselves.”

“The plants were the last things we bought for the space. We’d finished the apartment – it was gorgeous – but we thought it looked rather bare and felt a little cool. I wanted to find a cactus that looked like a totem pole. One popped up on eBay that needed collecting from Wales. I said to Alastair: ‘We’ve got to go!’ It had been propagated from a cactus that the seller had had since he was five. We had to rent a van and make a stretcher for it – it was a palaver, but worth it!

“I love being here when the light comes through one side during the first half of the day, especially when it’s bright and sunny. But it’s also nice when the sun’s setting on the other side because the bricks light up in this amazing orangey colour.”

Alastair: “We’re both members of the London Symphony Orchestra, which plays in the Barbican, so this location is ideal for work. It’s also near studios such as Abbey Road and AIR Lyndhurst. And I love the fact that we’re triangulated by Camden, Kentish Town and Chalk Farm.”

Csilla: “There’s a really nice row of shops and cafes on the way to Tufnell Park too. We also enjoy going to Angel and Islington, which are about a 20-minute cycle ride away. Then there’s Bloomsbury on our way to work, Clerkenwell, King’s Cross…

“I’d like this to be our home long-term. But do we have the itch to do something with another place? Yes, there’s always that sense of: ‘If we had another space, we might do this or that…’”

Alastair: “But it’s quite hard to find height and windows like this. Those were – and still are – the holy grail for us.”