Contrast is king at this Camberwell townhouse
There’s something about modern takes on not so modern spaces that really thrills us. Just as cold ice cream with hot pudding produces a singular sensation, so too does the rubbing of shoulders between old and new. And if good design is all about tension (and tension is so often about contrast)… Well, you can see where we’re heading. Need some illustration? Join us on a trip to this five-bedroom house on Camberwell’s Bushey Hill Road, which is now on the market.
From the street, the house reads as a typical Victorian house of the grander strain: tall, set back behind a wrought-iron gate, with a façade of London stock brick dressed with stucco details. There’s even a mature wisteria.
All this conventional prettiness conceals a more inventive interior, however. Remodelled by Manser Medal-winning architects Knox Bhavan, a practice that pays as much attention to colour and materials as it does to light, proportion and place, the rooms are each an exercise in the way spaces can be shaped to surprise and delight us in the 21st century.
Downstairs, in the traditional reception rooms, this endeavour sees ceilings painted (as opposed to walls), solid-oak floors contrasting with white shuttering and crisp original cornicing, and some smart furnishing choices: a Calder-style mobile, furniture by Eames and Le Corbusier, an Artemide floor lamp in smooth aluminium. At the back of the house, meanwhile, colour reigns supreme. We love the interplay of orange walls with the warm wooden units in the kitchen, which sing in the light let in by the vast and very un-Victorian picture window.
In the less public spaces, things get even more exciting. The master bedroom – all-white save for a cherry-red room divider and zingy yellow headboard – is an object lesson in the power of pigment, but it’s the staircase that reaches it that really steals the show. Floating, its upper banister cut with Corb’s ‘open hand’ motif, and backed by a sunshine-coloured wall, it’s a spirit-lifting piece of engineering. That was the thing that really stood out to appraisals specialist Wilhemina Madeley when she visited – along with the other cheering details that appear here, there and everywhere: a blue circle painted on a ceiling; turquoise window frames; mirrored walls.
What we’re really trying to say is that there’s more to this ostensibly traditional townhouse than meets the eye. To step inside is itself a singular sensation, just as joyful, in fact, as bowl of hot pudding with cold ice cream.
