A pleasingly unconventional house in south west London where old meets new
If your two brothers ran an architectural practice together, what would be the worst thing they could say when you showed them the house you had just bought? ‘It’s impossible – it’s that bad’ might well be it, especially if you wanted their advice on how to improve it. But this was the response when Antony and Amelia Joseph revealed to Antony’s brothers – twins Philip and Peter – their detached home overlooking Wandsworth Common.
Antony had his own doubts. ‘I thought that it was really ugly,’ he says, now standing in the house’s kitchen extension. With its double-height volume and its expanses of glazing running overhead and out into the garden, it features bespoke furniture, custom hardwood joinery and a Bonnet range cooker that is so beautiful it seems absurd that you would do anything as prosaic as boil an egg on it. This is an aesthetic experience worlds away from ugly.
The journey to get here began with a sit-down with Philip and Peter, who head up P Joseph, an architectural design studio whose projects – which range from the refurbishment of a Grade II-listed manor house in Wiltshire to the interiors of Brioni’s London flagship store – often require intelligent responses to challenging historic buildings.
Since this was a family project, the brief was hashed out collectively and involved a fair amount of client input. Amelia has a background in design and Antony is design director for homeware brand Joseph Joseph, which he runs with his twin brother Richard. With everyone agreed on the need to do something to soften the eccentricities of the original Victorian Gothic Revival architecture, and with Antony and Amelia wanting to increase significantly the space available for family life with their two children, they decided to extend both backwards and down.
Where others might have suggested something more conventional, P Joseph’s design reflects their ability to devise modernisations that manage to be harmonious through being gently assertive. The double-height kitchen extension, with its orthogonal geometry and exposed concrete slabs, stands proudly modern in form. But Philip, who leads the design side of the practice, took his cue from the house’s façade and used a pale London stock brick throughout the new space to create continuity. ‘Crucially,’ he says, ‘we didn’t clean the original façade, so the bricks retained a patina that relates to the slightly desaturated ones we used in the extension.’
The transition between old and new is further eased by the clever spatial arrangement. ‘I don’t like rear extensions that take over and render the original part redundant,’ says Philip. He set about arranging the rooms so the family would want to use all of them. The solution came in the form of windows in the ground-floor sitting room that open onto the new addition and the continued use of brick in the lower-ground-floor TV room, which is slightly lower than the kitchen. The house was also extended to the side, creating space for what Philip calls a ‘rather grand staircase’ that descends from the sitting room to the kitchen. The resulting rooms overlap, with each retaining its integrity.
One part of the house where modernity could run free was the basement, which contains a gym, a bedroom and a spa. ‘In the same way that we didn’t want to create a typical extension above, we didn’t want the basement to be just about maximising square footage,’ explains Philip. Even here, the airiness of upstairs continues, thanks to generous ceiling heights and a light well that runs the length of the space, connecting it to the garden via an external staircase.
As well as the architecture, P Joseph was responsible for the interiors, which introduce a subtle modernity to the historic fabric. ‘Amelia and I were into quite a classic look, but Phil suggested stripping back,’ says Antony. Out went the cornices and skirtings in the original part of the house, leaving a pared-down backdrop that is counterbalanced by the more decorative sash windows and original chimneypieces. It provides an elegant setting for their furniture, which leans towards 20th-century classics by the likes of Charles Pfister, Hans Wegner and Isamu Noguchi.
In the new parts of the house, Philip observes, the bespoke joinery and furniture are meant to be ‘an extension of the architecture’. Working with furniture maker Jeremy Pitts, he designed pieces such as a freestanding pantry unit and a kitchen table inspired by the chunkiness and simplicity of Luis Barragán’s furniture. These ‘anchor pieces’, as Philip describes them, work effortlessly in the background to stage the couple’s art collection, which was sourced with the help of Lizzie Dixey of The Art Register.
‘We have an idea at work that we call “the delight factor”. It’s the marriage of functionality and aesthetics,’ explains Antony. Looking around at his home, which now so deftly synthesises old and new, utility and beauty, elegance and robustness, you get the sense this is a design philosophy that runs in the family.
P Joseph: p-joseph.com
Michael Sinclair1/10An ‘Akari’ pendant by Isamu Noguchi hangs over the oak dining table designed by P Joseph and made by Jeremy Pitts, with Carl Hansen & Søn ‘CH47’ chairs completing the mid-century look. Bonnet’s ‘Maestro’ modular kitchen range suite sets off the ‘One Well Known Sequence’ pendant by Michael Anastassiades above the island. The artwork is Aquarius (Magic Dance) by Rhys Coren.
Michael Sinclair2/10Armchairs covered in satin and a sofa in Rose Uniacke velvet, both by Jerome Shorter, tone with the ‘Love Me, Love Me Not’ marble coffee table by Michael Anastassiades for Salvatori; the calacatta viola marble cube is from Coexistence.
Michael Sinclair3/10Lizzie Dixey helped source the artwork, including Wonder, by Henrietta Dubrey, over the sofa, and Haarlem Horizontal III, by Kate Giles, on the easel.
Michael Sinclair4/10The photograph on the sitting room wall is from Nick Knight’s Roses from My Garden series.
Michael Sinclair5/10The staircases' curves are complemented by the artworks – Grayson Perry’s Map of Nowhere (Red), 2008, from Piano Nobile, and Keith Coventry’s Big Junk 7, from Pace Gallery.
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Michael Sinclair7/10The walls of this first-floor bedroom, in ‘Mortlake Yellow’ by Little Greene Paint & Paper, pick up on the warm hues of the bedcover in
Svenskt Tenn’s linen in amber and curtains in Rose Uniacke’s ‘Heavy Weight Linen’ in lion.
Michael Sinclair8/10The sculpted plant-fibre ‘Anders’ pendant light is by Pinch.
Michael Sinclair9/10In contrast to the earthy hues in the bedrooms, the walls, floor and bath are covered in cool blue mosaic tiles by Vicalvi, with panelling in Little Greene’s ‘Aquamarine’. The basin brassware is from Barber Wilsons and the ‘Ballerina’ towel rail from Vogue UK.
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