Trade knowledge: award-winning architect Alison Brooks's interior design tips and favourite London furniture shops

Alison Brooks is the only British architect to have won all three of the UK’s most prestigious awards: the RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize (for Wrap House in Chiswick, in 2006); the RIBA Manser Medal (for Lens House in Canonbury, in 2014) and in 2008 Alison Brooks Architects was joint winner of the RIBA Stirling Prize for its part in the Accordia housing project in Cambridge.

By the end of the year she will complete Exeter College Cohen Quad — the first female architect to design a new quad at an Oxford college.

Brooks is married to Charles Walker, a director at Zaha Hadid Architects, with two sons.

WHERE I LIVE

I’ve lived in Queen’s Park for 22 years. I think of it as being a perfect Victorian neighbourhood, centred around a park. I play ultimate frisbee there every Sunday.

The area was all built between 1880 and the 1900s, with late-Victorian terraces and villas and leafy streets.

There’s a really great local high street and the Tube. There are local independent entrepreneurs: bars, pizzerias, delicatessens. When they were young, my kids played in the nursery in the park and more recently my 19-year-old son worked in the café in the park.

MY HOUSE

We have a late-Victorian semi-detached house, built in 1899 so it has Arts and Crafts proportions rather than Victorian proportions. It’s kind of a square footprint house with an L-shaped stair. Like many London houses, all of the original features were stripped out in the Fifties. A dentist used it as his office.

We moved in 11 years ago and my husband and I have been very gradually giving the house back its soul, starting from the top floor down.

We’re working with a lot of materials that I love and have used in projects with clients, such as cherrywood, which stems from my childhood growing up in Canada. Cherrywood is wonderful for making furniture, it darkens over time and the grain gets richer.

MY DÉCOR

I always say that people’s homes should be repositories for meaningful artefacts — gifts, souvenirs, memories — that you’ve accumulated over your lifetime. If an interior is too matching you feel like you’re in a hotel. So I’m not minimalist in that sense.

I have two Orange Slice chairs designed in the Sixties by Pierre Paulin for Artifort and a fantastic Nanimarquina rug which we have in the dining room, because I specified them for the Atoll Spa Hotel on the island of Helgoland, Germany. And my sofa is a B&B Italia Solo sofa by the furniture designer Antonio Citterio which we got from the show home we designed for Accordia.

And then there are pieces I inherited from my parents: a big Empire-style sideboard, a teak Sixties Clairtone hi-fi cabinet. I believe you should build in integrating walls of storage as beautiful pieces of furniture rather than just as closets.

ARTWORKS AT HOME

I have a mono print by the artist Simon Patterson. I commissioned him to do a site-specific piece for the VXO House in Hampstead that we designed for a client.

I also have a Javier Mariscal print of Barcelona, shot from the air, that designer Ron Arad gave me when I had my first son. I worked for him for seven years and I have welded steel book shelving that Ron gave me as a prototype.

FAVOURITE FURNITURE

I am very wary of furniture that looks trendy. I am more interested in things that look timeless or are authentically from the Fifties, Sixties etc. Citterio makes the best sofas — big things that somehow disappear into the room.

I have a Fritz Hansen Jacobsen table and I’ve specified a lot of Cherner chairs. They’re the perfect moulded plywood chair with a very thin-necked back and so comfortable.

We have books in every room so we have the 606 Universal Shelving System by Dieter Rams at Vitsoe.

We have the Vitra Eames chair with its Eiffel Tower base. I love the Joyn bench system by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec. It’s a table with A-frame legs, and no legs at the corners. Designing an interior, you must be aware of how many different kinds of legs are in the room or they start fighting with each other. Kettal on the King’s Road makes perfect outdoor furniture that will last you a lifetime.

DECORATING TIP

I use mirrors as a means of bringing light into spaces. If you position mirrors opposite a window to the garden, you get the garden doubled in the house. And if you position mirrors at right-angles to windows, you get double the width of window reflected in the home.

For oversized mirrors in big frames, go to Tottenham Court Road — the furniture centre of London.

AMAZING ARCHITECTURE

The Royal Festival Hall is so permeable and inclusive. You can go in at lots of different levels, from every direction, and thanks to the various landings, performance spaces and podiums, you can find somewhere to hang out and enjoy. It’s just easy to use.

I really love St Pancras station and these big old pieces of infrastructure that have been transformed and upgraded so well. I spend a lot of time in Paddington station. It’s great looking at the ornamental roof structure.