Open House London 2019: the best private homes offering renovation inspiration at this year's event

Be inspired by amazing architecture and other people’s home design as Open House weekend from September 21-22 showcases London’s best buildings.
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Ruth Bloomfield18 September 2019

A passport to snoop, Open House London weekend is one of the most popular events of the year for the many Londoners obsessed with homes and architecture.

It is their chance to push open the doors of property owned by complete strangers, who in their turn are keen to showcase their building inspiration, or that of some of our most remarkable architects both ancient and modern.

For just 48 hours, inspecting clever interior design in other people’s homes — their light-filled drawing rooms, their ingenious extensions, super-sleek kitchens, luxurious bedrooms or space-saving bathrooms — will be actively encouraged.

Thousands of us will meticulously plan our Open House London route for September 21 and 22, to gain an insight into a huge variety of property.

And it’s not just private homes throwing open their doors. The hundreds of options include a huge range of modern offices, landmark public buildings and signature projects such as new community centres.

The biggest problem can be deciding what to visit in such a tight time frame. To give you a flavour, here are five of the best private homes set to open their doors for Open House.

1. The ingenious extension to an east London family home

A couple with three young children and a three-storey Victorian terrace house in Hackney decided to look underground for more space.

They enlarged the existing cellar to create a new living room, and for fun connected ground and lower-ground floors with a slide, though there is also a staircase for those unwilling to get in touch with their inner child.

They also got architects Seán and Stephen Ltd to design them an extension for a large family kitchen and dining room, renovated their four bedrooms and put a study into the loft. In all the project added almost 970sq ft.

Although adding space was the driving force of the project, Seán McAlister, one of the architects, persuaded the owners to cut away a section of the ground floor to give part of the basement a double-height space.

This acts as an internal atrium which, together with a bay window at the front of the basement, makes sure the family’s living space is nice and light.

  • 41 Groombridge Road, E9 7DP; architect-led tours, Saturday Sept 21, 2pm-4pm, pre-book only at Eventbrite

2. Welcome to the house of fun in Stepney

Green and pink concrete kitchen work surfaces. Egg yolk yellow woodwork. A pink front door and a lifetime’s collection of books, arts and objects crammed inside… the renovation of this small house in Stepney won’t appeal to those who like their palettes neutral and restrained.

But it is a joyful, fearless antidote to boring developer chic.

Architects Bradley Van Der Straeten were given a “more is more” brief and melded Bauhaus, Art Deco, and Steampunk influences into one glorious hotchpotch at a two-bedroom Georgian townhouse.

The property is within a conservation area and could not be extended. So instead the architects removed the entrance hall wall, and joined up the living and dining rooms to create an open-plan ground floor.

In the galley kitchen a small window was enlarged and an internal door removed to give more cupboard space.

Owners Francis Saul and Emily Hamilton paid just over £102,000 for the revamp, just in time for the birth of their first child last year.

  • 3 East Arbour Street, E1 0PU; visit on Saturday Sept 21, 10am-5pm, with last entry at 4pm

3. A modern classic in Stoke Newington

With its series of elliptical curves and tactile ridged concrete fins, this house by architect Stephen Chance, of Chance de Silva is the kind of new build you can imagine people admiring in 100 years’ time.

The striking 1,076sq ft property was built on a patch of unused land at the end of a period terrace in Stoke Newington in Hackney, which Chance picked up for the relative bargain price of £40,000.

Now rented out, it has two bedrooms and a ground-floor studio, and the top floor features a glass roof pavilion and terrace.

The project took eight years to get right. Every level is a different size and those curved walls meant that all the cabinetry — and pretty much all of the furniture — had to be built bespoke.

And while the site itself was a bargain buy, the complexity of this project pushed its build cost up to £700,000.