We were so excited to work on The Invisible House project, set amidst mature trees and decorated with black pools and fresh ferns, we could barely sleep the night between the delivery and staging.

BPN architects and owner developer Steve Smith’s collaboration deconstructs a traditional house set on a site in Morton Paddox near Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. Divided into individual components, each room is designed as a cantilevered pavilion giving the illusion that the whole house has been opened up with rooms floating ferns, grass and black ponds with the mirrored exterior blurring boundaries between landscape and home.

Like a chef deconstructing a dish we wanted a mix of items, punctuation points if you like, bringing the wood and pale leaves from the trees, the mirrored surfaces  of the house, black pools. The touches of red are like that last touch of lipstick put on before you walk out of the door. Using the opposite colour on the colour wheel to blues and greens makes the exterior pop even more as you look out to the grounds outside.

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Our feeling was to we needed to soften the edges in order to show buyers how they could live in this artwork, to bring a sense of homeliness into the interior while also appreciating its gallery feel, separated by glass bridges.

There was a risk it might not work but the idea was to mirror the light, space, nature and art gallery in a mix of textures within the space that would contrast with each other, possibly clash.

 Visualising each room before touching down at this futuristic house. we had a few alternatives to hand just in case the mix of chrome, stainless steel, mirrored boxes, glass and pale wood might not work. Thankfully all went to plan colour and texture-wise.

We wanted to give the hallway a sense of the outside coming in with the reflective top of a round black glass topped table to soften the harder lounge chairs.

We had a mirrored podium with a drooping plant set to add an exclamation mark to this space but it broke in its box from being moved around. Serendipity perhaps as we feel it works better without the podium in hindsight, the huge window enough of an exclamation mark in itself.

 

No art was to be put on the white ribbed walls, so we put ‘the art’ on the beds using abstract throws that would give depth to the floating beds from outside. Smoked mirrored boxes were used as bedside tables in one room. Accent chairs suggest a place to throw clothes or sit with a book.

The idea was items in the house would look as good from the outside as the inside so that the staging would light up in any night time images too.

Dots of colour, blue, yellow, pink, sky blue, terracota, red mixed with black, white and honeyed wood and organic, we wanted everything to focus on the views from outside giving the home a feeling of escape from the busy life we have seen ourselves entrenched in yet again after two years of calming lockdown.

 

  

Photos: French and Tye

Stylists: Lucy Ryder Richardson and Petra Curtis

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