Rodić Davidson merges two 19th-century artwork studios to create dwelling in London’s Chelsea

Rodić Davidson Architects has reworked a pair of artists’ studios that will as soon as have belonged to JMW Turner right into a lofty household dwelling in London full of eclectic furnishings and placing artworks.

The property is situated on Glebe Place in London’s Chelsea, a road the place many celebrated artists took up residence within the 19th century, when rents had been nonetheless comparatively reasonably priced in comparison with different components of city.

It’s named Turners Studio as a blue plaque on the aspect of the constructing means that these explicit studios had been occupied by the painter between 1811 and 1829, though the declare is unsubstantiated.

Rodić Davidson’s transformation celebrates lots of the qualities that made the buildings appropriate for portray.

Excessive, sloping ceilings and huge skylights enable pure mild to flood the inside, together with a big new basement flooring. Surfaces are stored mild and shiny, making a clean canvas for displaying brightly colored work and objects.

“Creating beneficiant areas to show our consumer’s assortment of artwork was vital,” defined studio co-founder Ben Davidson.

“All the pieces above floor was eliminated to create a single house of serious quantity and full of mild,” he advised Dezeen.

The architects had beforehand labored with the purchasers on their former dwelling, situated on the identical road, which was accomplished earlier than the couple had kids.

The transient for this new undertaking was to create a house large enough for 4.

“The house owners are very loving however are protecting of their privateness,” mentioned Davidson.

“They needed to retain points of their earlier dwelling life whereas additionally creating a house appropriate for a rising household. Additionally they needed to border their assortment of artwork.”

The brand new basement flooring doubles the ground space of the unique two properties, creating loads of house for a main bedroom, two kids’s bedrooms, a playroom and loos.

Backyard Workshop designed round an outdated workbench and a set of handmade instruments

This freed up the bottom flooring to develop into a single, open-plan house for lounging, cooking, eating and entertaining, which opens out to a rear backyard.

A sunken cosy is slotted in a single nook, with a examine situated on a mezzanine above.

The plans centre round a central stairwell and a lightweight nicely, which each assist to make sure loads of daylight reaches the basement.

“We used the proportions of an inside courtyard of the riad in Marrakech the place we had stayed throughout one in every of our workplace journeys,” revealed Davidson.

Artworks are dotted throughout the partitions, together with on the uncovered, whitewashed brickwork that kinds the rear of the unique facade. Their shiny colors are matched by patterned sofas and royal blue eating chairs within the residing house.

There’s additionally loads of color downstairs, from the splatter-style wallpaper within the kids’s rooms to the deep pink hue of the master suite.

Rodić Davidson Architects has studios in London and Cambridge.

Earlier tasks by the agency embrace a black-stained home in Dungeness and a backyard shed constructed to the proportions of a historic workbench.

Pictures is by Rory Gardener.