Category: Town Houses

Categories
Architecture People Restaurants Town Houses

Deal Town Kent + Lady Dalziel Douglas

The Importance of Being

Deal Town Kent Beach © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

It’s not every coastal town that has a restaurant run by a descendent of the lover of the greatest wit of the 19th century. But Deal in Kent isn’t just another coastal town. It’s chockablock with listed buildings without being chocolate box boring. The upwardly mobile relaunch of The Rose (firmly prefixing gastro to pub) complete with Tracey Emin prints hanging on the walls is simply the latest proof in the pudding (St Émilion chocolate torte tonight) of Deal’s rising status as Battersea-on-Sea. Roast Jerusalem artichokes with shallots and hazelnut dressing provide more memorable menu moments.

Deal Coastline Kent © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Deal Town Kent Boats © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Deal Town Kent Sunrise © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Deal Town Kent Pier © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Deal Castle Kent © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Deal Town Kent Esplanade © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Deal Town Kent House © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Deal Town Kent Houses © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Deal Town Kent Townhouse © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Rose Pub Interior Deal Town Kent © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Black Douglas Deal Town Kent © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Black Douglas Deal Town Kent Family Portraits © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Black Douglas Deal Town Kent Family Photo © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

On a rainswept late Friday evening, The Black Douglas along Deal’s esplanade is an atmospheric hive of joyful activity. “My name’s pronounced ‘DL’,” says owner Lady Dalziel Douglas. There are a few visual giveaways. One is the sepia soaked photographs of distinguished aristos in court dress – lots of ermine on display. Another couple of clues are Dalziel’s cheekbones to slice Manchego with and her piercing blue eyes. She is of course the great great niece of Lord Alfred Douglas, the dashing poet better known as ‘Bosie’, Oscar Wilde’s amour. “My great great great uncle, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry, invented the Queensberry Rules of Boxing!” smiles Dalziel, pointing to one of the photographs. The Douglas clan motto is Jamais Arrière which means ‘Never Behind’. True to form, Dalziel confirms, “We were one of the first places to open in Deal of this nature. We’ve been here for 14 years and it’s given other people confidence to open up similar businesses.”

The Black Douglas Deal Town Kent Family Portrait @ Lavender's Blue

Just as The Rose and The Black Douglas have weekend dinners down to a tea tee, Deal Pier Kitchen upholds the great British breakfast tradition with a twist or rather lots of vegan twists. Eating the first meal of Saturday to the rhythm and splash of lapping waves is a must. Suspended over the sea at the end of a 1950s concrete pier, the café is in a timber and glass pavilion designed by Níall McLaughlin in 2008. The architect has continued Deal’s centuries old dedication to romantic maritime architecture.

Dalziel Douglas The Black Douglas Deal Town Kent © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Categories
Architecture Town Houses

Cheyne Walk London + The Doors

The Pursuit of Love and More

Cheyne Walk London Doors © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Well, if it was good enough for Marianne Faithfull…

Categories
Architects Architecture Art Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

JAKS Brasserie + Bar + Concept Store Truro

French Open 

The Leats Truro © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

“My wife Karine has the eye for colour,” says John Baker gazing round the chocolate brown ground floor lounge bar. “We met in Luxembourg. Having lived on the Continent for around 20 years, we are looking to bring the food dishes that we loved over to the British Isles. We want to establish the sort of place we would love to come to! St Ives is lovely but very touristy. Our ethos is we want to be part of the community, to be local. That’s why we’ve chosen Truro.”

Philip Sambell Terrace Truro © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Moules frites arrive in a newspaper made of china. Quirkiness is a feature of the interior from a tailor’s dummy to an outsized print of Sir Winston Churchill. Strategically placed jewellery and giftware are for sale. Upstairs are six dining rooms of varying sizes and aspects holding up to 50 guests. It’s all very cosily elegant and elegantly cosy. They had a good canvas to work with though. JAKS occupies a particularly attractive 1830s end of terrace villa with a south facing garden.

Philip Sambell Houses Truro © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Philip Sambell Niche Truro © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

JAKS Metalwork Truro © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

JAKS Truro Plasterwork © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

JAKS Bar Truro © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

JAKS Lounge Truro © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

JAKS Jewellery Truro © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Named Castle Lodge, it is one of many houses in Truro designed by the deaf and dumb architect Philip Sambell for the developer Josephus Ferris. Walsingham Place, a curved street close to Truro Cathedral, is the architect’s best known residential work. Castle Lodge belongs to a group of terraces lining the River Kenwyn. Mostly stuccoed, they have interesting and sometimes idiosyncratic features such as double height pilasters and elaborate glazing patterns. The architect’s trademark is a niche. Indoors, there’s plenty of decorative plasterwork in the main rooms.

JAKS Mirror Truro © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

“Karine is from Metz in northeastern France,” John relates. “We’ve created a menu that is Continental with a local twist. There’s tarte flambée which is like a very very thin pizza topped with caramelised onions, lardons and cream. And there’s Cornish mussels!” Two of the most adventurous sounding puddings originate from Karine’s part of the world: poire belle Hélène (poached pear with ice cream and hot chocolate sauce) and coupe colonel (lemon sorbet in vodka).

JAKS Private Dining Room Truro © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Categories
Architecture Town Houses

Verona + The Doors

Shakespeare + Co

More than Juliet balconies.

Categories
Architecture Town Houses

Verona + Lavender’s Blue

Palladio Palladian Palladium

It’s really about having a sense of proportion these days. As Reverend Jonathan Aitken told us recently, “Above all, it’s a journey.” Verona is worth a worthy detour along the way. Fine Art Dealer William Thuillier calls it “the most beautiful city”. Pictures from Verona.

Categories
Architecture Hotels Luxury Town Houses

Lady Verona Residence Verona + Lavender’s Blue

Expounding Riddles With The Harp

Everything tastes better in a palazzo with a campanile.

Categories
Architecture Town Houses

Veneto + Lavender’s Blue

Lassoing the Moon

“Life was a perpetual holiday in those days.” The Beautiful Summer by Cesare Pavese

Categories
Architecture Art Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Maison + Bistrot du Cygne Brussels

Off Our Trolley

On the gastronauts’ bridge of broad horizons, Brussels looms large, radiating racy and irresistible attraction. It ranks third – after Paris and London – in the Michelin Cities Guide. We’ve loved bistronomique at Scheltema and adored haute cuisine at Comme Chez Soi, so now we’re lusting after haute bistronomique in the thoroughly upholstered intensely mirrored supremely polished Maison du Cygne on Grand Place.

This 17th century former guildhall is gilded to the nines with golden capitals, corbels and a monogram of the architect Pierre Fariseau’s initials. A gold footed and beaked swan emerges from the fanlight over the entrance door. Stone guilt free angels guard the mansard cum bonnet cum domed roof.

The restaurant is a room of dreams: of shape, form, textures and tensions. Ebullience, rather than restraint, is its theme. This is not one restaurant: it is multiple dining rooms, moods, scenes and dramas. The result of multilayered endeavours. Maison du Cygne is a lesson in what Jacqueline Duncan, the Founder and Principal of Europe’s first interior design school, calls “the very grammar of the profession”. That is, the history of design, furniture and fittings.

And what of the Belgo French cuisine? Benjamin van Malleghem, the Majordome, recommends an off-menu seasonal Flemish starter: white asparagus with buttery scrambled egg. We get it. Continuing the high protein diet, we select a low cooked egg accompanied by chervil and sea shrimps main course. Crème brûlée with Madagascar vanilla is a flawless construct filled with passion – and calories. The food is as ripe and original as the revamped interiors.

Opening with O+C Club favourite St Véran Maison Joseph Drouhin 2017, upon Benjamin’s suggestion we move on to Domaine du Colombette 2016. “It’s by a small yet distinguished winemaker. This Chardonnay is rich and full bodied,” we’re advised. And as gold as the architectural trimmings on Maison du Cygne’s façade. “In the 1980s, Maison du Cygne had three Michelin stars. We have recently relaunched under new ownership. We want it to have a relaxing atmosphere – something a bit different,” says Benjamin, pointing to the leopard skin patterned chairs and contemporary French paintings.

Another O+C Club favourite is the puddings trolley, a sweet chariot of temptation. A faded photograph over the bar shows the restaurant in the 1980s. The trolley – still in use – takes pride of place against a recognisable powerfully carpeted forcefully panelled overwhelmingly lampshaded backdrop. Maison du Cygne: it’s an encore, not a swansong.

Categories
Architecture Art Developers Luxury Town Houses

Gustave Strauven + Palmerston Square + Marie-Louise Square + Ambiorix Square Brussels

Art for Art Nouveau’s Sake 

Just as Josep Puig i Cadafalch is overshadowed by Gaudí, so Victor Horta steals the limelight from Gustave Strauven. Monsieur Strauven was a protégé of Monsieur Horta. His pièce de résistance is a sliver of a building on Ambiorix Square, Brussels’ finest address. He designed and built this house, as slim as a Parisian Métro station beacon, for the painter George Saint-Cyr between 1901 and 1903. It’s a slender symphony of sinuous wrought iron lines dancing across a stone façade, a single bay four metre wide work of art, a magnificent manifesto to all things Art Nouveau. Above a lower ground floor truncated Sunset Boulevardesque staircase, projecting and inset balconies weave and wander up the building, feathery columns as thin as bedposts propping up a first floor viewing gallery; then more twists and turns until finally reaching a crescendo – ta da! – a top floor circular loggia. In front of the house, the greenery of Ambiorix Square slopes down to the greenery and water of Palmerston Square which in turn falls towards the water of Marie-Louise Square. In the distance lies the city of diplomats.

Categories
Architects Architecture Developers People Town Houses

Rue de Laeken Brussels + Prince Charles

A Study of a Street

A summary of the eastern street frontage of Rue de Laeken, which runs between Rue du Pont Neuf to the north and Rue du Cirque to the south follows. The Foundation for Architecture in Brussels organised a Europe wide competition in 1989 for the reconstruction of this part of Rue de Laeken which had been demolished in the 1960s. Over 200 entries were received. The overriding criteria used by the international jury were that the projects should recreate a street suitable for the heart of Brussels and for the people who would live there. The winning team, then all aged under 40, came from Belgium, England, France, Italy and Spain.

The competition was a quest to combine architecture and urbanism: how to reconstruct a section of a street that would respect the scale and structure of the traditional city and the aesthetics of a historic street dominated by neoclassical language while meeting the economic, functional and technical requirements of contemporary shops, workshops, offices and houses. The buildings work symbiotically together; concessions to modern requirements such as lifts and underground car parking are hidden from view. Prince Charles approves: “The completion of this project to reconstruct the Rue de Laeken is a sign of hope that we may at last be entering a new and more humane age of European urbanism.” So from left to right, north to south, in a particular order, there are lots to see:

  • Lot 1 by Gabriele Tagliaventi + Associates. A three bay by three bay corner pedimented tower rising five storeys with arch headed ground floor windows. Attached is a two bay four storey with dormer building; blind windows on either side of the doorway.
  • Lot 2 by Atelier 55 + Marc Heene + Michel Leloup. Four bay three storey building with dormers; a shopfront takes up half the ground floor façade. Attached is a narrow four storey with dormer building; first floor rectangular oriel almost spans its full width.
  • Lot 3 by Sylvie Assassin + Barthélemy Dumons + Philippe Gisclard + Nathalie Prat. Symmetrical seven bay street centrepiece; four storey with attic; shopfronts either side of gated archway.
  • Lot 4 by Jean-Philippe Garric + Valérie Négro. Seven bay four storey with blind central bay on upper floors; shopfronts either side of arched doorway; first floor treated as mezzanine.
  • Lot 5 by Javier Cenicacelaya + Inigo Salona. Four bay three storey with dormers; arch headed ground floor doorways and windows.
  • Lot 6 by Liam O’Connor + John Robins. Three bay three storey pedimented townhouse. Attached is a four bay four storey heavy corniced symmetrical building; doorcase on either side of shopfront.
  • Lot 7 by Joseph Altuna + Marie-Laure Petit. Six bay four storey corner building accentuated by arch headed first and third floor windows; first floor metal balconies; chamfered corner.

Categories
Architecture Restaurants Town Houses

Queen’s Road + Clifton Crescent Peckham London

So Hot It’s Cool

Queen's Road Peckham © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Hyperbole alert! There’s that unmistakeable frisson in the mild breeze on a hot day upon exiting the refurbed Queen’s Road Peckham Railway Station. It’s the delicious combo of the arty and the artisanal: skateboarders working their moves outside Blackbird Bakery. The 19th century birth and the 21st century rebirth of Peckham are both really down to the railway. Its invention turned a village into a suburb; its extension transformed a down-and-out address into a ready-to-party postcode.

Asylum Road House Peckham © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Even before Time Out ranked Peckham as the 11th hippest place on the planet (Embajadores in Madrid won prize position although our personal favourites are No. 27 Phibsboro Dublin, No. 41 Palermo Soho Buenos Aires, No. 43 Kadıköy Istanbul and No. 46 Langstrasse Zürich), Bellenden Road (Peckham south) was a gastrohub. Now it’s time for Queen’s Road (Peckham east) to shine.

Clifton Crescent Peckham © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Clifton Crescent Peckham London © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Clifton Crescent Brimmington Park Peckham © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The corner of Queen’s Road and Asylum Road forms the fulcrum of all that is current. At its very epicentre is Kudu, a local restaurant with a South African flavour, run by Amy Corbin and Patrick Williams. Amy’s father is Chris Corbin, one half of celebrated restaurateurs Corbin + King (The Delaunay, The Wolseley, Brasserie Zédel and so on). What does bliss look like? Shakshuka, eggs, parmesan crisps and burnt kale brunch served in a pan on Kudu’s plant filled sun drenched terrace.

Asylum Road Lilac Tree Peckham © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Kudu had barely opened when it received a Bib Gourmand accolade. Other south London restaurants to bask in this Michelin recognition include Trinity Upstairs in Clapham and José on Bermondsey Street. The former is our local on the Common. The latter reminds us of Atlántico in Arroyo, Buenos Aires, with stools lining a tiled bar. Elevated bistro fare.

Kudu Restaurant Peckham © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Asylum Road is lined with insanely attractive houses and lilac trees. It links Queen’s Road to Peckham’s finest terrace, the Bristol sounding Clifton Crescent. These Grade II listed mid 19th century houses are transitional in style. Georgian leftover? The steps to the piano nobile entrance doors of course. Regency reminder? That’ll be the lead canopies. Victorian era? The red brick for sure. This shallow curve of architectural delight overlooks leafy Brimmington Park. It’s time to add SE15 to the Monopoly board!

Kudu Restaurant Garden Peckham © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Categories
Architecture Art Town Houses

Marseille + Marilynne Robinson

A Seraphic Calling 

“We know only what we know, only in the ways that we know it or can know it.” MR. On a morning of utter unimpeachable freshness, it’s time to enjoy a latitudinal view of experience. No curtailment of grace, or majesty, thank you. Efficacious, beautiful, vital, satisfying, glorious. “We wander the terrain of a very remarkable freedom.” You guessed. MR again.

Categories
Architecture Luxury Town Houses

Marseille +

Webs of Moment and Meaning and Memory

American writer Marilynne Robinson is enthralled by this “roaring, surging universe”. Witness, the fury of the Mistral. Here’s to zoomorphia: cathedral as zebra.

Categories
Architecture Luxury Town Houses

Marseille + Corniche President John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Onward to Camelot

A pericope scooped from Marilynne Robinson’s writings: “We came from somewhere, and we are travelling somewhere, and the spectacle is glorious and portentous.”

Categories
Architecture Luxury Town Houses

Marseille + Traverse de la Fausse Monnaie

De Temps en Temps

Gardens to tarry in.

Categories
Architecture Luxury Town Houses

Marseille + Anse de la Fausse Monnaie

The Wealth of Nations

A kind of dark gorgeousness. It does translate, after all, as the Cove of Counterfeit Money.

Categories
Architects Architecture Art Design Developers Town Houses

Casa Amatller Barcelona + Josep Puig i Cadafalch

Sweet Dreams are Made of This

To describe Modernisme as Catalan Art Nouveau underrates its roots but it’s a fair starting point. The style originated in the 1870s when Barcelona was enjoying industrial prosperity and expanding beyond its medieval walls. This expansion, named Eixample, became the home of Modernisme. The relaxation of town planning and the influx of wealth combined with a resurgence of Catalan identity created the perfect climate for new commissions and in turn a new style. Modernisme is a manifestation of Catalan character in stone. And brick. And trencadís (broken ceramic tiles). In homage to the region’s history, Gothic, Moorish and medieval styles were fused with naturalistic motifs of Art Nouveau. Catalan architects superimposed their local customs and beliefs on traditional architecture and made it something new. The epoch ended in 1911.

Who better than Colm Tóibín to capture the spirit of the moment, speaking in 2010 , “The style is known as Modernisme, and it was taken up by Catalan architects at the end of the 19th century as a national style from a number of sources, Art Nouveau and William Morris’ Arts and Crafts movement being among them. In 1903, just two years before the Palau de Música was begun, the leading Barcelona architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch wrote, ‘the most important thing we have done is that we have made a modern art, taking our traditional arts as a basis, adorning it with new material, solving contemporary problems with a national spirit.’”

Casa Amatller is a prime example of Eixample Modernisme. Its crazy ziggurat gable and spiky dingdong parapet sew a rich Dutch pattern into the fabric. The fabric of the rich, stitch upon stitch. Casa Amatller is one of three attached mansions, each a wildly varying rebuilding of an existing structure, together known as “Mansana de la Discòrdia” or “block of discord”. Chocolatier Antoni Amattler Costa commissioned Josep Puig i Cadafalch to go for it. Big time. An oriel as big as a planet. It was one of the first houses in Barcelona to have electricity, no less. Modern without the isme too. All that, he did with great aplomb. Almost 120 years after completion, Casa Amattler still has the wow factor. Madness or genius? Chisel or pencil? Fantasy or reality?

Apropos to the source of the dosh, Casa Amatller could easily be a stage set for Hansel and Gretel on speed. Maybe a bit of Rapunzel on acid thrown in for good measure too? Josep’s heroic adeptness at ecstatic playfulness is a trait Postmodernists would strive to emulate but rarely achieve a century later. Colm observes his eclecticism: “His style moved from the strident neo Gothic to the more gentle Germanic.” Peter Thornton, writing about Paris in Authentic Décor The Domestic Interior 1620 to 1920: “Most Art Nouveau was a good deal more sober than is generally supposed.” The same could not be written about its Catalan counterpart. No way, José.

Speaking at the European Commission in Smith Square London, in January 2019, architectural historian Andrew Saint remarked, “Art Nouveau is really missing in the English context.” He cited Charles Harrison Townsend’s Horniman Museum in London as a rare example. “You can see Art Nouveau as a coalescence of vernacular traditions with an interest in urban politics. The poor old Glasgow School of Art shows that Scottish nationalism was an important force. But that energetic Pan Slavic or Catalan movement is missing in Britain.” There is no British equivalent of Casa Amatller.

Categories
Architecture People Town Houses

Bujović Palace + Perast Montenegro

The Pedagogy of the Impossible

“It’s a gorgeous baroque town. A little piece of Venice with very baroque stone walls and terracotta roofs.” Our tour guide is Liset Kuhar. “It was built by mostly seafaring and noble families. There are just 70 families live here.” Perast is below the peak of Sveti Ilija, facing across the Verige Strait to Verige 65 restaurant.

The loggia and balconies of Bujović Palace practically spill onto the serpentine coastal road. Built in 1694 by the Commander of the Town Fleet Vicko Bujović to the designs of Giovanni Battista Fontana, the palace is a pure Renaissance fantasy of architecture and setting and poetry. It faces Our Lady of the Rocks, a 1400s artificial islet in the Bay of Kotor.

“The coast of Montenegro is for the people. The first three metre span of water, sand or rock has to be accessible to the public unless businesses pay for up to 70 percent of its use. The other 30 percent has to be available for people to come with a towel to sunbathe on. This doesn’t apply to resorts.”

“Mussel farms in the sea are very popular because the limestone mountains filter the water. Mussels grow on the nets, the ropes, they grow anywhere! It takes one year to grow a full harvest. Steamed mussels with white wine are popular, the more wine the better! Add garlic, parsley and olive oil. Very easy and delicious!”

“Kotor coastal people have their own culture; it’s an independent area. A lot of words specific to the Bay of Kotor are very similar to the old Italian. They say ‘Adio’ for goodbye. The tradition of working at sea has been going for centuries. Real estate prices here are high.”

Portonovi – a chauffeur driven Italian and Libyan PR aided Forbes accompanied blacked out windowed Mercedes people carrier drive away from Perast – is more than a development. It’s a lifestyle. So now we’re listening to Portonovi Presents A Touch of Montenegro majestically ¬mixed by local maestros Darko Nićević and Srdan Bulatović. A mesmerising medley of waltzes and jigs, this classical goes trad album will have us dancing till dawn:

• Daybreak Yet to Come
• In the Field it Rais’d
• Rose
• Slender Fir
• Vrsuta
• White Water Wavelets
• Dance
• Fistanlija
• A Beautiful Shepherdess
• Quince
• Ljubović
• Meadnow
• Ye Lassie
• Under the Hillside
• Jump

Categories
Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Design Developers Fashion Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Boutique Hotel Awards 2018 + Lavender’s Blue

Quite Simply The Universe’s Most Glamorous Hospitality Awards Gala Dinner 

How the great poses? “We do it all the time!”

Categories
Architecture Town Houses

Lifford + The Doors

Borderlands

Designed by Michael Priestley in the mid 18th century, Lifford Courthouse (now a restaurant and prison museum) with its Gibbsian keystoned rusticated pedimented doorcase is reckoned to be the most impressive public building in County Donegal. The better half of Strabane has several other discreet moments of architectural merit.

Categories
Architecture Town Houses

The Four Seasons + Gdańsk

This Evanescent World

Gdansk Mist © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Grey mist to lavender twilight.

Gdansk Twilight © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Categories
Architecture Town Houses

Gdańsk + River Motlawa

Time to Reflect

This is what Sunday evenings are all about. Sunset on the river.

Categories
Town Houses

St Aubin Jersey Town + Harbour

All Saints

The Bailiwick of Jersey, in the Gulf of St Malo, is divided into 12 parishes which all border the sea. They are named after their historic parish church dedications: St Brélade | St Clément | St Grouville | St Helier | St John | St Lawrence | St Martin | St Mary | St Ouen | St Peter | St Saviour | Trinity. St Aubin is a fishing village and harbour in St Brélade. It may be the biggest of the Channel Islands but Jersey is only nine miles by five meaning you’re never further than a few minutes drive to the coast.

Categories
Architecture Town Houses

Calais + Lavender’s Blue

There’s More to Life

Calais. It’s having a fashion moment. Official. Nice, no, niche, yes. Mid 20th century architecture is so early 21st century happening. Wherever there’s glamour there’s Lavender’s Blue.

Categories
Town Houses

Richelieu Park Calais + Lavender’s Blue

Get Into the Grove

Marilynne Robinson once more: “We have looked into Melvillean nurseries, and glimpsed the births of stars that came into being many millions of years ago, an odd privilege of our relation to space and time.” The American essayist adds, “Properly speaking, we are the stuff of myth.” Our late afternoon stroll through Richelieu Park proves providential, echoing a strange efficacy, a special instance of cosmic time.

Categories
Architects Architecture Town Houses

Lath House King’s Lynn Norfolk + Henry Bell

For Whom the Bell Tolls

“There are 13 Grade I listed buildings in King’s Lynn,” explains local historian and former Mayor of West Norfolk, Dr Paul Richards. “There are 300 altogether including 52 Grade II*.” A member of the latter group is Lath House, 15 Nelson Street. It’s a three storey six bay house so unusually the doorcase is off-centre on an otherwise balanced Palladian façade. After being used as offices in the 20th century it is now nine apartments accessed off the intact staircase hall. He credits many of Lynn’s buildings to Henry Bell, 1647 to 1711, a linen merchant and part time architect. “Henry Bell was an ingenious architect, nationally important. He visited London and The Netherlands.”

Dr Richards observes, “There’s tremendous social history packed into King’s Lynn. The BBC are about to start filming David Copperfield here. In the 18th century gentry from London, Bristol and Southampton got their wine from the town. Every two or three years a floor falls through a house mid restoration and another wine cellar is uncovered!” Lath House was owned by the Browne merchant family during this period. When owner Samuel Browne died in 1784, the inventory of his wine stock included Brown Port | Caleavela [sic] | Lisbon | Medeira [more sic] | Mountain | Old Hock | Red Port | Sherry. Total value was £1,682.

Categories
Architects Architecture Art People Town Houses

Sir John Soane’s Museum Holborn London + Emily Allchurch

Collage of the Titans

After organising a hugely successful and academically driven Irish Georgian Society London work-in-progress tour of Pitzhanger Manor, Sir John Soane’s country home (due to reopen to the public next year), an invitation to breakfast at his townhouse  museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields proves providentially irresistible. Morning sunlight pierces the shadowy interiors, soaking the sarcophagi, the inimitable collection lit by shafts of coloured light through stained glass cupolas and lanterns and domes. Nowhere in the capital is there such a multilayering of art and ideas. As Bryan Ferry used to sing, “All styles served here…”

We’ve heard of the Soane style being heralded as the forerunner of modernism – think of his streamlined later work – but today’s proclamation is about his postmodernism aesthetic. Applying such plaudits, bestowing such honorifics to the ultimate disruptor, is but a fitting tribute. Dr Bruce Boucher, Director of Sir John’s Soane Museum, says, “In many ways Soane was postmodern. He’d no fear of adapting different styles. Even the double coding of this building as a house-museum and workplace is postmodern.” A diorama of China Wharf by the cleverest postmodernists, CZWG, takes pride of place in the first floor gallery space. The custard yellow egg in the custard yellow drawing room looks strangely familiar. Turns out it’s from Terry Farrell’s TV AM building.

There’s also an exhibition on the ground floor of what Bruce calls “remarkable digital collages”. It comprises three works by the artist Emily Allchurch. She trained as a sculptor and has an MA from the Royal College of Art. Emily was inspired by significant works by the artist Giovanni Piranesi and the architectural illustrator Joseph Gandy in the Museum’s collections. “The light boxes are windows into another world,” she explains. “My practice creates a dialogue between historic artworks and the present day, using hundreds of photographs and a seamless digital collage technique to recreate the original image in a contemporary idiom. I always take my own photographs. Visiting the buildings is part of the journey.”

Grand Tour: In Search of Soane (after Gandy) is a reworking of Soane’s built projects. Its companion piece Grand Tour II: Homage to Soane (after Gandy) is neoclassical architecture around Britain with “unbuilt” Soane additions. The roofscape of Calke Abbey is amusingly spruced up by three splendid domes. Such euphoric recall! Punchy. Like Joseph Gandy’s work, both these pieces were exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. The third piece is Sic Transit Gloria Mundi (after Piranesi).”It’s a conversation about London and Rome,” Emily confirms, “a reminder that empires can collapse.” There’s a weight and confidence to her work. It displays great artistry. And super wit. A “Dead Slow” sign next to mausolea; “If you lived here you’d be home now!” graffiti beside Pitzhanger Manor.

Soon, it will be time for the Irish Georgian Society London to return to its roots. A party to celebrate half a century since the restoration of Castletown House in County Kildare, the Society’s first major success story, awaits.

Categories
Architecture Design Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

The Franklin Hotel Knightsbridge London + Anouska Hempel

Franklin Minted

To be frank, it wasn’t the hardest decision in the world to while away a wintry Saturday afternoon, yes, the perfected world of a Saturday afternoon, wistfully tucked up in a swanky five star Knightsbridge hotel. Add Anouska Hempel (Lady Weinberg to you) to the mix, and it’s a given. The Franklin Hotel, retrieving the definite article, belongs to the family of London terraced houses turned boutique hotels by the New Zealand born designer, from the (very open) maximalist Blakes to the (now closed) minimalist Hempel. From the outside, it’s terribly similar to No.11 Cadogan Gardens. A Pont Street precursor perhaps? All candid brick elevations with canted bay windows. A cute crow stepped gable above a petite portico marks the entrance.

This stretch of Brompton Road between the V+A and Harrods caters for discerning Christian disciplines from Alpha (Low Anglican Holy Trinity Brompton) to omega (High Catholic Brompton Oratory). Ascetic or aesthetic? The Franklin is discreetly positioned on the streetscape, overlooking Egerton Gardens to the rear. Its red and white exterior gives way to monochromatic brilliance. The Lady has form. Blakes has plenty of black. The Hempel had plenty of white. Grey is the new black. A shadow play. Penumbra obscura. She has embedded a melismatic yet palpable narrative into the building’s very fabric. Before long it’ll be coloured by the exaggeration of memory. There’ll never a dull moment.

Anouska Hempel waxes lyrical on her latest creation, “The English love the Italians. The romance of Rome and Venice. All combined, opposite the Brompton Oratory, have become The Combination. Dark brooding greys and bright sparkling whites: floors of Carrara marble and slate. Garden windows abound onto a row of umbrella shaped pear trees. The glorious couture tables make the ground garden floor a sensation. I have had these made specifically to follow the floorplate. Venetian wells, piazzas, squares, dark greys with white punctuations. Mysterious.” Such moods, such moods and modulations.

Digging deeper, Loretto alumna Lady Weinberg, fresh from a stay at Abbey Leix, dwells on creation at large, “I hope that I have something more important to give the world than just what you see on the level of where I’m living at the moment. I think my mission is to bring peace and harmony and a sense of enjoyment, and also to bring something special into ordinary everyday life. I really have been very fortunate to have a little talent, and also incredibly fortunate to have had so many great opportunities. But I strongly feel that I am not the source of my own creativity, which must come from somewhere else.” Painterly, scholarly, otherworldly.

Bowing to mannerism, call it architectural etiquette, the palazzo look certainly isn’t by chance. This is the latest addition to Starhotels, an Italian family owned group. The bedlinen in each of the 35 bedrooms may be 400 thread count Italian Frette linen but the wrought iron balustrades of the enfilade were inspired by English conservatories. A mutual attraction | a binational lock-in love-in | a European commission. Anglophile Elisabetta Fabri, President and CEO of Starhotels, tipped off the designer about her passion. Anouska took it to fruition – with rigour. Hers is a symmetrical staging of sculpture: discovered, framed, mounted, foreground, background, grounded, released. Walls fading to trompe l’oeil, a mirage of Venetian eglomisée mirrors in the restaurant reflect the wonders of Alfredo Russo’s culinary capability. The Piedmont born chef snapped up his first Michelin star aged 24. Expect tiptop modern Italian cuisine. Disappointment is not, no never, on the menu. Exhilaration is. There are more highlights than a National Theatre performance of Amadeus.

Bed is a reinvented fourposter rising to a spidery crown, apropos to a rococo reverie or a baroque dream or a contemporary vision. It’s impossible not to be hyperbolic about this parabolic scrawl in the perfumed air. The entry to an arcane deserted world. And so late Saturday afternoon, yes, luscious late Saturday afternoon, descends into an undeclared denouement: a happy convergence of atavism with hymn charms. Shadow puppets at play. Unfurling the hours spent, later, so much later, upon reflection, through a glass, darkly; frankly it’s all about Franklin scents and mirrors.

 

Categories
Architecture Hotels Luxury Restaurants Town Houses

Villa Kennedy Hotel + JFK Restaurant Frankfurt

Er | The Autobiography of Things

So: 30 up, 20 to go. Cloudbotherers. In 2017 the price of new apartments in Frankfurt rose 25 percent. Hence the haste. It’s upwards and upwards. The Goldman Sachs rush. High cost high rise high flying high living it is then on the west bank of the River Main.

This, and other flotsam and jetsam, is what LVB* are discussing in Villa Kennedy’s JFK Restaurant. Over Cape Cod Dream mocktails: yoghurt | passion fruit | passion fruit juice | vanilla | lemon (€13).

And 50 Shades of Green herbivorous superfood: quinoa patty | avocado | Tahiti dressing | pumpkin seed pesto | courgette | young spinach salad (€26).

Chocolate thins to counterbalance all that healthiness. The best since last week’s petit fours served at Ballymore’s marketing suite – over a chinwag with Sir Oliver Letwin.

LVB are putting the gnomic into gastronomic.

There really is something swashbuckingly Rhode Island mansion about Villa Kennedy. It’s one of many turn-of-last-century landscrapers on the east bank of the River Main. Château façade; half timbered staircase hall; palazzo loggia: eclecticism on steroids.

Hansel and Gretel meets Norman Shaw was seemingly the whole rage back in the day. “Architecture is more than practicalities,” Dr Tim Brittain-Catlin reminded the audience at the final European Commission talk celebrating the European Year of Cultural Heritage.

Closer to the River Main is the 1896 Liebieghaus. A “prestigious villa” no less, announces a sign on the gatepost. Baron Heinrich von Liebieg’s former home is now an a museum. Said sign sums it up, “Manor house built in a mixture of styles: Southern German; Late Gothic; and Alpine Renaissance.” And for good measure a 1908 “Art Nouveau gallery wing with Baroque influences.”

Named after the Presidential visit of 1963, the very restored Villa Kennedy has been given the full blown Rocco Forte treatment with a little art deco help from designer Martin Brudnizki.

Hey ho. Jackie Kennedy was instrumental in launching the Irish Georgian Society. Ho hum. Now LVB have been appointed the social diarist for the London Chapter. JFK | JBK | IGS | LVB. Acronyms are so very FRA.

*A design based celebration of the good things in life

Categories
Architecture Design Luxury Restaurants Town Houses

Four Seasons Hotel Buenos Aires + La Mansión + Elena Restaurant

Perennials | Alias Graceful

Harrods closed in 1999. Praise be then for that other stalwart of longstanding luxury still standing, the standing tall Four Seasons. This being exclusive Recoleta, a Beaux Arts mansion of seven hotel suites around a black and white Carrara marble staircase is plonked in the grounds. If Gatsby had a townhouse… It has its own romantic story attached, one with a happy ending. Dashing heir to a ranching fortune Félix de Álzaga Unzué built La Mansión in 1920 as a wedding splash for his smashing bride Elena Peña. It recently got a £40 million makeover led by Argentine architect Francisco López Bustos. These days? Serendipitous suzerainty in sunglasses. Indoors. Sexy has a new.

Buenos Aires reaches out across the Atlantic yet the endless Pampas encircling the city reinforce the feeling of an enraptured self involvement. The city clings to the edge of the land, looking towards Europe rather than America. French architecture dominates (or certainly did in the past); Italian cuisine reigns supreme; and there are plenty of Spanish speaking locals claiming Anglo Argentinian heritage, whether of English or Celtic descent. In the 18th century, Argentina was the non English speaking country to attract the highest number of Irish immigrants. Many would become eminent in the navy, arts and medicine. In some ways Argentina is more progressive than its European counterparts: unlike Spain, it banned bull fighting as early as 1822.

Buenos Aires translates as “good air”. It could just as easily stand for “the good life” to be enjoyed in winter, spring, summer and autumn. Restaurants, cafés and bars – and this hotel for sure – are alive and kicking, vibrating with the rise and fall cadence of polyglot chatter and laughter, well into the wee small hours. A dark tango erupts across this ambassadorial enclave under the dense shade of blazing jacaranda trees. A clock strikes 12. Midnight in the garden of good and upheaval.

Earlier in the day, away from the searing heat, mingling with mestizos, there was lunch in Elena. Yep, the Four Seasons restaurant carries her name. Between the crazy new block with its broken pediments (like an adopted lovechild of Philip Johnson and Quinlan Terry) and La Mansión is the surprisingly macho Pampas ranch style restaurant. It’s scalped out of the escarpment of the sloping site, lit by a dome which pops its transparent head up into the garden next to the swimming pool. The old and the new, the subterranean and above ground meld and depart; the mellow and the bonkers (condom shaped lights and door handles formed of chains in the loos anyone?) blur and collide.

Over lunch, a tangy aromatic Doña Paula Malbec 2017 on ice was just so cooling. The temperature rose back up when a sizzling cheese soufflé arrived from the kitchen. Mariscada was next. That’s: trout, octopus, shrimp, catch of the day (make that white salmon) and sautéed squid. A seabed of goodness; southern pemmican. Finally, mousse de chocolate amazónico 70 percent and proper Argentinian bean coffee. All four were so very this season.