Interior architecture
Kitchens, joinery, stairs, lighting and finishes designed within the studio alongside the architecture, so the design intent holds from structure to door handle.
Our Position
Interior architecture, not interior decoration
There's a difference between an interior designer and an interior architect. The decorator chooses the cushions; the architect designs the room. We do the second.
Our interior work is concerned with spatial planning, structural opening-up, bespoke joinery, lighting strategy and the specification of materials that age well. The plan, the section and the material palette are settled together, not stitched on at the end.
We take on interior architecture as part of an integrated architectural commission, or as a standalone project: typically a whole-house refurbishment, a flat, a hospitality fit-out, or a workplace.
What's Included
The six disciplines of interior architecture
A complete interior architecture service covers the spatial, the structural, the technical and the tactile, from first plan to last fitting.
Walls moved, removed or rebuilt. Circulation rationalised. Rooms re-proportioned. The discipline that turns a poor plan into a good one: usually the most valuable thing we do.
Kitchens, libraries, dressing rooms, panelled walls, built-in storage. Drawn at full scale, specified in detail, made to last decades, not flat-packed and replaced.
Ambient, task, accent, theatrical. Designed in section as well as plan. Lighting is half of how a room feels and the part that's most often badly done.
Floors, walls, ceilings, hardware. A coherent palette of materials chosen to age: timber, stone, plaster, brass, linen, leather. Specified by us, not by a magazine.
Bathrooms, kitchens, mechanical and electrical detailing, integrated technology. The technical detail that determines whether the architecture works once it's lived in.
Loose furniture, soft furnishings, art and accessories on request. Not every client wants this: we're happy to stop at architecture, but we'll see it through if asked.
When to Commission
Three common entry points
Most clients come to us at one of three points. Where you join shapes how we engage.
The most common, and the most coherent. We design the architecture and the interior architecture together so the plan, section, joinery and materials are all set in one mind. For example: Whole-house renovations, new builds, listed building works.
The shell of the building doesn't need to change but the inside does. We'll come in cleanly and treat the existing building as the brief. For example: Flat refurbishments, kitchens, primary suites, hospitality fit-outs, workplace interiors.
Plans don't work, joinery isn't ready, the lighting plan is wrong, the spec is incoherent. We can usually pick up a stalled interior project and finish it. The best results come from involving us early, but a stalled project can usually be brought home.
Fees
Transparent and staged
Where we're also the project architect, the interior fee is usually rolled into the overall RIBA appointment. Standalone interior commissions are quoted as a fixed fee.
In practice
