The Art Of Living

A London home undergoes a calculated overhaul to showcase an impressive art collection

- Nonie Niesewand

A Victorian house built in the Italianate style in a smart conservation area of London is an unlikely setting for provocative contemporary art. Yet architect and interior designer Shalini Misra has created a dramatic space every bit as bold as the owners’ collection of art. Just inside the front door, visitors are greeted by a sculpture called Almech (2011), by the Polish artist Pawel Althamer. Its bone-white face is revealed as bandages mummifying the female form are peeled away. This could be seen as a metaphor for the house itself – its Victorian past stripped to face the future. Step further inside and it becomes obvious that this is not a house for a timid designer.

That is surely why Shalini was commissioned. Her projects, which include the interiors of Regent’s Park penthouses and an apartment in New York, are bold, exciting spaces that bear the hallmarks of a designer with expertise in finish and detail.

Having been familiar with Shalini’s work, the owners knew not to expect plain white cubed spaces. An essential part of their brief was to make the house, which they share with their three children, bigger, in order to display their art collection. Working in finance and also owners of a gallery in Istanbul, the couple have a collection that includes pieces by some of the best-known artists of the twenty-first century: Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, David Hockney, Antony Gormley and Tracey Emin, to name a few.