This listed 4,000 square foot showroom for Woven Place and Howe London was built as a commercial space around 1860. It had housed sculpture studios, a gym (with rifle range in the entrance), a car spray workshop and most recently an art and antique furniture gallery in which all natural light had been blocked out.

This was a project of reduction and removal, rendering the building’s past visible, in which the antiques and rugs displayed inside become a new layer of its history. The building was like a block that we carved space out of. A triple height central atrium was formed by removing a 1960’s rooftop addition. Walls were stripped back to brick and left bare or limewashed. Rooflights were reglazed and opened up. The space was revealed.

The showroom is entered through a pair of unassuming doors in a residential terrace off Pimlico Road, leading into a timber cobbled ramp running through the terrace into the central atrium. From there spaces lead off to all sides but the view is also upwards. There is something almost divine about the light coming from above.

Project architect  Margherita Zompa

Photography  Ollie Bingham