Wallpaper* A humble London Cottage becomes a Private Sanctuary

Wallpaper* Magazine has featured Private Sanctuary in their online magazine.

Journalist Tianna Williams spoke to Siri Zanelli at Collective Works about how we worked with out Clients Louise and Akin to create their dream private sanctuary, ‘rooted in culture’.

We helped them to extend the cottage with an open plan kitchen dining area and reorganise their ground floor to create a series of connected but cosy rooms. Following an interiors workship with Siri, Louise and Akin took on the design project on to produce spaces that have more than a nod to their British Nigerian and Zulu South African heritage.

“Louise and Akin have real confidence in their style and a clear idea of what they liked about their historic cottage and what wasn’t working for them,’ says Siri. ‘We didn’t want to take away from the personality of the workers’ cottage, so instead we embraced and emphasised the cosy layout in the original part of the property. The large extension gave us an opportunity to contrast with that. We set light alongside dark, airy against cosy and open-plan spaces segueing into programmed rooms.”

The aim for the expansion was to create more space, more light and more privacy from the street. A home is somewhere safe to return to – from a day at work, with friends or like Louise and Akin’s eldest child now – from time at university. Their private sanctuary welcomes them into a space which is very much their own.

Siri said ‘We tried to capture some of this sense of an anonymous exterior façade; you cannot imagine what is hidden behind this humble cottage street front. You have to move through several rooms to reach the warm, light-filled family room facing the garden – a little family retreat away from the busy-ness of London.’

You can read the full feature in the online magazine.

Photos by Anna Stathaki.