Garden Square Townhouse
South Kensington, London
A Grade II* listed townhouse on a street of houses designed by one of the most idiosyncratic Victorian architects of his generation — every house on the terrace stylistically distinct, despite the single hand behind them. The interior was developed by Beata Heuman, brought to the project by the client.
The studio led the architecture and the heritage strategy. The house had accumulated decades of listed building contraventions, and the project began with the careful work of unpicking what had consent and what didn't — and then deciding, with the client and the interior designer, which of those battles were worth fighting and which were worth conceding to secure the rooms that mattered most. The kitchen, which had been built on the ground floor without consent, was retained there: the entrance was reinvented as part of the same move, opening directly onto the kitchen with a balcony beyond, overlooking the garden square.
Studio Insight
The standard advice with a listed building is to keep the interior quiet — to let the heritage rooms hold their authority and let the finishes recede. It is sensible, and it is often the right answer. It is not the only one.
This house was always going to take a different kind of interior. The aesthetic that came with it was eclectic, handcrafted, distinctly Scandinavian — the kind of scheme that is rich in texture, full of decision, and entirely at odds with the conventional restraint of a Grade II* refurbishment. The work was in finding the geometry that lets that interior sit comfortably within a heritage building's existing walls — wonky, irregular, hand-built — without either fighting them or smoothing them out.
What makes it work is that neither side pretends to be the other. The listed building keeps its imperfections; the interior keeps its richness. The two are reconciled not by compromise but by careful resolution at every point where they meet.
