John Pawson

The subject of the first project was a flat in Elvaston Place, shared with the art dealer Hester van Royen. The flat had high ceilings, but the proportions of the original interior had been compromised by a series of partition walls. The writer Bruce Chatwin recalls visiting the finished interiors in his essay, ‘Wabi’: ‘I was taken to a flat in an ornate but slightly down-at-heel Victorian terrace and shown into a room in which, it seemed to me, the notes were almost perfect… I walked around the walls, watching its planes, shadows and proportions in a state of near elation’.

Photography
John Pawson