The brief had two halves that do not usually sit together: the classical elegance the island instils, and a house that functions as a contemporary home.
The brief.
Bonham & Bonham were commissioned by the client while the house was still in early construction. This is the only point at which an interior can still be aligned with the structure rather than fitted into it, and the studio worked from there with both the client and the architect: where the plan divides, how the circulation runs, the purpose of each room and how best to maximise the views.
What the client asked for was a modern classical interior. Not a copy of the island’s Georgian houses and not a modern interior hidden inside a classical shell, but rooms that carry the elegance Jersey has always provided and performs the way a contemporary house should work. Four floors, three of them served by a lift, a little over eleven thousand square feet, standing in five acres inside the island’s coastal national park.
Rhythm, taken from the orders
The classical orders are a system before they are an ornament. They fix how tall an item is against how its width and where changes are suitable. The interior treatment through this house were spanned the division of a panel, the height of a dado and the set-out of a run of cabinetry, all answering to the same measure.
It is the difference between a composed house and a characterless sequence of adjacent rooms. Inspired design is invisible when successful and subtle in its application. A visitor registers it as calm rather than as proportion.
A palette from outside the window
The colour came from the island rather than from a scheme board. The soft hues are already rooted in the surrounding environment, the easy light of Summer on the water, and against them the design team introduced small suggestions of the drama of the ocean view.
Champagne tones run through the interior. It is met first in the antique mirror of the entrance hall and then picked up in a satin brass theme that recurs on every floor, so the house reads as one theme wherever you are standing. Walnut and dove grey carry from one room into the next as the rooms transition seamlessly.
The exception, and the only place the interior raises its voice, is the kitchen island: a cabinet whose top is cut from natural precious stone, lit so that its interior crystal echoes as the complexion of the sea.
Made in the workshop, fitted on an island
The specialist cabinetry in the principal reception rooms and on the upper floors is American Black Walnut, interlaced with refined metal and glass detailing. It was drawn, made and finished in the studio’s own workshop before it was shipped to the island as was the kitchen, built by hand along with the pantry and wine store.
Manufacturing what you install has a distinct advantage on an island installation. The items that arrives is the item that was drawn, and the hands that cut it are the hands that hang it. The materials came from further afield, chosen for the intended room and sourced with consideration as to their origin.
How to maximise the views
The plan gives the water theme to the rooms that are used at the beginning and the end of the day. The principal suite on the first floor takes the commanding view across the reservoir below it with his and hers bathrooms and his and hers dressing rooms: not two wash basins in one room but two rooms. Above it sit the guest and penthouse suites, the penthouse with a living space of its own. Five bedroom suites in all.
On the ground floor the drawing room and the withdrawing room sit either side of an open dining room, and the study looks out across the front courtyard, formal to work in yet comfortable to relax in. The lower ground floor belongs to the end of the day: an indoor pool with a jacuzzi, a cinema, a wine cellar and a gym.
Faced in the island’s own granite
The garaging and the staff accommodation stand away from the house and are faced in Jersey granite, further rooting the new build home into its rural setting. A triple garage with a gardeners’ store included, and an apartment above with room for a couple to live comfortably.
What was handed over was a finished house. The furnishing was specified and supplied by the studio as well, down to the stone, so the client walked into rooms rather than into a shell with a schedule of works attached.
