GALLERY Tour Johnathan Reed's workhouse-turned-apartment in Chelsea

London loft salutes past with utilitarian, military themes

February 7, 2000
Web posted at: 3:20 p.m. EST (2020 GMT)

LONDON (CNN) -- A red brick building in London's Chelsea district once served as a workhouse and hospital. Now it's a home and studio to British interior designer Jonathan Reed. He uses utilitarian and military motifs to try to evoke the spirit of the past.

"The concept was to really respond to the history of the space," Reed says, "not to impose anything too modern and too clean ... because it is a space with history. And I wanted some of that feeling to come out."

Some of the utilitarian touches include chairs from a sewing machine factory in the dining room and shiny white tiles around a fireplace in the kitchen. When Reed replaced the tiles in the bathroom, which was once a hospital scrub room, he used "the cheapest utility tile available."

The military theme is prominent in Reed's bedroom, where olive drab file cabinets hold his clothes. A sculpture of a soldier hangs above the fireplace.

The biggest obstacle Reed encountered when decorating was a preservation law that forbade him from erecting walls in the 5,000-square-foot (450-square-meter) apartment. But being one who likes to experiment with space and proportion, he found a way around that.

"The space really is just notionally divided by the arrangement of furniture into a living area, a dining area, a sleeping area and a kitchen," he says.

The sleeping area, for example, has just a plaster partition to separate it from the rest of the apartment.

Reed says he took into consideration the apartment's size when choosing furniture. "It demands strong sculptural forms," he says. "It's not a space that would respond to neutral, minimal furnishing."

CNN Style Correspondent Elsa Klensch contributed to this report.

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