A Victorian house in Stoke Newington has been reworked by London architecture studio Wadhal into a home that combines a private art gallery, domestic interiors and an unusual outdoor space modelled on the South Asian stepwell. At its centre is a considered relationship between contrasting materials, with reddish limestone, stainless steel, concrete, timber and clay-washed surfaces establishing a consistent language across the building.

Founded by Fahad Malik, Wadhal describes its work as narrative-led, exploring the relationship between design, tradition and culture. Stepwell House is the practice’s first substantial completed project, and an opportunity to test its interest in material consistency and the reinterpretation of familiar forms. For the private clients, the brief was to transform a tired Victorian property affected by damp and historical building faults into a more open home capable of accommodating an extensive art collection.

The architectural response involved a substantial reconsideration of the existing plan. More than a third of the internal floor area was given over to a new gallery space, with a bedroom removed to create a double-height volume. An opening skylight brings daylight into the centre of the house, reaching the exposed semi-basement levels that had previously been poorly lit. The resulting arrangement gives the collection a dedicated setting while establishing a clearer connection between the interior and garden.

The outdoor space is particularly distinctive, and there is a case for saying that it steals the show. A stainless steel mesh gabion structure contains reddish limestone, creating a sculptural arrangement of steps that takes its reference from the traditional stepwells of South Asia. The stone provides a strong counterpoint to the precision and relative lightness of the metal enclosure. Its warm colour is echoed inside through bespoke clay-washed wall finishes, giving the materials a visual continuity across the threshold.

Rather than forming a conventional flight of steps, the limestone structure changes direction at different points in a manner that is vaguely M.C. Escher-esque. But this deliberately irregular arrangement makes the space as much about occupation as movement, with the steps intended to provide places to sit, gather and lounge. The project also draws on American-Indian artist Zarina Hashmi’s sculpture Steps, using the relationship between concept and material to give the courtyard a character beyond that of a conventional garden circulation route, and worthy of sitting alongside an art gallery.

The metal mesh grid becomes a recurring device throughout the house. It first appears as a transparent balustrade before extending into a bridge floor between levels, allowing light to pass through to the lower gallery and bathrooms. The same material language is carried into bespoke shower shelving. Inside, fumed oak joinery and doors repeat the grid at a 50mm scale, while externally a hand-nailed oak fence translates the pattern into timber, with individually finger-jointed components.

Other materials temper the more industrial elements. Poured concrete flooring, stainless steel and claywashed walls establish a restrained architectural backdrop, while the visible weld marks on the staircase retain evidence of the metalworkers' craft. In the bathrooms, British fossil stone supplied by James Elliot is used for solid stone basins and matching tiles. Its fossil-rich composition introduces a different kind of material detail, with the traces of ancient sediment providing a tactile contrast to the manufactured precision of the mesh and joinery.

The interiors were developed in collaboration with Max Radford, founder of Max Radford Gallery, whose role extended beyond furniture selection to helping to shape the relationship between the architecture, art and domestic objects. Contemporary work by designers including LS Gomma and Olivia Bossy sits alongside pieces by Josef Hoffmann and Kazuhide Takama. Radford describes the process as a conversation where these objects “directly responded to the mix of historic and contemporary elements that Wadhal presented in the house's core architecture.” As a result, different periods and approaches are allowed to coexist rather than imposing a single style.

The collaboration was important to the overall identity of the house, and Malik feels the project explores how heritage can be reimagined in a modern setting: “The Stepwell House examines how both ancient and contemporary design can be recontextualised, and come to belong in the same home.” That thinking is evident in the stepwell-inspired courtyard, but also in the way the building's material palette moves between traditional references and contemporary fabrication.

Externally, the existing Victorian character is retained through London stock brick, as required by local conservation standards. A mortar slurry gives the facade a more monolithic appearance, while the detailing avoids conventional concrete coping by carrying the waterproofing beneath the final brick course. Custom stainless steel rainwater hoppers and downpipes maintain the same attention to material consistency and draw a direct relationship to the gabion cages.

At Stepwell House, stone is neither a decorative addition nor an isolated statement. The limestone courtyard gives the project its most recognisable sculptural gesture, while fossil stone brings geological texture into the bathrooms. Together with the steel, timber and concrete, these materials help resolve a house built around contrasts: gallery and home, historic reference and contemporary craft, industrial precision and tactile warmth.

Images © Lorenzo Zandri 

As architects and designers look beyond familiar construction and finishing materials, interest in bio-based alternatives is growing. Renewable resources, agricultural by-products and industrial waste are becoming the starting points for experiments in everything from surface finishes and textiles to acoustic panels and interior objects. But moving these materials from the laboratory or designer’s studio into wider use requires more than a promising sample. It calls for shared knowledge, testing, dialogue, and a clearer understanding of how materials are made, what they can do, and what happens to them at the end of their useful life.

That is the territory occupied by Biomaterials Library, a publicly accessible collection and research platform established in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2023 by creative researcher and biomaterial designer Austėja Platūkytė. Based at the SODAS 2123 cultural centre, it is the first physical collection of its kind in the Baltic States, bringing together material samples, experimental processes and design objects from Lithuania, the wider Baltic region and beyond. An expanding online resource extends its reach beyond the physical archive.

Image © Gustė Grigaliūtė

The idea emerged from Platūkytė’s recognition that material libraries are often housed within universities and specialist institutions, leaving their contents relatively inaccessible to the wider public. She wanted to create a place where people could encounter unfamiliar materials directly, rather than simply read about them. “My idea for Biomaterials Library was to exhibit not just biomaterials such as clay or seaweed, but to show how designers engage with these materials and what they create from them,” she has previously explained.

For Platūkytė, the Library is also a way of connecting individual research with a broader design culture. Her own practice spans material design, science, technology and craft, with projects investigating how biological resources and local waste streams might be transformed into new materials. Her experimental packaging made from algae-based ingredients, for example, explores a compostable alternative to conventional synthetic packaging, while other work has examined the potential of organic waste as a material resource.

Image © Sam Frost

Some examples within the library are early experiments; others have progressed into finished objects or more developed applications, but the programme extends beyond collecting samples. Exhibitions, workshops, lectures, open recipes, publications and collaborations create opportunities for designers to share processes and connect with scientists, educators, manufacturers and potential commercial partners. The team regularly presents the collection at design events, including House of ICON during London Design Festival and, more recently, Dutch Design Week. 

Among the participating creators are Agnė Kučerenkaitė, Austėja Platūkytė, Dijuota Žilytė, Evelina Kudabaitė, INDI, Indrė Butkų, Indrė Spitrytė-Mikuckė, Sarmite Polakova, Viltė Adomavičiūtė and Waste Matters Studio. Their work demonstrates how varied the sources and approaches can be, from reclaimed production materials to plant fibres and biological growth.

Image © Evelina Kudabaitė

Evelina Kudabaitė’s ever-expanding GIRIA collection considers how the by-products of wood processing can be given another purpose. Mixing waste generated from the lumber industry, notably tree bark dust, with organic binders, she has developed a series of surfaces and vessels. While the earthy tones and rich variations of the surface move the aesthetic far from it, the process is not unlike that used to manufacture MDF, only here the outcome is toxin-free and true to its organic origins.

Image © Indi

Lithuanian design brand INDI, founded by Simonas Tarvydas, uses another form of recycling through its REPAPER technology. Using paper derived from waste, the process produces interior surfaces and objects that can appear like another less-than-reputable material cousin, concrete, but without the environmental damage of the ubiquitous substance. Aesthetically, the outcomes appear substantial but offer a lightweight alternative, which has seen it used as tiles as well as lighting and interior objects. What’s more, the pieces are designed within a circular production model, with the material able to be recycled and used again in future objects.

Image © Indrė Spitrytė-Mikuckė

Indrė Spitrytė-Mikuckė’s research moves towards the softer side of materiality, creating textiles and leather alternatives created from algae and bacteria. Her beguiling surfaces carry the appearance of having clearly been grown in a lab, and her scientific approach is opening exciting new biologically derived materials that address the material demands and waste associated with fashion and textile production.

Image © Viltė Adomavičiūtė  

Viltė Adomavičiūtė is investigating the potential of industrial hemp, particularly the woody inner core of the plant, known as hemp shives, with a particular interest in its sound-absorbing possibilities. Combined with binders, the biocomposite can be formed into 3-dimensional surfaces and objects. Her ongoing Hempforma project is exploring how such undulating surfaces can positively maximise the acoustic qualities of interior spaces, while minimising environmental impact in their production.

Image © Austėja Platūkytė

Platūkytė’s own experiments sit alongside these practices, including her own research into algae-based materials, acoustic solutions, and notably bio-based alternatives that are eco-friendly, non-toxic and sustainable. Projects include decorative eco-boards, made in collaboration with Strato Homes, that use formaldehyde-free binders and natural-derived buckwheat hulls and hemp stems, as well as her own alternative to leather derived from the sea, and a cellulose-based bioplastic that is mixed with charcoal and applied to natural hemp.

Image © Austėja Platūkytė

Together, the projects show that bio-based design is not a single material category or a ready-made solution. It is a developing field shaped by local resources, making processes and the particular requirements of each application. By bringing these investigations into a shared, accessible setting, Biomaterials Library gives emerging work a place to be examined, questioned and developed. It is both a reference collection and an active meeting point, with the ambition to help material knowledge travel further than the studios and laboratories where it begins.

Organised by NGO Medžiagotyra and supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture, the collection can be explored at biomaterialslibrary.com

Part of Travertine's appeal lies in its ability to bring geological variation and warmth into an interior without relying on strong colour or pattern. RAK Ceramics has drawn on this understated quality for Maximus Travertine Crosscut Osso, a large-format porcelain collection that translates the softer, more cloud-like character of cross-cut stone into a manufactured surface.

Available in White and Light Beige, the collection takes its reference from the tonal shifts and natural markings revealed when travertine is cut across its bedding planes. Rather than reproducing the more pronounced linear movement associated with vein-cut stone, the design offers a more dispersed pattern, with subtle multicolour nuances giving the surface depth without making it visually dominant.

Crosscut Osso forms part of a wider Travertine Osso offering and is designed to work alongside Maximus Travertine Osso, the complementary vein-cut interpretation. Sharing the same colour palette, the two surfaces can be combined within a single scheme, using the contrast between directional veining and the more diffuse cross-cut pattern to introduce variation while retaining material consistency.

The range is available in four formats, with the large slabs providing scope for more continuous surface treatments across floors, walls and architectural features, while the smaller dimensions offer flexibility for residential and commercial interiors. What’s more, the collective material palette offers options for surface texture, with RAK Ceramics Sync Effect digital structure technology used to create tactile relief products, as well as coordinating striped slabs available in the range. This adds a physical dimension to the visual interpretation, rather than relying on printed pattern alone, and with it, two or more finishes can be used in subtle contrast.

The collection reflects the continuing interest in travertine across contemporary interiors, while offering a porcelain alternative for projects where a coordinated palette, varied slab dimensions and the practical characteristics of a manufactured surface are important considerations. Its restrained colours and combination of cross-cut and vein-cut designs provide a degree of flexibility, allowing the familiar qualities of natural stone to inform a wider range of interior applications.

Like the baggy cargo trousers adorned by Gen-Zers from across the gender spectrum, the walls of the Crook’s Kitchen extension are a further suggestion that we’re ready to reexamine 00s trends. Back then, glass blocks were being torn out of properties in favour of Scandi-inspired minimalism and simpler material palettes. THISS Studio’s design for the space may not be taking us back to 90s Po-Mo pomp, but the subtle material contrasts used still combine to create a uniquely standout addition to the East London home.

Along with the glass blocks, the Staffordshire blue quarry tiles running from kitchen to garden are among the other defining features. Set against warm Douglas fir joinery, burnt-orange kitchen units and brushed metal surfaces, the materials and accented pops of colour give a Victorian terraced house a new kitchen and dining space that is both practical for a professional chef and a feast for the senses.

Crook’s Kitchen adds 11sqm to the rear of the house, where the existing kitchen was cramped and offered little room for the family to gather. The house and garden sit approximately one metre below street level, and the change in level becomes part of the organisation of the new space. Stepping down from the hallway, the Ketley Staffordshire blue quarry tiles provide a robust surface for the kitchen, continuing onto the garden patio to establish a visual connection between inside and out.

The tiles are one part of that deliberately varied material palette, which helps draw fresh breath into the environment. Douglas fir brings warmth to the interior, appearing in the kitchen cabinetry supplied by Pluck and in a substantial run of bespoke quarter-sawn joinery along the extension wall. The latter accommodates the family's ceramics, plants, cookbooks and vinyl collection, incorporating a dining bench before rising towards the angled roof trusses and skylights. Its natural grain provides a softer counterpoint to the more industrial finishes elsewhere, and the patchwork of tiles behind.

For Harry Kaufman, head chef and partner at neighbourhood restaurant The Clarence Tavern, cooking needed to remain central to the design. The kitchen therefore takes some of its organisational cues from commercial catering spaces. Rather than following the conventional kitchen triangle, THISS Studio created a U-shaped preparation area with generous work surfaces and a clear separation between wet and cooking zones. Stainless-steel worktops and matching splashbacks, supplied by Stainless Steel Direct, reinforce this working character. The metal extends behind the client's retained gas range cooker, with a full-height splashback reaching towards the ceiling.

The arrangement also considers how the kitchen is shared, with a raised platform finished in Forbo's Rosemary Green Marmoleum that runs alongside the burnt-orange units, providing a seating area at the peninsula. Children can sit close to the cooking, eat or do homework while remaining separated from the immediate heat and preparation area. The distinction between working and social space is achieved through the change in floor level rather than additional partitions.

And of course, glass plays a similarly active role in shaping the interior. Instead of relying on a large expanse of rear glazing, the architects introduced Seves wavy glass bricks alongside conventional windows and doors. Their translucent surfaces allow daylight to travel further into the plan, reaching the existing living room while softening its intensity. The resulting patterns of light and shadow change throughout the day, giving the otherwise simple extension a shifting quality, and breaking the blocks away from any associations formed during the canons of design history.

Beneath the glass bricks, bespoke banquette seating upholstered in a red and coral stripe by Colours of Arley accommodates up to six people around a cobalt-blue table. The seating turns into a corner alcove, creating a reading space within the open-plan arrangement. Further windows frame views of the garden, including a small planted area beside the dining space.

The rear elevation continues the material layering externally, bringing together existing brickwork, glass bricks, rectangular openings and pale porcelain tiles. A steel mesh screen and matching canopy extend the industrial detailing into the garden, dividing the outdoor space while retaining visual connections between its different areas.

Director Tamsin Hanke describes the approach as keeping the architectural intervention simple and allowing the material choices to do more of the work, while also allowing the clients’ characters to shine through: “The idea was simply to extend here, keep the form quite flat, and let the materials do the work. There is a richness as well as a light-heartedness to the material palette that I think reflects Harry and Alice as people.” In Crook’s Kitchen, that means using familiar materials in combination rather than relying on structural complexity: quarry tiles provide continuity underfoot, timber establishes warmth, stainless steel supports the demands of cooking, and glass blocks bring daylight into the depth of the house, while challenging our aesthetic associations of them.

Images © Lorenzo Zandri

A large cantilevered stone beam, held in balance by a roughly hewn boulder, is the central feature of a new structural installation at the University of Toronto. The Long Reach: A Carbon Balance brings together architecture practice GROUPWORK, structural engineers Webb Yates and specialist contractor The Stonemasonry Company in an exploration of how stone can contribute to lower-carbon construction, particularly when combined with timber.

Standing 9m high in the plaza outside the University's John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at One Spadina, the installation makes the mechanics of its construction part of the architectural expression. A 6.5m cantilever extends across the space, its weight counterbalanced by the boulder, while three unprocessed timber posts support and brace the frame. The result places two materials with very different structural characteristics alongside one another, exposing the relationship between weight, compression and tension.

The stonework itself uses two types of limestone according to the demands placed on individual components. Belgian Blue, with its higher strength, is used in the more heavily stressed parts of the frame, while Pierre de Bretigny limestone is employed where structural demands are lower. At one end of the material spectrum is the untouched boulder; at the other, accurately cut structural sections. Together, they demonstrate how stone can fulfil different roles without requiring extensive processing throughout.

The structural system relies on post-tensioning to extend the possibilities of stone beyond conventional masonry construction. Stone is naturally strong under compression but less capable of resisting tension. Steel tendons threaded through the individual elements are tensioned to pull them together, introducing compression across the assembly. This enables the resulting beams and columns to resist bending and transfer loads through the frame, making longer spans and more complex structural configurations possible.

The combination with timber is equally deliberate, and the design uses stone primarily in compression and timber in tension, applying the respective strengths of each material rather than relying on a single structural system. It also considers what happens at the end of a structure's initial use. Straightforward connections allow the frame to be assembled and dismantled using relatively simple construction methods, offering the possibility of reusing its components.

The team’s carbon argument rests partly on the relationship between the two materials. Timber stores approximately 1,000kg of CO₂ per cubic metre, compared with around 36kg of emissions generated through the quarrying and cutting of stone. The intention is to demonstrate how the carbon held within timber can outweigh the emissions associated with producing the stone elements. This is set against the comparatively low energy requirements of extracting and processing natural stone when measured against the manufacture of steel and cement.

For the team, the installation is another step in a research programme extending over more than a decade. Their investigations include The New Stone Age: Towards an Ethical Architecture, an exhibition and research programme at the University's Architecture + Design Gallery examining stone's potential in contemporary architecture. In the UK, the same collaborative research has informed the Stone Demonstrator, a three-storey prototype unveiled at Earls Court in October 2025. Developed with a wider group of specialist partners for Future Observatory, the Design Museum's research programme for the green transition, it tested structural stone systems at a scale closer to that of a building.

The Long Reach: A Carbon Balance is on public display at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, 1 Spadina Crescent, Toronto, until spring 2027.

Regular Stone Specialist readers will already be familiar with the work of Rebecca Jak. Following her co-curation of the insightful What Lasts Doesn’t Always Hold Shape exhibition at No.1 Poultry earlier this year, we invited her to interview Australian sculptor Alex Seton during the recent Frieze London exhibition. In this Insights article, they discuss his relationship with stone, the evolution of his practice, and their thoughts on how stone might offer a wider conversation about the future of making, technology and material applications.

“In his latest body of work The Sosie Series, Australian stone sculptor Alex Seton presents two sculptures whose forms mirror one another on rotating timber plinths at Frieze London 2026. Carved from Rosa Portugale and Verde Ming marble, together the pair explore the uncanny relationship between the self and our digital doppelganger. The series draws on the growing dissonance between our physical and online identities, capturing how our digital reflections take on lives of their own, increasingly beyond our control.

Image: Nicola Gnesi Studio

This body of work explores contemporary concerns regarding the loss of control inherent in our relationship to online identities, whilst revealing the lessons stone has imparted through Seton’s lifelong entanglement with the material. Working with stone requires a unique push and pull between mastery and relinquishing control upon which Seton comments:

Image: Nicola Gnesi Studio

AS: Being a natural material, discovery is crucial. Every time you chip away at stone, there might be a different layer underneath, a different character line, a different flaw or unexpected colour. Stone carving is a reductive medium. It is a series of choices, and you can’t second guess them. If you make decisions quickly and move on, you begin going somewhere; you go on a journey. Risk more, gain more is what I say. Ultimately, when working with stone, you have to relinquish a sense of imposition.

Image: Nicola Gnesi Studio

What became clear throughout my interview with Seton, is that the pieces exhibited at Frieze London 2026 were a punctuation mark within an expansive career. The path has undulated, taken turns, pushed back and resulted in what I would describe as a reciprocal relationship between maker and material. From a childhood growing up near a quarry, to his monumental installation Dark Heart for the 2014 Adelaide Biennal at The Art Gallery of South Australia, Seton explains how his relationship to the material has developed:

AS: At the beginning, carving stone felt familiar as I grew up around the material. When I started carving in earnest after art school, I wanted to prove myself and demonstrate my skill. In the early years, I chose materials that best suited the subject of my work. I chose durable, consistent stones. Later, when my work became more political, I began to embrace the marble’s monumental history and all that it implies. In socially engaged work, I also recognised the sincerity that comes with the act of labour. For The Sosie Series, I was inspired by the material itself. The pink Portuguese marble has a mottled quality, a fatness and a fleshiness. It has these peppery lines and almost bruised-like veins. Before, I often worked in reverse. I had an idea and went looking for the stone. What I realised over time is that one will always inform the other. For me, what has changed is the balance.

Image: Mark Pokorny

Buildings have a peculiar way of making stone appear mobilised by time. We encounter stone as facade elements and polished floor tiles, seemingly immune to the passing of time. Yet every piece of stone arrives with a history that precedes its life within a building or sculpture. Somewhere along the journey, the mountain becomes a material, and the material becomes a product. What is lost in that transformation? What is found?

Image: Vasili Vasileiadis

As professionals within the construction industry, we often celebrate stone’s capacity to endure. Durability alone is not the only measure of this material’s sustainability. There is also the question of how much of a material we use, and what becomes of what we leave behind. A block of marble might become a sculpture or be cut into building tiles, but its story need not end with this seemingly finished form. Rather than viewing offcuts, dust and rubble as waste, Seton sees this as an exciting opportunity:

Image: Alex Seton

AS: The key for me is to do it once and do it well. This means using 100% of the material, acknowledging stone as a material with deep geological time written into it. I used to pay a service to take away my rubble for use in road tarmac. It was a useful solution, but then the material started finding other lives. A group of students I was guest-lecturing at the University of Technology Sydney came to me and asked if they could use my marble dust and rubble in breeze blocks. They introduced me to The Natural Brick company, which makes terrazzo tiles and later began using the waste from my studio. They now make different tile series using the material from each body of work, sometimes in a new colour, or mixing it with an earlier series to create a new combination.

Image: Lorenzo Montanello

In architecture, as in sculpture, the tools through which we give form to an idea are never entirely neutral. They shape not only what we can produce, but how we understand the act of production itself. As digital technologies become increasingly embedded in design and fabrication, the conversation often collapses into ultimatums: handmade or machine-made, craft or computation, authorship or automation. Seton offers a perspective that is neither, and rather is a perspective on the value of a work exceeding the gesture of the hand alone, favouring the all-rounded knowledge of the maker. 

AS: You’ll notice there is a tendency towards the handmade, perhaps partly because of people’s concerns about technology. After decades of carving, I’m interested in exploring technology as a tool. Getting people to understand the difference between using technology as a tool and allowing it to override the judgement of the maker is an important distinction to me. I am currently developing new work in which I take an original carving of mine, scan it, slice it down the middle and mirror it against itself, almost like a cell dividing. The sculpture becomes more iterative and abstract as it is divided and mirrored. The original hand-carved forms are re-carved and reiterated using technology and then finished by hand again. I want to bring nuance to this conversation around technology being a tool, and I’m interested in using it to gain new insight and achieve greater technical complexity and scale in my practice.

Image: Nicola Gnesi Studio 

Seton’s practice reminds us that stone’s permanence is inseparable from its capacity for reinvention and reinterpretation. As the stone industry within construction explores new technologies, more considered uses of materials and possibilities for reuse, there is much to be gained by looking beyond its own boundaries. The exchange between art and architecture offers a space for new ways of thinking, working and making. By bringing different disciplines into conversation with one another, we can allow the most familiar of materials like stone to keep revealing themselves anew.”

Alex Seton is represented by Sullivan+Strumpf. You can explore more of his practice and work here. 

Rebecca Jak is an independent material researcher and curator. You can discover more about her work here.

A shared garden connects two very different buildings in Kensington, where Mosley Thorold has refurbished a listed Georgian townhouse and rebuilt its adjoining mews house. Rather than attempting to reconcile their differences, the architects have used them as the starting point for a project in which historic proportions and contemporary scale, traditional fabric and expressive new materials, each retain their own character.

Designed for a gallerist and their family, St Mary’s Townhouse and Mews House began as a relatively modest refurbishment of the townhouse. As the architects explored the site, however, the opportunity emerged to treat both properties as a single architectural undertaking. The townhouse was restored with a light touch, preserving its late Georgian proportions and original structural elements, while the three-storey mews house was rebuilt from the ground up, with a new basement and considerably greater spatial freedom.

The relationship between the two is most apparent across the central garden. From the kitchen and seating area of the mews house, the view runs through the courtyard towards the conservatory dining room of the townhouse. The garden is more than a gap between buildings; it establishes a visual connection that allows each residence to register the presence of the other.

The architecture of the existing townhouse also provided a cue for the new work. Two substantial brick piers rise along its rear elevation, establishing a strong vertical rhythm. Mosley Thorold responded with a series of monumental columns framing the rebuilt mews façade. The repetition creates a connection between the buildings without requiring the new architecture to imitate the old.

Inside the townhouse, the retained proportions provide a measured backdrop for a more individual collection of materials and furnishings. A stainless-steel and brass kitchen introduces a crisp metallic counterpoint to the historic fabric, while handmade Belgian tiles, sourced by the client from a specialist dealer, bring texture underfoot. Their surface offers a more tactile register than the polished metalwork, allowing contrasting finishes to sit alongside one another without competing for attention.

The interiors also draw on the reuse of existing objects. Antique Italian doors have been converted into a bespoke cabinet for tableware, carrying their ornament into a new function. Alongside tapestries, wingback chairs and vintage pieces, the cabinet contributes to an interior shaped as much by accumulated objects as by architectural intervention.

The rebuilt mews house takes a different approach. Its higher ceilings and more generous volumes accommodate stronger gestures, including bespoke corten steel shelving in the basement. The metal’s weathered appearance gives it a depth and texture distinct from the stainless steel and brass used in the townhouse, while its substantial presence suits the larger scale of the new interiors. Custom metalwork throughout both properties was developed with specialist craftspeople, sometimes from detailed architectural drawings and sometimes through direct collaboration between the makers and client.

For Mosley Thorold, the challenge was to give these varied materials a coherent setting without imposing a uniform palette across the two buildings. As founding director Henry Thorold explains: “The materials carried a natural weight and confidence - steel, brass, deep colours - and we focused on giving them a coherent architectural structure so they could fully sing.”

The project demonstrates how refurbishment and new construction can work together without erasing the distinctions between them. In St Mary’s Townhouse and Mews House, the architecture provides a framework for material contrast, allowing old fabric, reclaimed objects and contemporary metalwork (along with the all-important art on the walls) to establish their own identities within a connected whole.

All images: © Ollie Tomlinson

The treatment of exposed edges is becoming an increasingly important consideration in kitchen design, as islands, waterfall ends and shaped worktop profiles give surfaces a more sculptural role. SapienStone’s 4D Ceramics collection, available through Cullifords, addresses this with a technology that carries decorative patterns through the thickness of the porcelain slab.

Developed by Iris Ceramica Group, the full-body technology integrates decoration into the material rather than limiting it to the visible face. This allows the pattern to continue across cut edges and shaped profiles, creating greater visual consistency when a surface moves between horizontal and vertical planes.

Conventional printed porcelain can reproduce the colour variation and veining of natural stone across its surface, but the appearance at a cut edge may differ from the face. With 4D Ceramics, the through-body decoration is intended to reduce this visual break, giving fabricators and designers more freedom to shape the material without losing the continuity of its pattern.

The distinction is particularly relevant to kitchen islands, where a worktop can extend down the sides to form a waterfall end. It also opens up possibilities for vanity units, wall cladding and statement furniture, where exposed edges and changes in plane are integral to the design.

One of the collection’s more expressive options is Fior Di Viola 4D. An ivory ground is crossed by burgundy, plum and charcoal veining, drawing on the visual character of marble. The pronounced pattern lends itself to applications where the surface is intended to act as a focal point, whether across a kitchen island, a deep worktop edge or a splashback behind more restrained cabinetry.

The development reflects a wider interest in treating surface materials as three-dimensional elements rather than simply finishes applied to a plane. As shaped edges, deep profiles and transitions between surfaces become more prominent in interior architecture, the way a material behaves when cut and fabricated is increasingly relevant to specification.

Natural stone has long offered variation through its depth, although the appearance of a cut edge depends on the stone itself and the direction of the cut. SapienStone’s approach seeks to bring a similar visual continuity to porcelain, while retaining the design control associated with an engineered surface.

For fabricators, the technology provides another consideration when selecting porcelain for projects in which the edge is as visible as the face. For designers, it extends the scope for using marble-inspired patterns across more complex forms, allowing the surface to read as a continuous material rather than a printed image confined to the top.