Keeling House is one of those London landmarks that anyone with a fondness for mid-century design will recognise. The brainchild of Denys Lasdun – creator of the National Theatre – it was built in 1957 as one of his famous cluster blocks, which he envisaged as ‘streets in the sky’.
Architect Jenny Fleming had been living and working in east London for years with the building always in her view. When a rare one-bed on the fifth floor came up for sale, she jumped at the chance to buy into a piece of architectural history. ‘You can still hear the birds in the trees and people chattering when the weather’s fine, but it’s high up enough that you’re private,’ she says of the flat’s ideal location.
The previous owner had rented it out, so the decor was tired and clinical. ‘The term that springs to mind is “dentist’s surgery!”’ Jenny says, laughing. ‘It was really cold, which is the last thing you want in a concrete building.’ There were large cream tiles throughout, a white kitchen and secondary glazing that clashed with the original Crittall windows.
In the bedroom, a fitted wardrobe made it impossible to get around. ‘The bones of the building were fantastic – it was just badly decorated,’ she recalls. ‘There was nothing I wanted to keep, so I started afresh.’
Stripping the flat back to its shell revealed some surprises. A boxed-in vent in the bathroom turned out to be a decommissioned space heater and, ‘there were four floors – I couldn’t believe it, people had just put one floor on top of another floor,’ Jenny says in amazement.
Having to make every inch of the space count forced Jenny to come up with some ingenious solutions. While most of her neighbours squeezed a small table into the living-dining room, she built a ‘peninsula’ to divide the space. ‘It’s tight to get into, admittedly, but it is a perfect little dining spot. It’s really intimate but also practical, and a bit like sitting in an old-fashioned train carriage,’ she says.
She and her partner Kevin also removed the fitted wardrobe in the bedroom, which made it feel less enclosed. Adding a parcel shelf – another idea borrowed from train-carriage design – provided extra surfaces to hang lights, as well as changing the scale of Jenny’s art collection towards smaller works that could be appreciated more closely.
Then right in the middle of the renovation, everything stopped. In early 2022, Jenny received a life-changing diagnosis of spinal tumours and had to go into hospital for treatment. This enforced break gave her time to reflect and, following a successful surgery, she returned to the project with a fresh perspective.
She’d been planning a primary-coloured scheme with a yellow kitchen, red bedroom and blue bathroom. ‘Because I had longer to think about it,’ she explains, ‘I thought I’d like it to be a bit warmer and softer.’
The new colour palette also had an unlikely source of inspiration: legendary TV detective Lieutenant Columbo. ‘It gradually got a little more Columbo-esque – I just had to steer away from beige!’ she says.
The one thing that never changed from Jenny’s original plan, though, was the heart of the flat: that joyful, sunshine-yellow kitchen. This is her happy place where she likes to work and eat, but all too often finds herself getting distracted by the view.
‘What’s so beautiful about that space is the windows along the length of it,’ she says. ‘Looking out over the terraced houses, you can see what I call the ‘strained city’ view. If it’s a bright day you need your sunglasses.’
There’s no getting away from the fact that, at 33 square metres, this is a very tiny flat. By embracing its size and applying imaginative solutions, Jenny has sculpted the space to be not just liveable, but life-enhancing.
Uplifting colour and bespoke furniture that encourages a relaxed, intimate way of living coupled with those extraordinary views make her sunny nest a true sanctuary – one that Denys Lasdun would surely approve of. cuozzo-fleming.com; carter-fleming.com
