Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic “We wanted to create an enfilade and I should use that word sparingly for want of sounding pretentious, but it’s like creating streams so you get the width, depth and full use of the spaces,” smiles architect John McAslan describing the masterplan behind the renovation of his Victorian home in south-west London. “It really is a pull of energy, to move you through from the front door to the garden,” adds his wife, Dava, dressed in vibrant Issey Miyake Pleats Please.The journey – or enfilade – through the McAslan home, situated on a leafy, residential street, begins at a knee-height bespoke wooden gate. This unusual design is the initial welcome into the expansive, expressive interior that lies beyond the front door. The hallway, with original geometric period tiling, features an oblique, narrow glass window that frames an olive tree planted in an external side return. On the left, it bursts open into a living area, and straight ahead segues into a big kitchen that swings out perpendicularly into a dining area with a vast Vitra table. A wall of sliding glass garden doors filters light across the entire ground floor.Scotsman McAslan, who founded John McAslan+ Partners in 1993, is a pioneer of intervention and preservation – an architectural approach that favours repurposing (rather than demolishing) old buildings. His multi-award-winning practice is behind some of the most impressive transport hubs in the world including King’s Cross Station, Sydney Metro’s Central Station, the upgrade of Penn Station in New York and Bond Street station on the Elizabeth Line, alongside residential towers, education centres and museums such as the revamped The Burrell Collection in his home city of Glasgow. While different, each project is underpinned by human-centric architecture that improves the quality of urban life.When it came to conceiving this house, the McAslans were not interested in statement-making grandeur but in creating a beautiful environment in which to live, love, think and work. For John, the methodology is the same. “It was about transforming the old into new, which is what a lot of the work of the practice is about. We wanted to open it up, retain what we could, set a budget and develop a language of architecture and design that was an expression of us,” he says. “The central idea here was to get the energy of the house circulating front to back and retain, remodel and upcycle what existed to varying degrees – we had an ecological, fabric-first approach.” Since the early 1980s, the couple lived in four different properties in Notting Hill. As John was building his business, his wife Dava Sagenkahn was working in recruitment while raising three children, Hannah, Flossy and Renwick, who have now all left home. There was no urgency to move, rather a gentle yearning for more light, sky and a sense of expansiveness, which is hard to find in the densely occupied city. Moving south of the river was not on the agenda until their daughter Hannah, a lawyer who lives in the area, spotted the property and went for a recce, iPhone in hand. She sent the video to John and Dava who were on holiday at their restored farm south of Florence. They swiftly put in an offer. “We’ve never done that before. We’re normally forensic,” laughs Dava of the almost blind bid and the serendipitous events that landed them the keys. The core renovation with the construction company Davies & Daughters involved knocking down walls, opening up all the spaces, building out into the garden and ripping out a “circus tent” conservatory. “It was an awful octagonal makeshift ’70s one – boiling in the summer and leaky in the rain,” says John, rolling his intense blue eyes. It was reconfigured into a punched-out space that now frames a small kidney-shaped garden landscaped by Jack Newlyn and enclaved by bamboo and neighbouring trees. The first floor hosts John and Dava’s bedroom, a private sitting room and an emerald-Bisazza-tiled en suite bathroom with a curvilinear wall. The top floor houses two super-size flexible sleep-living spaces for guests and family, with extended eaves that create new volumes and light. The upstairs bathrooms are vivid lime green “cubes” with a painted floor, ceiling and wall in the same wake-me-up hue. “The layout of the house is clear and direct, with flexibility: the ground floor is entirely open, engaging the hall, reception spaces, extended kitchen, garden room and fully opening into and through the garden,” says John, who admits he has an aversion to rooms with closed doors. “The first floor is our apartment, and the top floor is a suite of connected spaces that can open or close as needs be.” “I feel I can use every room,” says Dava. “There are times when I take my laptop and go all the way up to the top of the house and it’s just great.” There were a few trouble spots, including a damp, rotting cellar that required gutting and fixing to make way for a utility area. “How we avoided electrocution, I don’t know!” says Dava of the early renovation. They moved in permanently in March 2024. Perhaps unusually, the couple were aligned on pretty much all aspects, including the wood-panelled walls and simple single strips of shelving (by John Cherrington of Windmill Furniture) that feature throughout. The Strong White (Farrow & Ball) wall paint changes with the light, accented by breezy voile curtains, citrus-green blinds (that beam optimism from the street view) and the wide oak floorboards. The couple first met in the late 1970s in Boston at the canteen of the architectural practice Cambridge Seven Associates, where John had just landed an internship as a recent graduate from Edinburgh University. Dava was working as an executive assistant to one of the partners. It was a coup de foudre. “I said to myself, well, I’m going to marry her. This was she! So I stayed my year and I think on the last day I asked you out or something,” smiles John, who returned to London to work at Richard Rogers and rack up a phone bill calling his sweetheart. A transatlantic courtship ensued before Dava moved to the UK in 1981 and they wed. “Not really knowing each other, but enough to know,” laughs Dava. “This was not anything I ever planned when I was burning my bra with my feminist sisters: a, to get married; or b, to marry someone I didn’t know very well.”The couple share a love of adventure, travel, family and collecting that is writ large in their collection of furniture, art and artefacts. The cane and teak furniture is a combination of original armchairs designed by Pierre Jeanneret for Chandigarh in the 1950s, with a number of pieces recently made by Phillips Antiques in India in reclaimed teak. The wooden screens by Artek were designed by Alvar Aalto in 1936, and they own a standout Brazilian petal table by Jorge Zalszupin from the 1960s. “We dressed the interiors with an array of panelled wall assemblies – some open and some closed – for our library. The artefacts, collected over time and very personal to us, express our journey individually and as a family,” says Dava.There is a luminescent collection of Bakelite pieces (many found in Martha’s Vineyard) perched on cabinets; a vintage Missoni rug alongside colourful abstract floor coverings, some sketched by John and handwoven by Shyam Ahuja in Mumbai. The artworks, casually leaning on the narrow shelves and coursing up the stairwells, range from an exquisite sketch of two female bottoms by their daughter Flossy (John swears it is better than Klimt) to contemporary Indian abstract painters, and a very early American 1869 Shield, Eagle and Flags stamp (one of a series purchased for their children) to celebrate Dava’s US roots.By contrast, there are photographic works by the Indian artist Raghu Rai, alongside Wolfgang Tillmans and Simon Starling. The couple are patrons of emerging artists and the collection is diverse, esoteric and autobiographical – with many humorous anecdotes attached. “We began collecting around 40 years ago when we first married, starting with Peter Blake’s pencil studies of a lady’s bottom made in 1955 when he was a student at the RCA. From there we focused on European expressionists like Paul Klee, Jean Metzinger, Erich Mendelsohn, Marc Chagall, Sonia Delaunay and Giorgio Morandi,” says John. They also share a love of abstract Indian painters including Ram Kumar, Tyeb Mehta and Francis Newton Souza – a founding member of the Progressive Artists’ Group.The duo are strong believers in community and in preservation. In 2010, they fundraised £3.5mn with the local community in Argyll to save Dunoon Burgh Hall, an 1874 arts venue in the seaside town of Dunoon, where John grew up. The building was in danger of being torn down, so they bought it for £1. It is now a thriving cultural hub and there are plans to establish a library and archive centre with their vast collection (around 2,500) of architectural and art books. McAslan is also lobbying the GLA and central government as part of a Social and Affordable Housing Initiative calling for the adaptive reuse of redundant “grey belt” office space (estimated at 24mn sq ft) as a sustainable alternative to the push for new-build homes. One of the biggest eye-openers for John is the newfound joy of crossing the Thames en route to work. “I think of the Kinks and ‘Waterloo Sunset’, romantic meetings and all that stuff. But the big change is having that distance between work and home,” he says. Not to mention the novelty of using the Overground and Underground. “When he first got on the train, we thought he might not come back!” says Dava. But now both have the pleasure of coming home through an elegant front gate. Four neighbours have already inquired after its provenance. “It is our gate!” they laugh in unison.
