Living in the Sky
Interior architecture
City | Canary Wharf, London
A Canary Wharf apartment organised entirely around its skyline, delivered complete for clients arriving from Hong Kong.
LOCATION: Canary Wharf, London
PROJECT TYPE: Full turnkey transformation
SCOPE: Interior Design · Kitchen Design · Bespoke Joinery · Flooring · Bathroom Refurbishment · Window Treatments · Full Furnishing · Art Curation and Placement · Styling
A professional couple based in Hong Kong had owned a three-bedroom apartment in Canary Wharf for more than a decade. After years of tenancies, the interior had been drained of any quality or character. When they decided to use the apartment as their London base for regular visits, they came to us with a single, complete brief: take ownership of the project from start to finish. The owners should arrive with a suitcase and find their home ready.
The property occupies one of the building's upper floors, with floor-to-ceiling windows wrapping the main living space and views across the Canary Wharf skyline in every direction. The bones were exceptional. The finishes and fittings were not. Our task was to transform the apartment completely, without the clients needing to be present, into something that reflected their sophistication, spoke to their Asian heritage, and was organised around the relationship with London's skyline.
The result is an apartment that holds its view as the defining design element, and that carries, in its palette, its wallpapers and its joinery, a quiet but unmistakable cultural intelligence. Blues and greens drawn from a Missoni fabric. Wardrobe doors lacquered in a nod to Chinese furniture. Wallpapers with Asian motifs in deep forest tones. The clients' own art collection integrated throughout. Bespoke window seats in every room. Luxurious sheers and blackout curtains. Bedlinen, crockery, kitchen equipment. Everything, down to the last detail.
"Claudia and her team have been very helpful. They work with accuracy and speed to get our project moving forward. They are skilled with what they do and really listen to our needs. Claudia and her team have provided us with a high level of comfort that all details have been fully considered and planned for and fully documented to optimise the final outcome with efficiency. Claudia demonstrates creativity ensuring a practical outcome. She has exquisite style and makes excellent recommendations for finishings and colour. We have already recommended her to our friends.”
—Clients, Living in the Sky, Canary Wharf
The Brief
A decade rented. A home, returned.
The brief could not have been more complete. The clients wanted the apartment as their London base: a place to arrive from Hong Kong, step into immediately, and feel at home from the first evening. Everything was to be ready. Bedlinen, crockery, kitchen equipment, towels, art on the walls, wine in the rack. We collected the keys and handed them back when it was done.
Managing a complete transformation for clients based in Asia requires the same discipline as any remote project: clear communication, confident decision-making, and total accountability for every trade and every delivery. The clients were closely involved in the design direction through video calls and detailed visual presentations. They were not involved in the management of the project. That responsibility was entirely ours. When they arrived in London for the first time after the transformation, the apartment was exactly what had been agreed. They have been back many times since.
The Palette
One sofa. The whole palette.
The colour story began with a single piece of furniture. The Missoni Mahjong sofa, a modular composition in the Italian house's signature bold print, was chosen early and held firm as the chromatic anchor for everything that followed. Its palette of blues and greens, moving from teal and cerulean through to deep forest and midnight, became the thread that runs through the entire apartment: present in the wall colours, the fabrics, the wallpapers and the joinery finishes.
This is how a palette works at its most effective. Not as a predetermined scheme applied to the rooms, but as a language discovered through a single decisive object and then spoken consistently across every surface. The blues and greens that fill this apartment feel earned rather than chosen. They have the quality of colours that belong here, with this view, in this building, for these clients.
The View
Not a backdrop. The room itself.
The defining architectural feature of this apartment is its position. Floor-to-ceiling windows wrap the main living space and the bedrooms, framing views across the Canary Wharf skyline that change character entirely between morning and evening, between clear winter days and the particular quality of London summer light. A view of this quality is not a backdrop. It is the room.
Every spatial decision in the apartment was made in relation to the windows. Bespoke window seats were designed and built in every room: low, deeply cushioned, positioned to make sitting at the glass feel like the natural thing to do. Luxurious sheers filter the light without eliminating it during the day. Blackout curtains ensure that the skyline, rather than the street below, is the last thing seen before sleep. The apartment does not have views. It is organised around them.
“The clients arrived with a suitcase. The apartment was ready. That is the whole point of a turnkey service done properly.”
The Bedrooms
Lacquered. Layered. Fitted to the room.
The three bedrooms were each stripped of their rental-grade carpets and replaced throughout with the new oak parquet that runs across the entire apartment. Each was rebuilt with bespoke fitted joinery that provides the level of storage a London base genuinely requires. The wardrobe doors are finished in high-gloss lacquer: a deliberate reference to the lacquered furniture tradition of Chinese interiors, a material gesture that connects the apartment to the clients' heritage without announcing itself as a cultural statement. It is the kind of detail that the clients will recognise and that other visitors will simply experience as exceptionally considered.
Extra-large bespoke headboards anchor each bedroom, designed to the specific proportions of each room and upholstered in fabrics chosen in relation to the wallpaper and palette behind them. The wallpapers themselves carry Asian motifs in deep blues and greens: a botanical and geometric language that speaks to the clients' cultural background while sitting entirely naturally within the apartment's wider scheme. The bedrooms feel simultaneously cosmopolitan and personal: the combination that makes a hotel-quality finish feel like someone's actual home.
The Kitchen
Redesigned for the way the clients actually live.
The original kitchen layout served a rental property. Functional, generic, optimised for nothing in particular. We redesigned it entirely around how the clients actually live when they are in London: entertaining, hosting dinner parties, the particular pleasure of a city evening that begins at home. The new layout improves the flow between preparation and dining. Bar seating at the island makes the kitchen a social space rather than a service one. The specification throughout was upgraded to match the quality of the rest of the apartment.
The Corridor
An empty tunnel, given character.
The architecture of the apartment had allocated a generous amount of space to the corridor: a long, winding passage connecting the entrance to the living spaces and bedrooms. In its original condition it was a dark, empty white tunnel. Unloved, purposeless, and making the apartment feel considerably less generous than its floor plan actually was.
We treated it as a design opportunity rather than a circulation problem. An energetic geometric wallpaper, bold in pattern, rich in colour, transformed the passage into a space with genuine character. Storage units and a seating element were added along its length, giving it practical purpose alongside its new visual energy. The corridor is now the first thing guests experience when they arrive, and it sets the tone for the apartment beyond it with complete conviction.
The Art
Their collection, placed. Walls, completed.
The clients have their own collection of Asian art: pieces accumulated over years of travel and living that had never had a proper home in London. Integrating a personal art collection into a new interior requires the same attention as any other design decision. Which wall. Which scale of object alongside it. Which light falls on it. Which relationship to the furniture in front of it. We worked through every placement with care, and the result is an apartment where the art feels as though it grew there alongside the palette rather than being introduced to a finished scheme.
Affordable additional pieces were sourced to complete the walls where the collection left gaps, always chosen in relation to the room they would occupy, never as generic decoration. An apartment that holds art chosen by the people who live in it tells a different story from one that holds art chosen to fill a wall. That difference is present in every room here.
CITY
Urban Sophistication
Surf
Coastal Serenity
Ski
Alpine Craft
Every home begins with a conversation.
Every project begins with a conversation.
If you are considering a home and would like to talk through your ideas, we would be glad to hear from you.