Professional
Tonkin Liu’s Sun Rain Room, an extension to a listed Georgian house, shows how the boundaries between inside and out can be blurred in a highly imaginative and conceptual way
Left: Boundary Space’s scheme for a Notting Hill basement extension includes a landscaping scheme in the lightwell with integrated planters and lighting – turning what could have been a bland space into something much more pleasant to look at.
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IN AN AGE of biophilia, green roofs and living walls, nature and architecture are more integrated than ever. Outside spaces, meanwhile, are becoming as amenity-packed as their indoor counterparts, from mood lighting to cooking and entertaining facilities. Both trends point to the idea that architects and interior designers should be taking on the landscaping side of a project, too. “We say that what we do is architecture, landscape and art, and we don’t view any of them differently. It’s more about an experience,” says Mike Tonkin of Tonkin Liu. He was an architect first and subsequently trained as a landscape architect, so he is more equipped than most to give a 360-degree view of spaces inside and out. The award-winning Sun Rain Room, an extension to the listed Georgian building where he and Anna Liu share their home and practice, is a wonderful example of what can happen when holistic thinking is applied to house and garden. A living roof swoops from the rear of the house to the back of the plot, while a C-shaped hole in the roof demarks the outdoor space. This central area can either be a dry terrace or a flooded, shallow pool: when it rains, drops dance off the pool, a spectacle enhanced at night thanks to slim horizontal beams of light positioned just above the water level. “When it really starts coming down, it’s like a kind of fire, but with water,” says Tonkin. A mirrored run of cupboards under the roof at the far end of the garden stores tools and recycling. While not many architects and interior designers go as far as retraining, as Tonkin
did, there is nonetheless rising demand for them to tackle outside spaces. Like many practices, architecture and design studio Boundary Space uses external consultants (and one in particular, FRLA), but keeps overall control of how the scheme will turn out. “Landscape comes with a raft of technicalities, not only when it comes to the planting but also irrigation, drainage and hard landscape detailing; because of this we rely on collaboration,” says its director Thomas Furse-Roberts. “From a client’s point of view,
“With climate change, it’s getting hotter and wetter; you need more shelter from the rain and the sun, so there’s more need for semi-indoor, semi-outdoor spaces.”
Mike Tonkin, Tonkin Liu
they can receive a single concept from us with landscape ‘baked in’ rather than them having to consider a separate consultant who may or may not chime with the architecture.” Projects such as a stepped basement lightwell with integrated planters running all the way up, softening what could have been a relentless view of hard surfaces, show how important it is to think of all the elements, inside and out, in harmony.
Cinzia Moretti of Moretti Interior Design Ltd agrees it’s better from a client’s perspective if
there’s only one person to deal with, and says that “for every brief, we don’t stop with the interior – we follow it through into the garden from the very beginning”. Her interest in biophilic interior design has extended to the outdoors, too, and how nature can enhance wellbeing. Lighting plays an important part. “It creates more depth, and gives the impression that there’s more space, if you can sit in your kitchen when it’s dark and see the end of the garden,” she says. “If you have lighting all around a perimeter fence, and an uplighter for one particular tree, it can become a feature of the interior as well, because you can sit on your sofa and enjoy it from inside.”
We are starting to think differently about the boundaries between inside and out, says Tonkin. “With climate change, it’s getting hotter and wetter; you need more shelter form the rain and the sun, so there’s more need for semi-indoor, semi-outdoor spaces.” Rik Smith at Design Emporium says it’s important not to work based on a client’s idealistic memories of “occasional long English summer nights, or southern European holidays, which do not transfer to everyday use in this country”. He says: “It is simply not practical to design external spaces and eating areas away from the primary internal preparation areas; instead, the external functional areas have to be close enough and be used with ease, taking every opportunity to sneak into the sun while it lasts, whether for an impromptu lunch or quick cup of tea.” Areas that are a hybrid between inside and out, or that flex between the two, are
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