THE JOURNAL
FOUR TIMES WOW!
Bigger, taller and more thrilling than ever, WOW!house 2025 took the interiors world by storm, cementing Design Centre,
Chelsea Harbour’s position at the forefront of the contemporary design community. Charlotte Abrahams celebrates a magnificent fourth edition
we have indeed been special, lucky guests at an aesthete’s extraordinary home. All this was true for WOW!house 2025, only this year the spell was cast before we even arrived at the front door. Entrances are important; they set the stage for what is to come and the best of them allow a
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transformation to occur. And so it was for WOW!house mark IV. With its patterned terrace of English stone and fragrant, almost-untamed planting, the Artorius Faber Entrance Courtyard (one of several new additions for 2025) by garden designer and plantsman Alexander Hoyle didn’t simply conjure a courtyard, it was a courtyard. Even the water fountain worked.
“WOW!HOUSE 2025 REACHED AN UNPRECEDENTED GLOBAL AUDIENCE (NUMBERS WERE UP THREEFOLD ON THE DEBUT EDITION), DAZZLED THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN MEDIA AND PROVIDED INFINITE INSPIRATION FOR FUTURE DESIGN DIRECTIONS”
The use of genuine structural elements was a continuous thread. Adam Architecture’s soaring,
6.5m-tall architectural Facade featured sliding sash windows fitted with heritage glass, a timber front door and plinths carved from Portland Whitbed stone. In the Cox London Entrance Hall, there was a floating staircase temptingly suggestive of a house beyond; handmade trellis turned the McKinnon and Harris Garden Terrace into a Palm Court, while the Sims Hilditch Courtyard Room included a boot room and dog-washing station separated by timber screens. And many spaces, from the Entrance Hall to the unfitted surprise of Lopen Joinery’s Kitchen via Pirajean Lees’ extraordinary circular Library for Dedar and the colour burst of the Benjamin Moore Dining Room, literally raised the roof with skylights and lanterns. The ambition of all involved – 22 world-class designers, 22 sponsoring global design brands,
plus a dizzying line-up of incredible suppliers and consummate craftspeople – was thrilling. There were plenty of big, breathtaking decorative moments: the visual hit of Phillip Jeffries’ monumental abstract marquetry that wrapped the walls of
study; the opulent glamour of the verde Guatemala marble-clad shower in Laura Hammett’s their Staffan Tollgård-designed
t is an illusion, of course, the annual pop-up showhouse that is WOW!house; a theatrical set in three dimensions which we are invited to inhabit for a while. And each year we fall for the fantasy. Each year, the masterfully designed spaces cause us to suspend our disbelief and we re-emerge onto Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour’s Design Avenue believing that
LEFT: The esteemed line-up of designers for WOW!house 2025 alongside the Design Centre’s CEO Claire German, all striking a pose within two new spaces for the showhouse – Adam Architecture’s Georgian-inspired Facade, and the Artorius Faber Courtyard Garden, designed by Alexander Hoyle
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