A Year in Review: 2018 at The Modern House
We’ve had quite the year here at The Modern House. From moving offices to accommodate our growing team, commissioning industry-leading research, taking a staff trip to Helsinki and working with the country’s best designers and craftspeople, we’ve done a lot! Here, we recap the last 12 months.
We sold the best homes in the country
More than anything else, we love selling the country’s finest living spaces. And what a year it has been for that!
We built our reputation on pioneering a new marketplace for the UK’s Modernist architectural legacy. This year, we continued this endeavour by selling Housden House, a Brutalist-meets-early Modernist masterpiece in Hampstead; Walter Greaves’ wonderfully original family in home in West Sussex; The Lubetkin Penthouse in Highpoint II, the zenith of the International Style in London, and Maresfield Gardens, a 1938 Bauhaus-inspired family home by Austrian-German architect Hermann Zweigenthal.
At the same time, we’re committed to good design in all its forms, from bold new homes to sensitive period conversions. Contemporary highlights this year included Tiverton Road, an atmospheric abode by Takero Shimazaki Architects; The Yard House, a material-led family home featured on Grand Designs; Cheeran House; a much-lauded new home by architect John Pardey, and The Shed, an enchanting cabin-like house overlooking Loch Eishort on the southern end of Skye.
We launched our new website
At the end of this year, we launched our new website, which makes exploring the country’s finest living spaces even easier.
By popular demand we’ve improved our filtering options when searching through our sales roster, to make it easier for you to find your perfect home. We’re also presenting our sales in a more dynamic, interactive way.
Our new Directory is an A to Z of industry-leading practices with which to design, build and furnish your space. We only include practices who share our outlook for what constitutes good design, and you’ll even find a comment from us on each entry.
We’ve also rethought our Journal, creating a more editorial platform to share our award-winning content.
We moved house
This summer, in need of more space for our rapidly growing team, we packed up our old office in Islington for new pastures in Southwark.
Our new headquarters are housed in a former church hall, the renovation of which we tasked to TDO architecture. Flexibility and a multi-use capacity were at the core of our brief, and the studio responded by designing demountable desks that can open the space up for events.
Spatial adaptability has been matched with bespoke design pieces by Faye Toogood and Max Lamb, while a ‘living ceiling’ takes the form of hanging planters curated by Urban Flower Company.
At home in our new space, we kicked off an ongoing cultural programme with a panel discussion and housewarming party, with more events to come. Having an extra hall at our disposable has also allowed us to accommodate lectures for the London School of Architecture, an arrangement that is allowing us to define the cultural impact of our business.
We worked with British designers to create a bespoke moving-in box for homebuyers
For a long time, we had been trying to find a way to thank buyers for purchasing a home through us that went beyond the de rigueur bottle of champagne.
This year, we came up with an alternative. Our moving-in box is a bespoke collection of handmade objects curated by designer Faye Toogood. Approaching designers Sebastian Tarek, Olivia Fiddes, Małgorzata Bany, Tom Watt, Amaretti Design and London Honey Company, we looked to celebrate British craft to offer something more meaningful and long-lasting.
The six objects are intended to be thoughtful additions to our buyers’ new domestic environment, and we enjoyed learning more about each for our ‘Outside the Box’ Journal series, for which we visited each maker at their studio.
We went on a design pilgrimage to Helsinki
Our annual staff trip abroad took us to the Finnish capital this year, for a couple of days spent immersed in the country’s rich architecture and design heritage.
Our pilgrimage-like visit to the haloed ground of Alvar Aalto’s home and studio proved a highlight for The Modern House team, being a remarkable realisation of the auteur’s vision, from the architectural expression to the furniture, lighting and textiles.
Our team grew, and we launched new in-house initiative Field Work
Our team has more than doubled this year, with new team members James Noble, Lucy Roome, Charlie Monaghan, Jake Elliot and Jack Blythman helping to expand all areas of our operations.
With our team bigger than ever before, opportunities for collaboration and cross-pollination are riper as well. To facilitate that, we launched in-house initiative Field Work, which sees groups of our team dispatched to exceptional homes to live and work together.
Our trips to Eileen Grey’s Villa E-1027 and Marcel Breuer’s Sea Lane House kick-started a regular series of trips for our staff to experience great architecture up close and personal.
We proved the value of good design
Why are some homes worth more than their neighbours? It’s a question we’ve long felt we instinctively knew the answer to: good design brings not only an environmental and emotional value, but also a monetary one.
To find out if our instincts were right, we tasked analysts Dataloft with comparing more than 14,000 transactions in over 100 London postcodes to a sample of homes sold via The Modern House. Their findings? Homes sold via The Modern House command an average of 12% more than their equivalents.
Of course, the reasons for this uplift are complex but, to thrash some of them out, we hosted a panel discussion at our new headquarters, hosted by design editor and writer Hugo Macdonald. You can listen to an audio recording of the event here.
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