My Modern House: Cereal magazine founder Rosa Park reflects on home and style at her restful Georgian flat in Bath
Stepping into Rosa Park’s flat in a Grade I-listed Georgian
mansion block in Bath, we can’t say we’re surprised by the feeling of calm that
greets us. Like the pages of the magazine she founded and edits, Cereal, Rosa’s space is a soothing mélange
of muted, natural tones, fine design and craftmanship, mixed in with considered
displays of objects that hint at how far and wide she and her husband,
photographer Rich Stapleton, have travelled.
Here, Rosa shares the story of renovating her flat, her love affair with Bath and why beige has got under her skin. Don’t forget to listen to our brand-new podcast that features Rosa as our inaugural guest. Hear her talk about her three favourite spaces around the world and why she’s got a thing for Belgian design here.
Rosa: “Do you ever notice that a lot of fashion
designers wear black? I think it’s because, when you’re exposed to so much, you
tend to kind of retreat into the most streamlined version of yourself. It’s not
a blanket rule, but I suppose Rich and I fall into that category… except black
for us means beige.
“A lot of people ask us, ‘Don’t you get bored of this colour
palette?’ or, ‘Don’t you want some colour?’ Through my work, I have so much
colour in my life and just because it’s not in my sofa doesn’t mean it doesn’t
exist. I love colours and so does Rich but at home this is just what we like.
“It’s the sense of having a uniform and having a colour
palette that just feels easy and works for us because, more than anything, we
wanted this space to feel comfortable.
“We looked at 55 flats over the course of a year before we
found this one. We weren’t willing to compromise on location. In fact, our
search was concentrated to about five streets in Bath we really love.
“And the layout had to make sense because so often the
problem with Bath flats is that they are in buildings designed as whole
townhouses, not individual apartments. Over time they’ve been hacked away at in
awful ways and now everything’s protected, so sometimes you can’t even reverse
the horrendous decisions that were made in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
“We came across this flat on a street I love. I think it’s
spectacular, actually. It was built as a very grand boulevard and it still
impresses to this day.
“We came to see it and, although there’s kind of an old folks home vibe to this building, the location was a tick. It’s fully serviced and because Rich and I are both away for about two weeks of any given month, the idea of a lock-and-leave was very appealing. There’s also gated allocated parking, which is a holy grail in Bath – you can’t park anywhere in this city! We made an offer the same day.
“And then we renovated it for about four months, totally gutted it at first. It had green walls, green carpet, funky tiling and velvet curtains. And the previous owner had so much stuff in here. Unreal. The opposite of our aesthetic!
“I’ve just never had a particularly flamboyant or dramatic
style in my home interiors. Maybe it’s because of my parents. When my friends
see photos of my parents’ place they say, ‘Oh, it kind of looks like your
house’.
“I share a lot of similarities with my family, whose style is quite pared-back. Culturally, we Koreans have an artistic tradition that is quite restrained. And, obviously, I’m Korean and that aesthetic influences me a lot. With my gallery, Francis, which I set up last year, Korean aesthetics are a huge, dominating force.
“But we live in Bath, the most English place in the world.
It would be silly for us to not recognise that this is where we are. And I
always think interiors, or even how you dress, are dependent on your location. How
I dress in L.A. is different from how I dress here, so how I would decorate my
home in those two places is different.
“Rich and I had this realisation the other day when we asked
ourselves, do you think we like beige so much because we live in Bath?
Subconsciously, beige gets into your system when you live here and I guess it
could go either way: you could hate it, or you could just be like, yeah, this
is my life and embrace it.
“We admire the architecture in the city a lot – it’s one of
the main reasons that we love living here. Rich does voluntary work with the
Bath Preservation Trust and we’re always out looking for new architecture
details. And we’re both obsessed with Bath stone.
“So, our inspiration for this flat was literally Bath itself:
the light, the colours, the Georgian detailing. You can hopefully see it in the
beautiful English kitchen we went for, or the dark oil painting I bought for
the flat – I never thought I’d be into that sort of artwork, but it just works
to make everything feel less modern and new here.
“We’ve lived here for about a year and a half now and we’ve enjoyed adding things that just make it more us and more like a home. We don’t want people to come in here and feel like it’s a showroom, which because I am really OCD about cleanness and order, there is a danger of. People have come in here and said, ‘This is not how you live’. Unfortunately for Rich, it is!
“I was born in Seoul and moved to Vancouver when I was six. What’s really funny is that until I moved to England, I never had a physical sense of home. It’s very strange. I’ve never felt it, but I feel it in England, which I couldn’t explain until recently.
“I think most people, if they’ve moved around a lot, have different versions of themselves. The person that I was in Seoul is different to the one in Vancouver and New York, all of which are places I spent time in growing up.
“Then, I moved to England when I was 26, and I felt like I
became a functioning (or semi-functioning, at least) adult here. I started a
business here, I met my husband here and I bought my first home here. Those are
really big milestones, and all of that happened in Bath.
“So, even though I have no reason to feel at home in England
I realised I do because I like the version of Rosa I am here.”
Rosa, how do you define modern living?
“Convenience.”
Is there a home for sale on our website that has caught your eye? “The Bella Freud Apartment at Television Centre. I dig the location’s connection to the BBC, and I’m a huge fan of Retrouvious, so the styling really speaks to me. The shades of green that exist throughout the house are probably my favourite element.”
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