Rachael Smith,
photographed the home on our cover,
A specialist interiors photographer, Rachael’s client network spans magazines, books, architects, interior designers and product designers around the world. My choice for Britain’s favourite antique would be 18th-century jugs – particularly the Davenport Serpent Handled Imari jug, c1815. It’s very colourful, with a classic design that fits in well with most interiors.
W e really wanted a change from the area’s Victorian houses,’ says architect Helena Rivera of the sleek mid- century home she shares with her husband, Hernando Alvarez, and their sons, Teo and O !o. ‘ The rooms in Victorian houses can feel quite closed o" from each other – that era’s architecture was all about privacy and closed doors rather than openness.’
The same cannot be said of the couple’s three-bedroom house in Dulwich, south London, which clearly sprang from a very di "erent mindset. No space has been wasted on a long, dark entrance hall. Instead, goodsized, light-# lled rooms open o" a central living room on the ground $oor, while upstairs, a square landing creates a similarly generous sense of space. Helena and Hernando were immediately taken by the seamless layout. ‘I loved how you walk straight into the shared areas,’ Helena recalls. It was exactly what they had been looking for and it felt like a perfect #t, not least because they had an eye for mid- century design and already owned a Saarinen coffee table and two Penguin armchairs by Theo Ruth.
The house is part of an iconic estate, built in 1959 by Austin Vernon & Partners to provide well- designed, a "ordable housing on what was then the edge of London. Given its heritage, the couple didn’t want to alter the structure of the house: ‘ When you # nd a good example of Fi %ies design, you want to take care of it, not change it,’ Helena believes.
However, she could see that a few small design tweaks would improve it, while still honouring the original architecture. The # rst was
Paintings and posters are displayed around the house, ensuring it feels like a home rather than a museum.
reinstating the window seat in the living room. To do this, Helena went back to the original 1959 drawings and discovered that what had been used as a deep window sill for plants was marked as a day bed. ‘It’s a sunny spot with a view of the garden, so it makes sense,’ says Helena, who had the new seat upholstered in orange wool for a late Fi !ies, early Sixties feel. She also designed a screen made from sections of bu "ed and polished black walnut, which looks every inch an original feature. It was inspired by a structure that once #anked the porch, but had long since disappeared. Fortunately, a neighbouring house still had theirs intact, which gave Helena the starting point for her design.
The screen works as a subtle divider between the hallway and the living room. ‘As you move further into the seating area, your angle changes and the panels make a more solid screen,’ Helena explains. The bold paint shade they chose for the feature wall completed the Sixties feel. ‘ I’d never have a monochrome home,’ says Helena. ‘Colour is just more interesting and uplifting.’
Paintings, posters and o$ beat % nds, gathered over the years, are displayed around the house, ensuring that it feels like a home rather than a mid- century museum. Helena has a collection of vintage Colombian bus route signs, which she tracked down in a depot in downtown Bogotá. ‘ The garage
boss couldn’t see why I’d want them, but he was open to my offer,’ she says. The set of vintage Russian posters in the kitchen turned up in the lo" of their previous home. ‘ They’re from a series of 32,’ explains Helena. ‘ The owner travelled a lot in Russia. Maybe he took his favourites, but we love these as they are less well known.’
A huge 1909 map of Great Britain hangs in the dining area. Bizarrely, it once hung in Hernando’s primary school in 1970s Colombia. His brother went on to become a teacher at their old school and, when the map was # nally deemed obsolete, he rolled it up and sent it to Hernando in London. A # nal item that feels particularly personal is tucked away in a frame in the corner. It displays two sheets ripped from a reporter’s notebook. When Hernando was just starting out in newspapers, he attended a workshop by Gabriel García Márquez, set up to encourage new journalism in Latin America. ‘On the last day, I plucked up the courage to ask Márquez for some advice,’ remembers Hernando. ‘He invited me to lunch – which continued into the night. Those pages are his scribbled list of the literary classics every aspiring writer should read.’
With personal collections at every turn, this is a home with a # ne design heritage. ‘ We decorated this house in a way that is sympathetic to its era,’ says Helena. ‘But I also wanted to add touches that make it our own home.’