Resident Revolution

London’s new roster of rental buildings can be hard to categorise. Taking cues from hospitality as well as residential design – with a flavour of the best co-working spaces, too, for home-workers – their substantial communal facilities can make them feel more like you’re living in a swish hotel. For The Sessile in Tottenham, north London, developer Way of Life asked Linda Boronkay Design Studio (LBDS) to create an inviting scheme that would support this new age of multifunctional living.

“What I loved about this assignment is that our clients – on the contrary to most developers – were looking for a design with a strong point of view,” says Boronkay. “They weren’t afraid not to please everyone. It opened up the opportunity for us to create spaces with their own unique design language, so as you navigate through them, each room has its own personality.”

Boronkay is Soho House’s former design director and Way of Life is hoping that some of that coveted aesthetic – bold, layered interiors that are not afraid of pattern and colour, carefully chosen art and objects – will rub off on The Sessile. There are 310 apartments, from studios to three-bedroom homes, topped by a plant-filled 10th-floor ‘orangery’ with outdoor terraces. There’s also a gym and yoga studio, vinyl room and private dining area and kitchen.

“We knew our future clients would be design savvy, well-travelled, curious minds, looking for a place to live that caters to their modern lifestyle with plenty of communal spaces that support community-building around different activities,” says Boronkay. “So we approached the assignment from how we would start on a hospitality project: we created a series of spaces that you would normally find in your fancy members’ club, but brought it to your doorstep.”

LBDS has created a number of bespoke pieces that give The Sessile a feeling of creative originality, so that you’re not just stepping into another lookalike rental block. The custom-designed rugs have been made by Floor Story, while bespoke furniture includes the large handsome dining table in the private dining room and the Sogni Di Cristallo light above it. The table is surrounded by curved walnut dining chairs by Six The Residence.

The yoga studio, entered through stained-glass doors in a multicoloured checkerboard pattern, feels calmer still. With flexibility an important part of the brief, the studio has been designed so that it can also turn into a screening room, event space or gallery; elsewhere, drapery can “allow residents to instantly change the function or ambiance of a room…people can shape them depending on how they want to use them,” says Boronkay. And in the vinyl room, the large work table (hung overhead with neon artwork) can also become a ping-pong table, for those moments when the spreadsheets get a bit much.

The studio’s knowledge of customer experience – rather than simply creating something homely, although that aspect is here too – comes to the fore in this project. Nurturing relationships and communality is given equal billing to people’s private time spent within the apartments, and every space makes you want to linger and explore. “Sessile is a blend of history, nature and creativity, designed to foster community, inspiration, and a sense of home for its residents,” says Boronkay.