Refined furnishings, eye-catching accents and extravagant proportions reign supreme at the interior-architect Dara Huang’s Chelsea home
IT’S EASY TO SEE WHY IAN FLEMING CHOSE Wellington Square in Chelsea as the location of James Bond’s London pied-à-terre. This suitably stylish address is tucked away from the bustle of King’s Road, lined with stucco houses and plane-trees, which have been carefully manicured so that sunlight can stream in through the rows of sash windows. AA Milne also wrote his romance tales from number eight, just a few doors down from where the interior-architect and furniture designer Dara Huang moved in, at the end of September last year.
She came across the property online and was immediately drawn to its monochrome palette and open living spaces. Built in the 1850s, the home is set over five floors with a glass lift at its centre, and includes a glorious roof terrace with views across the communal gardens. The rooms are spacious with high ceilings, worn white-washed floorboards and original cornicing throughout. It provided the perfect base for Huang to incorporate her signature sleek but cosy aesthetic, with luxurious textiles in warm colours, vast mirrors covering entire walls to cleverly magnify spaces, and sculptural pieces that play with scale. Huang’s architectural background is evident in the clever configuration of the rooms, where the furniture is carefully arranged to promote easy conversation.
Born in Florida, Huang studied at Harvard University before moving to Switzerland to take a role at the leading architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron, where she worked on structures including Tate Modern and New York’s Jenga Tower.
But reaching such career heights in her twenties left her eager for a challenge. ‘I was working at the best office in the world, and I thought, “Where do you go from there?”’ she says. The answer, it turned out, was London, where in 2013 she established her own architecture and interior-design practice, Design Haus Liberty, at the age of 29.
‘I was very ambitious. Interiors was something I taught myself when I was trying to follow demand. In London, many of the buildings we were working on were listed, so it was difficult to change their structure – but it was much easier to do the inside.’ It didn’t take long for her to build up an impressive portfolio of clients, from LVMH to Four Seasons and Nihi Sumba in Indonesia, the celebrity-favour
