INSPIRING HOMES
Inspired by a road trip across the US, an architectural designer built a stunning home in the English countryside that combines local materials with a Californian spirit – aperfect space to indulge his love of indoor/outdoor living and mid-century design
KITCHEN/DINER
There’s a Mad Men feel in this open-plan space, which retains a feeling of warmth thanks to the dominance of wood on the kitchen units and flint stonework on the walls. Beneath the dining table, a rug blends beautifully with the mottled concrete floor while a row of vintage Chelsea glass pendant lights helps to separate the kitchen from the dining area. Rug, Rugs & Co. Glass pendant lights, Peter Rodd & Richard Stevens. Artwork, Andy Warhol Marilyn Monroe
11.24 screenprint for Sunday B Morning
KITCHEN
This page and opposite, left Bringing a retro feel, a dropped down wood-panelled ceiling features a futuristic-looking extractor, while shapely plastic bar stools and 1960s ceramics continue the mid-century theme. Spoon bar stools, Kartell
DINING AREA
Opposite, far right A collection of ceramics sits on the sideboard, above which an oil on board artwork, Reclining Nude by S Safdar Ali, has been hung on the flint wall
HOME PROFILE
Olu Abimbola, an interior architect and designer, his wife Lisa, a gardener, plus dog Charlie
A three-bedroom self-build completed in 2018, in the village of Clanfield, Hampshire
Should you take a walk in the east Hampshire countryside and stumble across Olu and Lisa Abimbola’s self-built home, you’d be forgiven for doing a double take. Because while its knapped-flint exterior anchors it to the local landscape, the crisp finish, generous glazing and terraced garden teeming with ornamental grasses give it a distinctly Californian flavour. And this is not by accident: ‘Before we bought the plot, we went on a road trip from San Francisco down to Palm Springs,’ says Olu. ‘It was epic. The architecture was very inspiring – the clean lines and the blurring of the boundary between inside and out – and that’s what I kept in mind with the design of our place.’
An interior architectural designer, Olu hasn’t always inhabited the world of property and building. It was the financial crash of 2008 that inspired him, then a city trader, to re-evaluate his life and exchange stocks and shares for paint colours and fabric swatches, enrolling on a two-year full-time course in interior design at South Thames College. In doing so, he was also revisiting his thwarted teenage ambition to work in architecture. He went on to work in studios, including Kelly Hoppen’s and, in 2013, started accepting his own clients.
Three years later, he took on his most ambiti
