As architecture enthusiasts, property buffs and the plain curious take a tour of Ruth Somerfield’s European modernist-style home in south London next weekend, she will be popping around the corner to poke around a neighbour’s house. It can only mean one thing: Open House Festival is back.
The largest free festival of its kind in the world returns for its 21st year, boasting more than 700 open days and events, providing rare access into public sites and private homes that are usually just that — private.
Of course if you’re an avid snooper it’ll already be blocked out in your diary. Running from September 14-22, this year’s programme includes new tours of the freshly renovated, Grade II-listed Walworth Town Hall, and The Mission Building in Limehouse.
It’s also one of the few occasions to check out landmarks such as Temple Bar and tour the Royal Courts of Justice for free.
“It’s a great opportunity to see what’s behind the front door of so many places that you pass by or that, like my house, are completely tucked away in a tiny backstreet somewhere,” says first-time host Somerfield, a cultural strategist and semiotician. In 2021, she bought a single-storey, glass-box house built in 1979 in Camberwell off The Modern House. It is nestled in a row of garages and is one of its kind, but Somerfield inherited a singular floorplan and a serious condensation problem.
After enlisting Quinn Architects to design a first-floor extension and bring the property into the 21st century, the house is now double the size — and bone-dry. The studio’s director and project architect will be leading the tours (tickets for which have been snapped up) as Somerfield and her family duck out of the way.
“I think we’re all naturally quite nosy, aren’t we? But it also opens people’s minds to new ways of looking at things and living,” she says. That’s a view backed up by the organiser, who claims that 90 per cent of those visiting events said the experience affected them, whether through researching ideas around good design or simply returning to a building or area.
While Open House unlocks civic gems, livery halls and even backyard air-raid shelters, there is unbridled appetite among design-conscious Londoners to discover extraordinary homes like Somerfield’s, behind often unassuming façades. This year there will undoubtedly be queues to see Khan Bonshek’s Two-Up Two Down House, an imaginative reworking of a mid-terrace in Maryland, east London; and Surman Weston’s self-build Peckham House, with its distinctive “hit-and-miss” brickwork.
As a practising architect, what better way to show off your work? Christian Brailey will be welcoming visitors to his award-winning garden flat in Muswell Hill for the third consecutive year. The home, which he shares with his landscape architect wife Faye Johnson, is unique thanks to its striking, wood-clad box to the rear which was prefabricated in a workshop in Devon and then assembled on site.
Three years since it was completed, the couple are reaping the benefits of clean air from the mechanical ventilation, as well as the lack of draughts, cold spots and damp that could easily plague an Edwardian-era property.
“It’s wonderful to be able to explain that in person, as all the sustainable elements that were baked into the design,” Brailey says of the breathable lime plaster and internal insulation. “Because of the amount of research and development we did, it’s quite a technologically advanced project,” adds the architect, who has shared his insights with hundreds of strangers (literally, 700 people dropped by in 2023).
Naturally, Johnson leads the tours outside, while her husband explains the intentionally limited yet calming palette of Canadian Douglas fir, polished concrete and the aforementioned lime plaster to enraptured audiences. “As a small architecture practice, it’s great to feel part of something bigger,” he muses. The sessions have led to commissions both locally and further afield for both Brailey and Johnson.
Also returning to the roster for a third year is Natasha Landers, an interior designer, who has lived in her terraced house in Walthamstow for 24 years. Her home features arresting colour combinations and is regularly used as a location house for adverts and documentaries, so she is more than used to people padding in and out.
“I’m keen to show that you can have modern interiors and decor which work in collaboration with traditional Victorian architecture,” she explains.
Devoid of any original features (or heating for that matter), Landers has gradually reinstated the ornate cornicing and embarked on the kitchen extension eight years ago. She largely fields questions about the inspiration for her bold decor style and colour-block walls, but there are often detailed queries from those about to undertake their own building projects.
In the age of Instagram reels whittling a side return extension down to 40 seconds of footage, Landers is keen to impress that creating a home is a marathon, not a sprint. “When I first moved in, I bought a roll-top bath for £50 and it stayed at one end of my living room for two years until I could afford to extend the small bathroom upstairs. I think that bit of reality helps people who are thinking of renovating,” she says. Being a self-confessed “extroverted social butterfly” also helps interactions.
This year, Landers is trying something different by exhibiting the works of Black artists. “I’m known for collecting Black portraiture and to me it’s important to have visuals around my home that represent me, so I’ve asked two artists to curate the space,” she says.
Visitors will be able to buy the works on display by London-based fine artist Stephen Anthony David and sculptor and creator Donald Baugh. Landers thinks this approach will help people visualise what the art could look like in their own homes: “It allows the potential collector to see it in situ rather than in a gallery in a way that doesn’t feel contrived.”
And now for a little erm, housekeeping. The full Open House schedule can be viewed online and is a mix of pre-booked tours and drop-in sessions. For the latter, be prepared to wait, so pack some snacks and wear comfortable shoes. Most venues will have a few rules; Landers asks visitors to remove their shoes and carry them (her kitchen’s canary-yellow rubber floor and high heels don’t mix). Areas which are out of bounds should be respected — Launders hosts tours of the ground floor and garden only.
And when the time’s up, don’t hang around. “The thing about my house is that it has a warmth that people don’t want to leave,” laughs Landers. Plan your itinerary and enjoy the permitted snooping. As Somerfield says: “It’s a bit like having a golden ticket.”
