This a phenomenal space. It’s a converted commercial space with 18 foot ceilings with an industrial feel at roomy 2550 square feet. It’s a very open floor plan with two bathrooms. It’s furnished with vintage furniture and art.

The kitchen is commercial grade with a six burner Imperial Stove and Viking Hood. I have everything you might need to cook up a storm. There is a barbecue and Traeger pellet stove if you want to cook outdoors.

One bedroom is upstairs with a king bed. The bathroom upstairs has a large steam shower that sits at least two if you want to get cozy. The bedroom downstairs has a queen bed. The bathroom downstairs has a massive concrete tub and shower that fits a small village.

The team at Sadie Snelson Architects envisioned an open-plan living room to accentuate the full potential of the warehouse’s space. Dividing walls were removed and parts of the floor were taken away to create double-height areas that maximise light. A new mezzanine floor was added with a steel balustrade and folded steel staircase.

Materials used throughout the property are intended to complement its industrial nature. Walls are left unpainted to expose the plaster finish, and structural I-beams are left exposed. The architects designed the concrete kitchen that the client cast himself. 

Architect:  Sadie Architects
Photos:  Rory Gardiner

Lounge area

One of the first things you will notice when walking into the lounge is a circular sofa, with eleven uniquely-designed compartments. Different textures, fabrics and colors have been used to create a focal point in the room, which will likely initiate conversation when guests visit the property. Modular sofas also feature in a seating area positioned in front of a large television, and cushions of different sizes and shape adjourn the sofa, which lie in bold contrast to the industrial feel of the rest of the room. However, these elements were already present in the property before the apartment was renovated – the concrete ceiling and wooden floor were discovered by accident when a 200-pound metal door was removed. Contemporary canvas art brightens up the far wall, adding a splash of color and style to the apartment, while mirrors line the ceilings, helping to create a feeling of more space.

Dining area

One of the most impressive features of the apartment is the dining table, which has been renovated and then mounted onto a rough oak worktop. In fact, many interior design elements were made according to the original sketches of the designer. The original objective was to create a unique space with an unusual atmosphere, with many echoes of the classic style of the famous motorcycle brand Harley Davidson. The dining area is a warm and welcoming space ideal for entertaining guests.

Other elements

Other design elements in the home include an original Harley Davidson motorcycle, a gramophone, and two contemporary chandeliers which illuminate the oak table. The kitchen metal worktop has been constructed onto carved food which spells out “eat”, with two wooden chairs on either side. This space is ideal when eating breakfast or grabbing a quick meal. In the bathroom, plenty of gold has been used, whilst floral prints and rustic charm are the design styles used in the bedroom. Contemporary framed art adjourn the hallway walls, which still contain many original elements of the building. As there is no natural light in these hallways, spotlights are used to illuminate the space.

Two decades ago, Queen Elizabeth Street Loft was down and out, a warehouse all but withered. But the owners had other ideas. From the dizzying brick walls to every nut-brown timber beam, this marvellous apartment is not as good as new, but better. Paired sofas and a professional pool table impress beneath the sitting room’s pitched ceiling, while a steel-clad kitchen and a coolly upcycled coffee table are honed and hewed.

Whether you skip to the mezzanine master bedroom, or scan the skies from the loungey balcony, here you can be sure yours is a story that ends happily.

Design for life

The owners are no strangers to restoring old buildings – they do it for a living. For all Queen Elizabeth Street Loft’s dereliction, they fell in love with its structure, and the rest is history.

Stroll across the tan wooden floor for a look at the woven lampshades and off-centre artwork, or spend untold hours in the charming twin armchairs. Stout timber beams span the ceiling, but there’s no lumber to be found in the coal-hued kitchen, with its blowtorch detailing and sleek worktops.

Linger at the pool table, or discover the melange of wood and brick that is the master bedroom. But before you slip deep into the modern four-poster, make time for a nightcap on the scenic balcony.

If you want, you can rent this loft too.

The loft has retained many of its original features with high ceilings, pitched roof and huge windows and 2 sleeping decks. Ideal for the creative types looking for a live/work base in the heart of Shoreditch.

Originally designed by Juan Carlos Quintana, a London-based fashion designer who combines Latin American flare with haut couture. He learned his trade from two Spanish masters who had formerly worked for the house of Balenciaga in Spain. When he launched his fashion label Quintana in London he needed a place to work and live. He found the solution in an unlikely place – a former canning factory in Shoreditch, on the southbank of the Thames River.

Before moving into his super-sized loft he had lived in a modest one-room apartment or bedsit in Chelsy. The difference could hardly be any greater – before, a small, cramped space, now a huge, two-storey loft in an erstwhile canning factory in London’s East End. Juan Carlos and Chris, a screenwriter friend, initially had to overcome a few difficulties in adapting. “We felt as if we were sleeping in a park or football field, ” says Chris, who felt lost in the vastness of the neo-Gothic building.

Shoreditch Loft

Juan Carlos, who comes from Guatemala, arrived in London in 2002, working first as a freelance fashion designer for Matthew Williamson, Jenny Packham and Michiko Koshino. As he had already had more than ten years of experience as a fashion designer in South and Latin America he finally plucked up the courage to head for Europe and set up his own label Quintana, which proved very successful when he held his first show in Paris in 2008.

Creativity at work generally translates in a kind of genius on every level of life. Clever ideas come quickly to Juan Carlos and his friend in their private sphere as well. For instance the problem of feeling lost in their loft was solved simply by setting up a protective tent in which the fashion designer and the screenwriter slept for their first year in the loft. It also had the advantage of lessening the pressure they felt to turn the former factory into a home from one day to the next. They took their time converting the industrial space and it paid off.

You can even rent it here: rent this loft

The building in Shoreditch where the loft is located

Original interior – 1

Original interior – 2

OK, in hindsight there should have been wheels on the ladder.

Steel is the kitchen’s main ingredient, cladding the nearly floor-to-ceiling cabinets, the massive island and even portions of the redwood structural posts. Its rawness fits well with the former early-1900s lithograph-warehouse setting and lends an edge that seems to permeate the entire project.

The original kitchen sat tucked underneath the loft seen on the left here; it was a dark and uneventful space. Bayon and the homeowner brought everything over to the double-height, brick-walled former living room, where large windows bring in lots of natural light. (The living room is now where the kitchen used to be.)

They wanted to get everything on the one wall, so the two brick columns basically were all they had to work with. Tall appliances, like the refrigerator, wine fridge and double stackedovens, took up most of the available space, so the upper cabinet “bridge” storage was left for the pantry and extra dishware. Given the height of the loft, though, the tall cabinets helped cut down visually on the void.

Though the homeowner isn’t an avid cook, he still wanted a working kitchen. In some places it’s just that style trumps function. There are kitchen standards of how far things should be apart, such as the sink in relation to the cooktop, Bayon says.

We broke a lot of rules and tried to find the balance of looking like an art installation but making a functional kitchen.

The homeowner didn’t want solid metal cabinets that would create a clanging racket every time he dropped a piece of silverware into a drawer or shut a cabinet. So Bayon’s firm designed and built wood cabinets, then had another company, Berlin, fabricate steel panels to cover everything.

All the steel still created heavy cabinets, and while earthquakes were an immediate concern, the team didn’t have confidence in the support that the old brick walls offered either. They brought in a structural engineer and decided to use vertical metal bars that connect the cabinets to the ceiling for additional support.

The island houses the sink,dishwasher and a pullout for garbage. There’s also a bank of drawers on one side and an open cubby on another for often-used dishware.
The homeowner had planned to keep the previous small-plank oak floors, but because the crew had to rip everything up to run plumbing to the island anyway, he decided to switch to concrete.

The island is 42 inches deep and acts as the main cutting and prep space. It’s topped with marble that has a warm wood tone.
Shades on magnetic rods can snap into place to conceal the lowest pane of window glass so people on the street can’t look in. Mechanical roller shades up top can close everything off to cut back on glare or create more privacy for the sleeping loft.

Bayon painted the window mullions dark to help focus eyes toward the views.

Pendants: Restoration Hardware; countertop: Fox Marble Silver Brown Wave; faucet: KWC Systema; sink: Julien Summum in Black Granite.

Outdoor Connection

The residence is transformed by a relocated mezzanine where a sunken interior court with a retractable glass roof connects to the planted green roof garden above. This gesture of subtracting volume from the interior brings the outdoors into the primary living zones. The roof, peeled back, showers the spaces with natural light. When open, ample air flow enters what was once a poorly ventilated and dark loft. By night, the court acts as an internal lantern illuminating the loft below.

Historic Dialogue

Embracing the building’s industrial past, a visual discourse between new and old is devised through insertions of modern materials along with restored or reclaimed materials from the loft. A custom steel stair repurposes timbers from the old roof joists as treads and landings. The multiple level residence is unified by a walnut fascia that serves as a conceptual datum.

Embracing the building’s industrial past, a visual discourse between new and old is devised through insertions of modern materials along with restored or reclaimed materials from the loft. A custom steel stair repurposes timbers from the old roof joists as treads and landings. The multiple level residence is unified by a walnut fascia that serves as a conceptual datum.

This loft of 170 m2 is located in a building built in Barcelona over a century ago, which was previously textile workshop. This space has kept most of the original structures and attractive unified space, all painted them white: wrought iron columns to ceiling originally black-and-run lengthwise environment, wooden beams, cut by a steel rail and the 4 meters mark open architecture.

Natural light, one of the key points of this house comes from a wall-hung windows, mostly original, ensuring that all day.