Living with Timber

Living with Timber is a minimalist residence located in London, United Kingdom, designed by EBBA. This 2025 renovation for director Benni Allan demonstrates how residential projects can function as testing ground for design solutions and ideas often abandoned during typical client-driven processes. The apartment conceived as live-come-showspace creates home as place to live around constantly changing objects – both collected pieces and works from friends and collaborators – displayed in gallery-like setting offering opportunity continuing idea development and exploring interaction with lived-in objects.

The experimental quality exemplifies through douglas fir use throughout including walls, floors, and joinery with installation, testing, and finishing carried out investigating how best using cost-effective materials ensuring longevity. This material research approach demonstrates how architect-occupied projects can serve as laboratories testing construction techniques and finish applications before deploying in client commissions where experimentation carries greater risk. Combined with found materials, project parts employ reclaimed elements like mahogany parquet taken from EBBA mews project otherwise discarded, demonstrating circular material use reducing waste while adding historical layers to new construction.

Large open-plan kitchen and living arrangement conceals all kitchen workings behind large cupboards forming furniture piece also addressing sharp angle to original building helping provide ample storage and retain calmness brought by raw plaster surfaces and warm timber. This consolidated service strategy demonstrates how single millwork element can resolve multiple spatial challenges including irregular geometry, storage requirements, and visual order within open-plan configurations where exposed kitchen equipment might compromise aesthetic coherence.

Main bedroom opens to kitchen through full-height sliding door where borrowed light fills space, demonstrating flexible spatial relationships enabling privacy when required while maximizing natural light distribution when bedroom remains unoccupied during daytime hours. Study connected from corridor doubles as making place often filled with other discarded materials soon becoming more experiments, positioning the apartment not just as residence but active workspace supporting ongoing design research and prototyping activities.

The project offers chance making new objects and items part of Benni’s furniture and music interests with stacked coffee table acting as centerpiece and part of new collection the studio develops. One-of-a-kind douglas fir speaker designed with Friendly Pressure and Our Department represents key addition completing home for now, demonstrating how architect-occupied residences can showcase emerging furniture collections while serving as platforms for collaborative design projects with complementary practitioners.

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