'This house has been in my head for 20 years,' says Angad Paul as he takes us on a tour of his new London home. 'I wanted to create a Case Study House in an urban context,' he says referring to the pioneering mid-20th century hilltop American Case Study Houses that sought to bring modernism and functionality to the masses.
Paul is chief executive of Caparo manufacturing group, and also chairman and co-founder of British design company Established & Sons; his new three-storey penthouse conversion is on top of Ambika House, a late-1950s block in tree-lined Portland Place.
Paul grew up in the building, named after a sister who died of leukaemia before he was born, and as a young bachelor, he relocated to the caretaker's flat on the roof.
The roof used to be 'a mess of tiny brick buildings that mainly housed water tanks and lift motor rooms' according to Matt Yeoman, founding partner and director of the East London-based architectural practice Buckley Gray Yeoman that designed the house. The fact that Paul wanted the space converted into a home for his solicitor wife and young family says a lot about how much this building, this part of London, and the astounding views mean to him.
Paul was clear from the start that it had to be a home, rather than a showpiece, so he chose materials for their durability and warmth; he didn't want the space to look like an art gallery.
This rationale explains the use of a thin super-compressed industrial ceramic tile on most of the floors, instead of the original idea of Portland stone ('a very subtle detail that doesn't make it feel like a mansion,' says Yeoman), reclaimed yarrow in the living room floor ('I really want it to crack and look worn,' says Paul) and Corian in the family bathrooms. On the walls, he chose an almost luminescent polished plaster for what he calls its 'tactile quality'; for the skirting and door panels, he used Corten steel.