From the archive: a London flat packed with clever small space ideas (2013)

It's a conventional enough layout, but this particular London flat is a cross between a cabinet of curiosities and a box of brilliant, space-saving tricks. The curiosities are mainly thanks to Simon, a publisher, who has a thing for stuffed birds and animals;Jane shows me a slightly wonky armadillo that she brought back for Simon from Texas, whose tail rather suffered in transit. Books, as you'd imagine, are much in evidence too, and it's in the design of the bookshelves that Jane's genius first becomes apparent. The large set in the dining room incorporates jib doors that open into Jane's office, while another set conceals a little desk and set of shelves for Simon. The CD shelves in the sitting room, for their part, clip back into place to form the entrance to the kitchen. My favourite innovation, though, is the way that a picture of Jane's mother by the painter Bryan Organ - his first portrait -slides aside on hidden runners, enabling another set of bookshelves to open and give access to a hidden cupboard behind.

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The sitting and dining rooms are full of fur­ther space-saving devices. The window seats lift to reveal storage space beneath, and the flat-screen television rises, at the touch of a button, from the base of the display cabinet that divides the sitting room from the dining room. 'This was originally one long room,' explains Jane, 'and I had to convince Simon and Henry that dividing it up like this wouldn't make it feel smaller. We'd never really used the space in the middle anyway, and though they took a bit of convincing, they're totally converted.' Even the box-bench seats on either side of the dining table turn out to have a second function: they're hollow, with run­ners inside from which hang suspension files for Jane and Simon's paperwork.

The all-white kitchen makes good use of a relatively narrow space. Curved shelves and cupboards round off awkward corners, and the drop-down kitchen table - MDF sprayed to a chip-proof white at a car-repair shop - is securely clamped to the radiator in the win­dow. Ample cupboard and wardrobe space is also a feature of the main bedroom down the corridor, which has a feeling of spaciousness and calm despite its relatively small size. Painted in soft off-white, with a simple pan­elled motif repeated on each wall, it has its own smart little en-suite bathroom, whose double doors - mirror-faced on the inside - and slightly higher floor give it an extra touch of glamour (the floor conceals the plumbing). Jane's favourite element, though, is the mirror­-glass dressing table, which fits neatly into the window- 'I'd wanted one for years,' she says.

The dining-room bookshelves open to reveal Jane's study.

Sarah Hogan

A door at the far end of the corridor, which is lined with family photographs, leads to Henry's self-contained domain, which has a shower room and an L-shape study­-cum-bedroom. Filling the short arm of the L, tucked behind the shower room, is a stepped-up platform bed with its own little window. By now, I'm hardly surprised when Jane shows me how the bed swings up, revealing storage for sheets and duvet covers in a cavity underneath.

Jane studied at the Architectural Associa­tion, but fell into interior design almost by accident. Her first projects were kitchens, of the rather grand variety; at Hatfield House, Madresfield and Burghley her designs had to be fitted into the Grade I-listed interiors. Some time after that people started asking her to look at other rooms as well.Jane's projects range from a house designed as a series of pavilions on Mustique and a beach house in Lombok, to the riad-style house she designed with her mother, Sarah, and her mother's partner, Tommy, on the edge of Marrakesh. 'We both hate glaring blue swimming pools,' she says, 'so I came up with the idea of lining hers with pale pink plaster. It's lovely, like swimming in rose water.' More recently she has also designed a couple of restaurants: Machiavelli in Covent Garden and Manico­mio in Chelsea.

I'm so impressed by her flat I tell her that if I could afford it I'd ask her to redesign my own. 'No, really!' she exclaims, as she helps me on with my coat. But I'm really not joking: I would.