A modernist California-inspired musicians’ home transplanted to north London

All the best artistic collaborations begin with a conversation in a pub. Or, at least, many do – not least the fruitful working relationship (and later, friendship) between interior designer Louis Hagen Hall and a musician couple, his clients Rae Morris and Benjamin Garrett, known as Fryars. After coming across Louis’ debut project on The Modern House, the duo dropped him a message on Instagram asking if he’d be interested in working on the two-bedroom house they owned in London’s Primrose Hill. Dating to the second half of the 20th century, the building had been split into three rental units and decorated unsympathetically; after a look round, the three decamped to the pub “for a few hours”, Louis recalls, and bonded over an interest in postwar architects like John Lautner and Richard Neutra. “We had a lot in common. In that sense, it was a really good process. We were on the same page from the beginning.”

The result of the conversation is a hyper-chic, 1970s-inflected home spread over three floors that draws on inspiration from those bungalows in the hilly Laurel Canyon neighbourhood above Los Angeles where the likes of Cass Elliot, Neil Young and Jackson Browne lived during rock and roll’s most mythologising era – and one which is perfectly set up for the domestic and professional needs of its inhabitants.

In enlisting Louis’s eponymous design practice, Studio Hagen Hall, Ben and Rae chose wisely. “All my favourite architects and designers were big in the 60s and 1970s in Los Angeles,” he says, citing design couple Charles and Ray Eames (of chair fame), as creative influences, as well as the Neutra VDL house, built by Richard Neutra in the 1930s as a light, airy place to live and work in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake. There was a personal connection to 20th-century LA, too: “Part of the brief was that they had been living in Laurel Canyon together when they were working on one of Rae’s albums. They loved that era.” And finally, there was one more major point to the brief: they needed a working recording studio. “They’re a creative power couple; they work on each other’s projects all the time. Ben writes with Rae and produces her albums, and Rae sings on Ben’s albums. They are very involved.”

The specific nature of the house meant that getting the floorplan right was essential from the beginning. And Louis had his work cut out. “It was a nightmare,” he says. The semi-retired previous owner had divided the house into three with little regard for spatial integrity and rented out each unit separately. “It was three separate flats, and it was just completely messed up. There was nothing really left of any kind of original detail.”

Luckily, though, the nature of the building meant that the internal walls were rarely load-bearing – though not a span house as such, there were “just two party walls, and the roof structurally spans over the whole thing. None of the interior walls are really doing anything, so we stripped it right back.” Louis remodelled the staircase, turning their lower steps onto a right angle to maximise the main living space, and he built-in all the furniture with a strong emphasis on storage. In the kitchen, for example, a hidden table that can be pulled out from under the countertop, which was inspired by “exquisite, mid-century sailboat joinery” Louis saw in his Norwegian aunt’s Swan sailing boat. Elsewhere, conversations around creating a 1970s-style conversation pit led to a dedicated, relaxed seating area – once again, with extensive storage space underneath each seat.