{"id":187018,"date":"2021-08-26T14:32:08","date_gmt":"2021-08-26T18:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interiordesign.net\/?post_type=id_project&p=187018"},"modified":"2022-11-14T12:36:50","modified_gmt":"2022-11-14T17:36:50","slug":"mat-barnes-references-gen-x-pop-culture-in-his-london-home","status":"publish","type":"id_project","link":"https:\/\/interiordesign.net\/projects\/mat-barnes-references-gen-x-pop-culture-in-his-london-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Mat Barnes References Gen X Pop Culture in His London Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\"Recycled-plastic-composite
Recycled-plastic-composite cabinet fronts in alternating colors introduce \na vertical note to the otherwise horizontal kitchen.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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August 26, 2021<\/p>\n\n\n

Words:\u00a0<\/span>Georgina McWhirter<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photography:\u00a0<\/span>Jim Stephenson<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Mat Barnes References Gen X Pop Culture in His London Home<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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The unassuming semidetached in Sydenham, a verdant district in southeast London, had sat empty for six long years before Mat Barnes, founder of Shoreditch architecture studio CAN<\/a>, got his hands on it. The two-story Edwardian brick house leaked and lacked heating\u2014and that was before part of the ceiling caved in. Still, the Welsh-born talent knew the home could be something special.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barnes founded CAN in 2016 but the firm\u2019s origins date to the art and design foundation year he took in 2005 to gain admission to the University of Nottingham, a period that exposed him to animation, fashion, and illustration. \u201cThat became the basis of CAN\u201d\u2014an acronym for critical architecture network\u2014\u201cwhich is all about bringing different aspects of the creative world into the discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Barnes
Barnes punched through the house\u2019s rear wall, leaving the fragmented brick exposed, to add a new skylit living room.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Prior to opening his own studio, Barnes worked for a time at Paul Archer Design<\/a>, a high-end residential practice known for its glass-box modernism. \u201cCAN is something of a reaction against that,\u201d he continues. \u201cAt some point in the nineties, the gallery aesthetic leached into people\u2019s homes, and everything became a bland white box: You wouldn\u2019t know who lived there or what they liked.\u201d In contrast, Barnes encourages his clients to tell all, from what music they love to what food they prefer, and feeds the sum into their project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For this house, the client was Barnes himself, plus wife Laura Dubeck and their two toddlers. To suit family living, he rearranged the upstairs bedrooms, accessed via a newly skylit stair, and added bathrooms so the home is now a four-bed, two-bath. He also opened up the ground floor, leaving only the front parlor, now a lounge, intact. He punched through the brick rear wall to the backyard\u2014pow!<\/em>\u2014leaving the edges ragged, to add a glass-enclosed extension that became the new living room. The busted portal is framed by twin poles and a horizontal steel I beam, a reference to a scene in Danny Boyle\u2019s seminal 1996 film Trainspotting<\/em> in which a collapsing masonry wall is upheld by steel props in the squatters\u2019 digs. \u201cI was hunting for the archetypal derelict wall,\u201d Barnes says of his source material. \u201cI wanted to preserve the memory of the old building and the construction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n