New Spaces 09 EN

Vegetables on the menu As a nutritional consultant, Vicki Lee knows the value of healthy food. Thanks to the big refrigerator and the pantry, fresh produce is always available in the house. Elegant homes, precisely trimmed hedges, a High Street with fashionable boutiques and cafés — the suburb of Highgate in northwest London is an exclusive neighbourhood. A normal weekday for the Lee family, who live here in a Georgian villa, begins at 7 a.m. Vicki, the lady of the house, prepares a breakfast of fresh fruit, porridge and scrambled eggs. When the rest of the family sits down at the kitchen table shortly after seven, the air is fragrant with the aromas of coff ee and hot chocolate. Her husband David is a lawyer, her son Barnaby is nine and her daughter Jemima is six. They talk about school or the weather; both are always topics of great interest. A half-hour later the house is quiet again. Barnaby and Jemima have been driven to school in the neighbouring suburb of Hampstead by the au pair. Mr. Lee jogs the fi ve miles to his job in the City every morning. And Mrs. Lee drinks another leisurely cup of coff ee before sitting down at the desk in her study. Like her husband, she too is a lawyer, but at the moment she’s training to become a nutritional consultant. “That fi ts in better with our family life, because the children are still young,” she says. “This allows me to have a more fl exible schedule.” In her grey trousers and fi ne cashmere jumper with a matching scarf — all in carefully coordinated colours — Mrs. Lee harmonises perfectly with the minimalistic design of the slate-grey kitchen and its Gaggenau appliances. The added-on room housing the kitchen, which was planned by Ramón Casadó of bulthaup, Mayfair, is very spacious and fl ooded with light. There’s an open passageway to the adjacent reading and TV room. In front of it stands a huge, inviting walnut dining table. The wall toward the garden is completely made of glass and off ers sweeping views of the lawn, the fl owering trees and the herb garden. “Everything here is so open and communicative,” says Mrs. Lee. “Ever since we moved in, the kitchen has gradually become the centre of our life. And that has changed everything. It’s just so much fun to cook and eat our meals here. Both of these activities are enjoyable, and they belong together — for me, at any rate.” The house, which was built in the early 18th century, is known as the “Apothecary” because many generations of doctors have lived here over the years. The family has been living in the house since 2006. There are fi ve bedrooms and a lodger fl at for house staff , which makes it ideal for a family that enjoys entertaining and needs a lot of space for the children’s games. Nonetheless, when they moved in, the house urgently needed an interior facelift. The Lees knew exactly what they wanted: a simple and hospitable home “ It doesn’t take a lot of skill to cook from scratch. All you need is a good recipe, the best ingredients — and of course the right kind of oven.” where they could live very privately but also entertain guests on a large scale. “Of course we realised that one shouldn’t do too much remodelling of a Georgian house,” says Mrs. Lee. “We love the classic proportions and lines of this period, and we were very careful when we made any changes. Whatever we did, we wanted to preserve the personality of the house.” The Lees have certainly succeeded. The classic layout of the rooms has been preserved: the family room and the dining room, as well as the studies, are on the ground fl oor; one storey higher is the elegant salon, and the bedrooms are also located in the higher storeys. However, the strong colours that originally covered the walls have been replaced by subtly nuanced shades ranging from beige to brown. “It’s modern, but not too modern,” says Vicki Lee as she opens the door to the salon on the fi rst fl oor. This is an attractive room with parquet fl ooring, thick beigecoloured carpets, an open fi replace and comfortable armchairs.

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