The Househunter

Can you tell what someone’s house is like from the way they dress and speak? Have you ever met someone at work, at a party, at a friend’s house and subsequently been invited to their home to find something completely different from what you expected? Or have you been right?

I find this completely fascinating as a subject, and if my house wasn’t so familiar to everyone I would love to ask them how they think my house would be decorated from the way I am. It’s a game I often play on the bus or on trains. Looking at people and imagining what their houses are like. Of course, it’s a game with no result because I can’t ever ask them, but still, that doesn’t stop me playing.

And it’s a game that is particularly appropriate here because (adopts David Frost voice – or Keith Lemon if you’re young) “Who lives in a house like this? We’ll find out as we go through the keyhole.”

Only we won’t quite as the owner of this house is dead, but that’s sort of the point. If you haven’t guessed (or haven’t seen it online this week) this belongs to the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen who bought most of the building before he died in 2010 and planned to turn it back into a single dwelling.

Now the top floors have been refurbished as a luxury penthouse which is on the market for, ahem, £8.5m. Yes, you read that right *sighs*. But the question is – does this scream McQueen at you?

He was a hugely influential designer whose skull motifs and builders’ bum trousers came to define an era. He liked to shock at his fashion shows and one of his defining (and brilliant) moments was when he sent double amputee Aimee Mullins, a Paralympian, down the catwalk wearing hand carved legs.

But some of his most memorable clothes involved amazing silhouettes – the folding wooden skirt for example – which is why I’m not sure that this house is very McQueen.

Sure there are skull motifs and a mirrored catwalk running through the apartment but it all feels a little muted and tasteful to me. What do you think? I think McQueen would have had something more distinctive less boringly luxe.

Next up a house that isn’t for sale but is also in the news this week. It’s the house of the designer Dieter Rams, which was yesterday listed by the Hessen office for the preservation of historical monuments and will be kept as a manifestation of his philosophy for good design.

He was born in 1932 and has lived in the house since 1971. According to Vitsoe, who announced the listing yesterday, the modest bungalow is on the Roter Hang estate, parts of which were originally designed for Braun employees. Rams bought a plot of land on the estate and worked with an architect to create this house.

He wrote: “My house.. is part of a concentrated housing development that I helped to plan. The house is built and furnished to my own design. It goes without saying that we live with Vitsoe furniture systems.

“Firstly, because I have only ever designed furniture that I myself would like to have and secondly to get to know them during daily use to better recognise where they might be improved or developed further.”

He went on to say: “In a world that is filling up at a disconcerting pace, that is destructively loud and visually confusing, design has the task in my view to be quiet, to help generate a level of calm that helps people to come to themselves.”

Later, in 1976, he gave a speech in New York asserting his commitment to responsible design and saying: “I imagine our current situation will cause future generations to shudder at the thoughtlessness in the way in which we fill our homes, our cities and our landscape with a chaos of assorted junk.”

You can read more about Rams on the Vitsoe website and I hope you have enjoyed looking at these two houses. Both so very different. Both belonging to pioneers in their fields.