A few years ago, David Kohn, who founded David Kohn Architects (DKA) in London in 2007, drew up a list for his office—which currently numbers 17 designers—of 10 points in regard to architecture. As enumerated by the 45-year-old Kohn—who got his architecture degree at Cambridge and worked for the art-world favorite Caruso St. John Architects before going out on his own—they describe a design philosophy that is refreshingly humanistic. For instance, his point No. 3, “Comfort,” tells us, “Architecture should be so comfortable as to allow people to focus entirely on life,” while No. 5, “Craft,” states, “The more pleasure had in making architecture, the more pleasure there is to be taken from using it.”
As promised, DKA’s completed buildings and interiors—from contemporary art galleries and exhibition spaces to residential projects—are as pleasing as they are precise. They have no signature “look,” instead taking their cues from program and place. The long, narrow form of Stable Acre, a weekend house in the English county of Norfolk, conforms to the footprint of the 19th-century stable that once stood on the site. The building’s emphasis on natural light and connection to the outdoors makes its minimalist contours and restrained palette of brick, wood, glass, and corrugated metal feel luxurious. A more exuberant color scheme—a nod to the saturated tones of Adolf Loos’s Villa Müller, says Kohn—prevails at the Sanderson House, an addition to the garden side of a Victorian home in London. In Barcelona, a two-story apartment was turned into a layered, loftlike volume, and its colorful encaustic floor tiles (by a maker Antoni Gaudí used) are painted with triangles that echo the shape of the building and the adjacent Plaça de George Orwell.
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