Down the rabbit hole with Irenie Cossey

*OntheSq by Irenie Studio Photo by Jim Stephenson*

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

Designer Irenie Cossey found an unloved Grade II Listed Neo Jacobean house on De Beauvoir Sq in London and inspired by Alice In Wonderland, created an oasis of charm, humour and surprising details.

Irenie commissioned artisans to follow her through the looking glass and respond to the house. This included collaborations with Rio Kobayashi, Flavia Brändle, Paul McCormack, Tomoyo Tsurumi, Kasia Kemper, Michael Murphy, The Tweed Project, and J Hill’s Standard.

We asked her how she did it and why.

THE LAB MAG
Let’s start at the beginning. How did you find the house on De Beauvoir Square?

IRENIE COSSEY
I came across the property a year before I bought it. It was a derelict 1840s Neo-Jacobian house. And I walked away from it because it was in such disarray. I was still searching for that entire year, and the agent said, would you go back and have another look? And I said, yeah, I guess so because I'm running out of options here. And I fell in love with the shadows.

There was something about having nine spaces that could become eleven or twelve. I thought this is fun. There's a lot of little boxes that can make up the whole story.

So, I went for it. A rotten house with great shadows. The shadows disappeared, and we got to work.

Irenie Cossey at OntheSq before transformation. Photo by Ellen Christina Hancock

THE LAB MAG
Can you give us some personal history, how did you become you?

IRENIE COSSEY
I was born in Ireland. After finishing school, I learnt design at the Institute of Technology, where I studied spatial, exhibition, set and products, which meant I was neither here nor there. Someone said to do architecture, but do it at the Architectural Association. So that blew my mind because you weren't doing, you know, straightforward architecture. It was the world of concept and all the rest. That's how I got into the world that I'm in now.

And then working really since I was young and taking every opportunity I could get my hands on. I've worked on really macro-scale things, right up to huge projects. And I've been living in London now for 27 years.

THE LAB MAG
Was there a specific moment in your childhood that switched you on to design?

IRENIE COSSEY
There's a vivid memory. I remember rolling this red box with wheels to school. It was made using castors from a sofa, and I made it over the weekend with my dad. And I was so proud of this red bus, bringing it to school.

And then my bedroom. I was always making houses, taking scraps of fabric, and making my own world. I wasn't interested in the doll houses that you could buy. So yeah, I was always escaping into other worlds. I suppose I was always going down Alice's rabbit hole in a way.

Tomoyo Tsurumi installation at OntheSq bathroom by Irenie Studio photo by Ellen Christina Hancock

THE LAB MAG
Who inspired you in the design world?

IRENIE COSSEY
Le Corbusier. I was fascinated; I didn't really know much about Le Corbusier when I was growing up in Ireland, but when I studied at the Architectural Association, we went to Ronchamp. We went to loads of places, learnt about Charlotte Perriand, Jean Prouvé, you know, all of those people. I suppose I loved the total analogue way of doing things or the dialogue, whatever is, you know, when you make things non-digitally, basically. And layering colours and apertures. Yeah, that era really took me in, for sure. Le Corbusier would be my hero.

THE LAB MAG
What else inspires you?

IRENIE COSSEY
I would say colour and storytelling. I like extracting stories from stuff that I do, the people I work with, listening to people and travelling. I always have my eyes open, even if it's travelling to a site. There's inspiration all around.

THE LAB MAG
Can you tell us about your daily routine? Do you have any rituals?

IRENIE COSSEY
I have to have an outdoor swim at the lido at least once a week. And I have a tandem; I have a bicycle with two seats.

And I'm known to go everywhere on the tandem, dressed up, dressed down, day, night, swimming, work, with no one on the back or two people on the back. That is at the core of me. I'm known as the girl in London who travels, you know, 20K a day, if not more. They're my rituals. And just talking to people. I talk to everybody, people in queues, and I hope not in an annoying way. I'm curious. I have a curious mind. Curiouser and curiouser!

OntheSq by Irenie Studio photo by Ellen Christina Hancock

THE LAB MAG
What does FORM mean to you as a designer?

IRENIE COSSEY
So that is a difficult one. Form, for me, is almost the negative space. When I put something in a space, yes the object is there, it's static, but form is kind of what's created on the periphery of that for me. And I remember speaking with Cecilie Bahnsen about her dresses; it's how they actually change the space around them. So it's ever-changing, and that's also what I do in my work. I'm constantly moving pieces, art, and objects around because I quite like to see the silhouette of what lies behind.

THE LAB MAG
Why was Alice in Wonderland your starting point?

IRENIE COSSEY
I've got a slight obsession with scale and juxtaposing things, and that's always filtered into my work. But really, it was the Neo-Jacobean house. There was a moment when I looked up at the windows, and I thought, oh, through the looking glass. And then it started to be born from the ground up.

The selection of tiles I was using are called 'Time', which is about worn-down spaces. And I said, well, that's fitting. So with the light and the tiles and creating these four different patterns, this is where the new Alice in Wonderland, De Beauvoir Square, London, came into play.

THE LAB MAG
Can you talk more about that Alice in Wonderland moment?

IRENIE COSSEY:

I had to get to know this house. It had been locked up for three and a half years. It was quite traumatized. And I'd just come back from LA, and I had so much jet lag that I thought I might as well do something with it. I was in the library space, which looks diagonally out onto this beautiful square. And the windows are all these little diamond shapes. They changed throughout the house. I was pulling up the subfloors. I wanted to release the energy in this house, open the windows, and take the nails out. And it wasn't happening. And then this light came flooding through, and I just went, oh my God, this is Alice's moment. This is good. And the house just started to relax.

It literally went, oh, I can breathe. I can breathe. Then it was all about scale, illusion, thresholds and the idea of being worn. And I knew I could implement these ideas.

The house is on four floors. The ground, first and second are about enhancing and revealing. So enhancing what's there, or revealing and bringing back what's in keeping with the 1840s. But when you go from the ground to the lower ground, that's going down the rabbit hole. And you go down to this juxtaposed floor, which is off-kilter; it's like four tiles by four tiles to give this massive scale.

Then you go into a room on the right, and that's about illusion. The pattern of the floor is all an illusion to make it feel smaller. Then you go into this hallway, kitchen, and all the external space, which is the threshold. It's how we live indoors/outdoors, and putting this solid green floor tiling with a pattern and a kind of movement to it.

THE LAB MAG
That is a very intriguing way of looking at space. A more traditional designer would see the building as something to impose upon. Are you always looking for the spirit in things?

IRENIE COSSEY
That's what I was trying to do. Breathing life back into found spaces. And, you know, you're creating the backdrops for living; the shadows come and go. The ghosts of the past were my companions.

But even then, on one of the floors, I inserted this big red box, which was me closing the apertures down, so it felt like a box. When you look through the peek hole, it messes with your mind a little bit.

People who would come to the house, would say, I can't leave. There's so much to see. And people come back for the fourth or fifth time and ask how did I not see that? So it's curiouser and curiouser, it's a constantly changing illusion without it being like a fairground.

THE LAB MAG
It's an elegant, reduced essence of Alice in Wonderland.

IRENIE COSSEY
There was also a lot of old doors. Only two of them survived because they were so banana in shape, but they all had the little keyholes in them. There is something so magical about looking through a keyhole, which we don't have anymore. People have got flush doors, these interlocking things. So I kept all the little apertures. My work is all about creating apertures. Like looking through and seeing, oh, they're having a dinner party. So the first sketch I did was this keyhole, and I implemented this little cutout in one of the sliding doors, which you can look down at the patterns of the house, and everyone's like, whoa, that's mad. It’s going back to having fun with architecture and design and colour and just test things. People are so scared to test colour, you know.

THE LAB MAG
Tell us more about how you found form and function within this unusual design concept.

IRENIE COSSEY
I did a red box, which is on top of the juxtaposed floor. I guess that's the point where 1840 and 2025 met. So whilst I was respecting what was there and bringing it back to life, I was also conscious that, you know, humans are changing. We need to adapt. I know, because of running a family. Spaces have to evolve. So, the box is this catalyst that you have a shower and a toilet, et cetera, downstairs, and your laundry room. But it's hidden in this element of surprise. You pull back this red door, and it's like, it's been dipped in yellow. So that's how it's spatially unlocked.

And another example is this other piece. A lovely sofa I picked up called the Cloverleaf.

It is a Verner Panton sofa, and it's this shape, kind of like a worm. So, the idea is that it's a conversational pit. So I put that in the center of the most traditional living room that I restored. I put people in the middle of the room, because everyone always sits on the periphery. One vista is looking out of the window to the square, and one is back towards the fireplace. So take your viewpoint. No tv, no nothing. But it's been so amazing watching people come in central to a space rather than going around the edges.

Irenie Cossey of Irenie Studio at OntheSq photo by Ellen Christina Hancock

THE LAB MAG
Does it bring a different energy?

IRENIE COSSEY
People get chatting, they're not opposite each other, and they're not across the room. You don't have the legs and all that to interrupt. It's shoulder to shoulder, but you've got that nice distance and you get people putting their legs up. I suppose it’s the form of a sofa that would've been done back in the fifties. It has come back into play in a now moment. Removing the digital and all the distractions and looking out the window, you know, it was beautiful to see.

THE LAB MAG
What was your biggest challenge? I'm sure there were many but is there one that was spectacular that you thought, I'm never going to be able to deal with this?

IRENIE COSSEY
Well, the whole thing was a challenge. It was three projects in one. We took the roof off my house and the neighbours off at the same time, and then we removed 280 tons of soil from the back to create this kind of submerged basin, the kitchen space and exterior spaces. There were 38 underpins and two party-wall agreements. There was only one light switch in the house when we bought it.

Were there challenges, yes, but you know, challenged in a positive way. I absolutely loved it. And usually, in a build, projects run linear, but there were three projects happening at once, so we needed to be creative. When we were doing the dig-out, we had to overlay that with the scaffold. The scaffold needed to hug the building whilst we were doing the roof and the internals. We did it in 10 and a half months, which was phenomenal. Plus, 32 contractors with partners, collaborative artists, and all the rest, and a six-week program of events and talks that I just finished last week.

Outside - OnTheSq Photo by Jim Stephenson

THE LAB MAG
What are you most proud of other than achieving all of that, is there one particular moment?

IRENIE COSSEY
I think the glassware I've designed, which was born out of the pieces I found in the ground when we excavated. We found an old ink bottle, a milk bottle, a jam jar, and a medicine bottle. Those moments show how life was once so simple. And I did a lot of iterations of them with J Hill's Standard, an Irish glassware company. They basically care about the loss of the craft, and they're trying to build it up again, including the heritage and all the rest. But we've done the prototypes based on the milk bottle and we play with scale. So we've got ones that are small and tiny, and then you get the stem glass or you get a big open head, so they're objects, but they all sit together and they're called chatter.

OntheSq x J Hill's Standard collection of vessels photo by Jake Cossey

So they chatter, chatter, chatter, mad chatter and beautiful colours. So they are launching very soon. They're a limited edition. And I'm really proud of those because they're my design. They've come from how I've been informed, respecting the past. And, you know, these simple vessels are how people use things. It doesn't have to be complicated. To build a narrative, challenge it, and work with an amazing company in Ireland. Yeah. That, I think, is my moment. And the use of tiles. Everyone's blown away by the patterns. Even the manufacturers. They're like, we've never seen this before. So those two would be my go-to moments of pride.

THE LAB MAG
Did you learn anything from this process that you didn't know before? Besides everything?

IRENIE COSSEY
Yes. How people are so responsive, how happy they were to take part and try new things and collaborate. Collaboration is core to my work. And just the ease of people and even lending pieces, it's lovely. There's been a beautiful dialogue. Everyone's supporting each other, so I'm giving them a backdrop, but they're giving me exposure.

Even with the textiles, we're bringing back the old fabrics of the house and weaving those into the now. Using dead stock from Cora. I'm a small studio. But getting that trust and seeing their response from using stuff that would've sat in a warehouse forever. That's been really cool too.

THE LAB MAG
How do you see the future of design in terms of automation and the in-coming revolution of AI? How is that going to work in your world? How do you see the future unfolding?

IRENIE COSSEY
Well, I think the future's going to do what it's going to do, but I think I'm going to stay in my world because I can't keep up with the technology side. I've got a hardcore diary. I've got three of them. And I just don't think you can replace the analogue. You can't replace the making, you can't replace that serendipity of meeting somebody, brushing shoulders and sparking an idea. You can get stuff done on CAD, but you can't replace storytelling. Yes, of course, there are great ways to use AI, but you still can't replace the human being at the center of those moments. Well, not in my world.

THE LAB MAG
What is the best advice you've ever received and the worst?

IRENIE COSSEY
Oh, the best advice was from my mother, God love her. She passed away a few years ago. She said, Irenie, whatever you do, don't ever write anything down on paper that you wouldn't be happy to see on the front page of a newspaper.

THE LAB MAG
Wise words.

IRENIE COSSEY
I think she was saying to my friend and me that she had got a bonfire going out the back and she was asking us, do you want to burn your diary? I've had a little look at those. You don't want those hanging around.

It is good advice. I think a year later, I ended up in the newspaper under the heading 'The Booze Street School Kids.' We had just finished school in Ireland. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And we weren't boozy, but four girls from the Catholic school got under the headline and the school went mental. It was hilarious.

As for the worst advice I don't have any, maybe I just haven't listened to bad advice.

THE LAB MAG
And do you have a motto that you live by?

IRENIE COSSEY
Yes. Every shoe tells a story. Another one of my mothers. It's more than just the physical shoe. We all have feet, you know; it's in the steps we take.