Angel O’Donnell Elevates this Listed Building with New Interior Architectural Details

This week’s instalment of the Project of the Week series features an intricate and creative residential design by 2025 SBID Awards Finalist, Angel O’Donnell.

Angel O’Donnell took the bones of a Grade II* listed building and elevated them with new interior architectural details. Every archway, wall panel, coffered ceiling, decorative moulding and wall-to-wall joinery unit they designed was a celebration of their fun, global and style-conscious client.

What was the client’s brief?

Our clients – a Floridian couple and their 16-year-old daughter – wanted a home from home with elevated details that wouldn’t look out of place in a five-star hotel. For the parents, this meant two things:

1. Creating something worthy of Architectural Digest, their all-time favourite interiors and architecture magazine
2. Curating new museum-level queer art they could add to their beloved collection.

For their daughter, however, elevated details meant something a little more whimsical – a dream bedroom inspired by the romanticism of a French Château.

What inspired the design of the project?

We were keen to take the bones of the building – which is an Edwardian, neo-baroque, Grade II* listed masterpiece – and refine them even further with new architectural details. Really, we just wanted to knock our clients’ socks off. That’s why every archway, wall panel, coffered ceiling, decorative plaster moulding and wall-to-wall joinery unit we designed and installed was a celebration of our clients who are a fun, global, and fantastically style-conscious family.

The artwork too – from the David Hockney photo collage to the Keith Vaughan oil on canvas – was essential in the shaping the look and feel of our scheme.

And we can’t forget the daughter’s design ambitions, without which we wouldn’t have necessarily thought to lavish her bedroom with intricate plaster garlands, a rococo-esque bed, and a bespoke dressing unit finished in 22k gold verre églomisé.

What was the toughest hurdle your team overcame during the project?

As the parents were super keen to have the apartment ready before their daughter went back to the States, timings didn’t always allow us to stagger the trades and craftspeople as we would have liked. So, our toughest hurdle was co-ordinating everybody. At one point, a huge number of people were all on-site together, including:

– Various construction and decorative workers – installers, plasterers (both carved and venetian), French polishers, ceiling contractors, joiners, curtain makers, scaffolders, and electricians
– Our core team – three lead designers and a project manager
– Art professionals – two curators, a gallerist, a fine art insurance broker, a muralist, and even a sculptor who flew in from Madrid to oversee the hanging of his six-foot-long mobile.

What was your team’s highlight of the project?

There are several standout finishes that both enliven and pull together the other handcrafted elements in the scheme:
– In the living room, for instance, artisans covered our joinery wall in gesso, gold leaf, and a hand-blended mixture of bronze and navy-blue paint. They then stone buffed it into a starry cosmos of tonal variations – an arresting feature that also houses a TV behind a remote-operated door.
– While on the opposite wall, a panel of inky-blue polished plaster frames the fireplace we installed. When the sun hits its faceted surface, the wall appears to flicker.

Details like these far exceeded our expectations.

Why did you enter the SBID Awards?

We have a soft spot for the SBID. They gave us our first major award – Best CGI & Visualisation – when we were a fledgling studio. Such recognition fortified us in many ways – convinced us that we weren’t mad, that we could forge ahead and build a design studio with substance. It said, ‘we belonged’, which means the world when you’re starting out. The SBID is a non-profiting, sector-championing, love-sharing ally in a scarily unregulated and largely unprotected field. They’ll always have our loyalty – and we’ll always enter their awards for as long we’re creating work we feel meets their exacting standards.

What has being an Award Finalist meant to you and your business?

This shortlist – ‘The OWO Private Residence’ – is especially meaningful as it’s our studio’s first project that shares design credits. Historically, Co-Founder Ed O’Donnell led the design vision solo. Now we have a small team of designers, two of which – Tatiana Pietrangeli and Prima Patel – share this achievement for their rigor, creativity and dedication to the project. It’s a big nod for them – and a wonderful symbol of growth for our studio.

Questions answered by the team at Angel O’Donnell.