In 2015, fashion designer Eudon Choi and his partner Neil Byrne, the founder of design agency Tomorrow PR, watched the building that now houses their flat in east London emerge. They were renting just five minutes down the road and, although not quite in the position to buy, they were intrigued by what lay inside the sleek building. They booked a viewing – ‘purely out of nosiness really,’ admits Neil – and immediately fell for one of the five flats within it. After three years and a price reduction, they finally bought the flat in 2018. Here, they talk to us about how the space, designed by Jaccaud Zein Architects and Roger Zogolvitch’s Solidspace, is an ideal backdrop for their collection of 20th-century design and why Neil can’t help but add objects.

Neil: “For about six years, we’d lived in a one-bedroom garden flat that we’d bought on a beautiful Victorian terraced street in Herne Hill. Although we loved it there, it was just too small for the two of us and our dog, Barney, so we decided to move closer to Eudon’s studio in De Beauvoir Town in 2014. It made sense – I’d just set up Tomorrow PR, an agency that specialises in design and architecture and was working from a corner of his office. 

“We rented a flat in Shoreditch and we loved the area. We’d walk around the neighbourhood with Barney and one day we spotted this rather strange red-brick building being built, with huge recessed windows of all different sizes. It didn’t feel particularly British – it was more like something you’d find in Amsterdam or Copenhagen.

“Even though we thought it would be way out of our price range, we decided to have a look around anyway. We liked the fact it was in a residential area tucked away from the madness of Shoreditch. We immediately loved one of the flats, but, as we’d expected, it was beyond our budget.

“I’m a big believer that if it’s meant to be, then it will be, and amazingly it came up with another agent at a lower price. We went to see it again, only to find out that another agent had accepted an offer on it!

“We went back to hunting and found something completely different – a flat in a late Georgian house on a square near Shoreditch Park. It had great charm and we were about to put an offer in when the other estate agent called to tell us that the offer on the new-build flat had fallen through. We had nothing to lose really, so put in an offer and it was miraculously accepted. It is so completely different from what we would have ended up with if we’d bought the Georgian flat.”

Eudon: “Culturally, Koreans veer towards new, modern buildings, whereas Neil has that British sensibility and leans towards traditional, period houses. I loved the convenience of this flat – it had triple-glazed windows and underfloor heating, and everything was new so there was very little we had to do.”

Neil: “Generally people expect a flat to have rooms off a central corridor and a kitchen at the end, but the layout of this was completely different. Amazingly for a flat, it’s spread over five floors. Like the other four flats in the building, it was a collaboration between Swiss architectural firm Jaccaud Zein and architect-developer Solidspace whose trademark feature is the use of split levels with mezzanines, rather than corridors. Essentially the rooms are stacked on top of each other and the stairways become the corridors. It means that it’s filled with light even on dull days.”

Eudon: “It’s a very narrow, yet tall space. You enter on the first floor and then go down to the kitchen, dining and living areas on the ground floor, which have incredible six-metre high ceilings. We loved how the space opens up as you move through the house, with a television room on the first floor and then bedrooms and bathrooms across the top two floors. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but for us it was just so interesting architecturally.”

Neil: “A lot of thought had been given to the materials throughout, which gives it such character. A walnut bannister snakes the whole way up the house, and there are nice ceramic tiles on the floors downstairs and rough-hewn oak upstairs.”

Eudon: “I love the beautiful textured Venetian plaster walls throughout, which are matched by these really minimal beige doors and door frames. I guess it could have felt quite grey, but for us the grainy textures were the perfect background for our furniture and artwork.

“Just before we bought the house, I met an artist called Vince Hart, who had recently graduated from Central St Martins, and created these incredible large-scale pieces on aluminium in amazing sky blues and yellows. We ended up buying four pieces from him and I remember thinking, ‘I really want the art and maybe this flat will be a good backdrop for them’. They are vast and we have two hanging in the living room one in the dining area and kitchen and another in the bedroom.

“I’m so bold with colour in the clothes I design and am always using fluorescent accent colours. Using colour in interiors is such a different experience to working with colour in fashion though – you can’t just wear it for one day and forget about it.”

Neil: “Any brave colour choices we make are almost entirely down to Eudon, as I’m naturally drawn to more neutral shades. One of the first things we did when we moved in was install a dressing room on one of the mezzanine levels, as there was no built-in clothes storage and the bedrooms aren’t huge. I stumbled across Uncommon Projects, who make contemporary cabinetry using ply for the carcasses and we went for yellow fronts.

“They can be seen from various points in the flat, so we wanted the wardrobes to be a statement piece. Uncommon Projects were thrilled we wanted colour, but I think Eudon drove them mad deciding on the exact shades! I love how the wardrobes almost become an art piece next to Vince Hart’s turquoise piece that hangs next to them on the wall in the living area.

“Another early choice was to add pendant lights by Industrial Facility for Wästberg in the dining area and kitchen and a trio of Nelson Bubble Lamps designed by George Nelson for Herman Miller . They have a three-metre drop from the six-metre ceiling and we had to bring in scaffolding to install them! A lot of the larger pieces came with us, such as the big green USM Cabinets, the 1960s Danish sideboard, the Noguchi coffee table and the Terence Woodgate sofa from SCP. I think we’re both attracted to mid-century style and a lot of our furniture seems to come from the 1950s – be that vintage or reissues. We’ve also recently commissioned furniture designer Daniel Schofield to make us a bespoke dining table, which we’re really excited about.”

Eudon: “We bought the Vitsœ 606 Universal Shelving System by Dieter Rams quite quickly after moving in, to go behind the dining table. I remember Neil thought there were more important things that we needed to do, but for me it was a priority. I have a more minimal taste than Neil and just think it’s a beautiful design.”

Neil: “I love collecting decorative objects, as they bring such character to the space. A lot of them are pieces that I’ve launched, so they’re not just pretty objects, but things that reflect my career. Eudon often thinks that I’m impulsive, but I give every piece a lot of thought before I buy it. My criteria is that it has to be beautifully crafted.

“I have a thing for birds and have about eight Iittala glass birds. I try to sneak them past Eudon, but I actually bought him one for his birthday once, which was quite a clever way to add another one! I also have several iterations of the Eames House Bird and a couple of the Bouroullec brothers’ L’Oiseau wooden birds. I’ve never wanted to have a real bird in a cage, but I love having these little symbols of nature around.

“One of the parts of the flat I’ve particularly loved this summer is the small walled garden, which is accessed through huge four-metre-high French doors from the dining area. It’s proved a real lifesaver and I’ve loved pottering there at lunchtime and after work. We had to bring an enormous amount of soil in and it was quite hard to get plants during lockdown, but we managed to plant it up. I find it incredibly relaxing.

“I’ve recently started collecting photography more seriously, so we have works by Lillian Bassman and Deborah Turbeville, as well as a huge piece by our friend Thomas Zanon-Larcher, which was actually a project he worked on with theatre entrepreneur Jules Wright for one of my old clients.”

Eudon: “When I’m at home, I spend most of my time in the living area. Neil is often in the snug, but it’s connected by a mezzanine so it all feels very open.

“We really feel like this is our forever home. The only thing that would put us off is the stairs as we grow older, but we don’t need to think about that now! It’s just a five-minute cycle to my studio and we love having a bit of everything around us. Maybe we’ll consider getting a place in the countryside in the future, but we’d still keep this place. It just offers us so much.”

Eudon and Neil, what do you think it means to live in a modern way?

Neil: “It’s about consuming sensibly. It means investing in things you will have for a long time, rather than buying on a whim and replacing every few years. I do have a lot of stuff, but I know I’ll have it forever. It’s not ephemera, but things that I really cherish.”

Is there a house on The Modern House website that’s caught your eye?

Neil: “I love Clayton Windmills in West Sussex. It’s crazy, but amazing how the architects have joined together a windmill, roundhouse, converted granary and a mill house. It has an incredible walled garden and it’s exactly the sort of place that I’d like to escape to.”