McKinnon and Harris Garden Terrace by Randle Siddeley

Once a windswept walkway between the glass-domed Design Centre and the offices and showrooms of Design Centre East, the Design Avenue is now Chelsea Harbour’s premier show space and the main entrance to the city’s most diverse design destination.

With a sky-high glass ceiling to rival Wonka himself, this vast atrium hosts interiors events throughout the year, from the Focus and London Design Week shows launching the new season industry collections, to special art and antiques exhibitions, a Christmas market, charity fundraisers and hot-ticket cocktail parties to celebrate each inauguration.

The launch of WOW!house in 2022 heralded the crowning of the 3-year-old Design Avenue as the most exciting interiors event venue in London. This unique showcase is an entire freestanding 500 square metre house, built within the avenue space and open for one month every year as a series of rooms decorated by world class interior designers working in partnership with globally admired and niche suppliers to the trade.

Left: Kit Kemp Design Studio Day Room by Kit Kemp and Minnie Kemp, photo by James McDonald
Right: Julian Chichester Library by Turner Pocock

From its first outing, WOW!house proved itself worthy of the moniker, with thousands of visitors and to great acclaim. Highlights included the fresh country cottage GP & J Baker Morning Room by Rita Konig, featuring a whimsical fern wallpaper & curtain combo; the eclectic Julian Chichester Library by Turner Pocock, piled high with books and objets as though from a lifetime of collecting enjoyed over late nights of backgammon and whisky; the dramatic midnight blue Dining Room by Lambart & Browne, with a blue and bronze flame motif tent ceiling; and a charming Day Room by Kit and Minnie Kemp of Kit Kemp Design Studio, displaying rows of decorative many-coloured hats on stands, a quirky variation on the studio’s famous mannequins greeting guests to the bedrooms of their Firmdale Hotels.

Legend Room by Nicky Haslam and Collette van den Thillart

In the 2023 WOW!house, Grandees of the home interiors scene Nicky Haslam and Tim Gosling rubbed walls with international stars Joy Moyler and Mark D. Sikes, and Rising Star award winner Christian Bense. Sikes’ plant-topped gossip seat was a fitting statement piece for the Entrance Foyer, adorned with a canopy ceiling and surrounded by decorative arts sponsor Iksel’s splendid Oriental hand painted walls. Nicky Haslam and Collette van den Thillart displayed barely restrained decadence in the Legend Room, with silvered cornices, mauve fabric walls from Altfield, decorative twisted columns and a gilded demilune (well stocked) drinks trolley.

Left: Fromental Courtyard Room by Maddux Creative, photo by James McDonald
Right: Tom Faulkner tables in the Courtyard Room, photo by Simon Williams

In amongst this plethora of talent, Maddux Creative collaborated with wallcovering wizards Fromental, to create the standout room of the showhouse. In their words, Jo leGleud and Scott Maddux wanted to conjure up a realm where “nature triumphs within a man-made environment” with their Courtyard Room. This involved in-depth discussions on mycelia, the mysterious underground network used by fungi, and resulted in a cocoon-like space with needlepoint ‘biomorphic’ shelf pads by Fromental’s Lizzie Deshayes, their luminous Ligeti wallcovering shimmering like an underworld Aurora, and semi-circular sofas by George Smith covered in soft, earthy-hued Pierre Frey mohairs reminiscent of a mushroom’s undercap, flanked by lilypad shaped Venetian glass cocktail tables by geometry genius furniture designer Tom Faulkner.

And on to the 2024 showhouse, with designers and brands involved in the 19 rooms having had a lot to live up to. 

Above: Watts 1874 Legend Room by Alidad, photo by James McDonald
Below: The Rug Company Dining Room by Ken Fulk, photo by James McDonald

Step forward Alidad. The ‘designers’ designer’ and erudite purveyor of interiors for the thinker, who was once the youngest ever director of Islamic arts and textiles at Sotheby’s, was invited to create the Watts 1874 Legend Room. The result was a sumptuous feast of antiques, collectibles and mementoes from the designer’s own collection, somehow miraculously assembled to bring warmth to the heart and a lump to the throat.

Objects we love can transcend their inanimate state, imbued with the emotions and memories they evoke. Occasionally – rarely – pieces by others that we don’t own or perhaps even know can generate these feelings, and we sometimes simplistically call this ‘art’. Alidad’s own embroidered Ottoman panel, simple trefoil appliqués and framed family photo. The carefully chosen collections of framed Delft tiles, neoclassical and 1910s paintings, sculptures and reliefs, tapestries, textiles and trinkets, Cantagalli chargers and sky blue Chinese vases, Persian Ziegler rugs and unusual furniture – a Goncalo Alves revolving bookcase and William IV piano stool here, a well-loved artist’s easel there. The Watts 1874 dragon’s blood mohair velvet, regal red and bottle algae damasks and sea glass and bronze silk velvets, fringed and trimmed with their braids, bullions, rosettes and tassels, knotted with silk and metal threads in muted mediaeval hues. This is design that touches the soul.

Ken Fulk's Dining Room for The Rug Company blazed with saturated hues of emerald lacquered panelling and cassette ceiling, and teal tasselled swags with chequerboard motifs. In borders above the apple green walls dotted with 3D porcelain butterflies were mediaeval crests, except these motifs were of mermaids, mythical beasts, the designer... and his dog. In this room even the most scintillating dinner party conversation would be outshone by its surroundings.

And so the beautifully designed, exquisitely crafted gauntlet was thrown down for WOW!house 2025, where 22 design studios have imagined rooms to dream in, among them Goddard Littlefair, 1508 London and Ben Pentreath, Spinocchia Freund and Alex Dauley, Staffan Tollgård and Thurstan.

Fortuny + Bonacina + Barovier&Toso Primary Bedroom by Tomèf Design

The roll call of room sponsor brands reads like a Who’s Who of ultimate craftsmanship in fabrics, artistic metal, furniture, carpets, bathrooms and art glass – the figurative oil tubes in the painterly hands of world-class interiors adepts. Magical materials virtuoso, Fortuny, working with Murano glass maestri Barovier&Toso on the Venetian styled Primary Bedroom by Tomèf Design. Fromental returning to adorn the walls of the Chad Dorsey Drawing Room with flights of fancy in the richly layered retreat. Cox London bringing their sculptural metalworking skills to the Entrance Hall by Victoria Davar of Maison Artefact and a nod to nature with built-to-last outdoor furnishings from McKinnon and Harris in the Randle Siddeley Garden Terrace.

The background tapestry to this unrivalled showhouse is adorned with WOW!Talks, featuring designers of the rooms and commentators from the world of interior design, WOW!house guided tours included with tickets, and a WOW!Gala party on the evening of the 2nd June.