“Playing around with visual ideas is my motivation.”
Architect Sophie Nguyen is a one-woman powerhouse of ingenuity. Based in a west London studio, which she designed and built, she is the go-to architect for homeowners in need of clever ideas to extend their houses. She says,
“Space is a luxury and in urban areas it is particularly important to make the most of what you have. I want to bring nobility to the spaces that I design, whatever their scale.”
Sophie thrives on the challenge of making the most of spaces, often finding surprising ways of maximising potential and creating imaginative interiors which not only look architecturally satisfying but also provide the client with an attractive and versatile solution. Sophie is an advocate of the ‘Don’t move, Improve’ school of thinking, the campaign encouraged by the NLA (New London Architecture) an approach which has been illustrated in some recent projects.
Born and brought up in Paris to a Vietnamese father and French mother, Sophie was immersed in science from a young age. Her father is a geophysicist and her mother an accountant. She says,
“I was good at maths and drawing and was fascinated by buildings. It seemed entirely natural that I should move into this profession.”
She attended the Ecole d’architecture, Paris La Seine in the 1980s and graduated in 1987.
Although she is currently concerned mainly with architecture for domestic spaces, Sophie’s early career involved work on some huge and prestigious cultural projects. While working at the renowned French architects, Ibos et Vitart in Paris, she became Project Architect for the Facades and Museum Display of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille. The project involved creating a highly contemporary façade which would provide extra office space for the museum but not compromise the classic architecture of the building. The solution was a dynamic steel and glass construction built opposite the old museum, reflecting its façade in the style of a pointillist painting. The structure impressed her peers in the architectural world as well as visitors to the museum; the project won the Building of the Year Award in 1997.
Sophie then moved to London and worked for five years at Richard Rogers Partnership (now Rogers, Stirk & Harbour) and was shortlisted for Young Architect of the Year in 1997.
In 2003, Sophie established her own practice, Sophie Nguyen Architects. She has concentrated on domestic projects for the last ten years but her interest in large-scale structures has not diminished. She participated in several studies with Arup Consulting Engineers including a proposal for a Landmark Tower for the Olympic Park in London, a feasibility study for the Commonwealth Institute at Holland Park in London and concepts for bridges over the River Thames at Battersea and over the railway at Stratford.
Her interior work brings elements of her monumental concepts into domestic spaces. This is attested by her bold and impressive use of colour blocks. For example, in a modest London space she created a versatile kitchen and bathroom space she called ‘Yellow Submarine’. The two ‘rooms’ (effectively, a conjoined kitchen and bathroom) were inserted into an open plan space within a single block and unified by the use of a bright yellow surface to contain storage and conceal essential services.
This theme is maintained in her current home, where the kitchen is blocked out in bold yellow to differentiate the space from the surrounding open plan room and conceals the working elements of the room behind smooth doors.
Within a very small apartment space in Paris Sophie found a way to maximize the space by creating a mezzanine which introduced two rooms beneath it. She says,
“It was by using the height of the volume to insert a raised bedroom into the space that I could liberate this restricted floor area. I used perception, perspective, symmetry and alignment to give the impression of a larger space and I introduced my own design features, such as a mobile basin in the tiny bathroom, to create a truly versatile space.”
Her current architectural studio was excavated beneath her terraced London home, to create a roomy, light-filled space. She says,
“I’m adamant that there must be light coming from two directions, if possible.”
She introduced a patio/well at the front, in front of a large wall of plate glass and made strategic use of opaque glass flooring in the room above to ensure that the space is filled with natural light at all times of the day.
When working with clients on projects Sophie always creates paper and card models of the design options. She finds that this is the best way of observing how light will flow through a building and enables her to check that exterior views are not interrupted by architectural elements or uncomfortable sightlines. For each project she will produce several variations on the design, each with its own model. She says,
“It’s vital that the client feels satisfied that the end result is going to be successful and these models give an much better impression of the finished work than computer generated images.”
When planning her projects, Sophie is particularly concerned with the technical elements. She works closely with the project’s structural engineers and understands essential details such as the way light can enhance a space. These elements are carefully expressed in project drawings. When working with older buildings, she relishes the chance to seek out original features, to reclaim space which might have been boxed in and likes to explore clever ideas for dividing or opening up rooms. Before preparing her plans she discusses aspects of the clients’ lifestyle to ensure that their needs are reflected in the plans; she reviews the position of the sun at different times of day, the impact of trees and their shadows close to the build and plots the natural flow of the interior space as people move around the house.
Sophie enjoys the challenge of working on a variety of projects and relishes the chance to exercise her formidable visual concepts to produce enduring spaces which are playful, minimal, bold and strong.
Sophie has been a member of the Architects Advisory Panel for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and an invited juror at the London Metropolitan University School of Architecture and Interior Design.