If Zoe Chan Eayrs and Merlin Eayrs were actors, they would be of the method-acting variety—that is, intense, focused, and committed to the extreme.
The young husband-and-wife team may not be famous on stage or screen, but they are rising stars in the architecture and interior design world, a notable feat given their firm is not yet five years old. In 2016, we wrote about one of their first projects (see The Renegade Real Estate Developers: Chan + Eayrs in London), and since then, they’ve completed just two more homes. Why the slow-drip of work? Like method actors who stay in character long past comfort, the pair don’t keep standard 9-to-5 work hours. Instead, they physically move into the homes they are designing, so that they can fully inhabit the experience of living in those spaces. And they don’t move out until construction is complete and every detail, including the art on the walls and the books on the shelves, is in place. Call it method designing.
One of their newer projects: the Weavers House, situated on a corner lot in Spitalfields. The neighborhood was once home to London’s largest settlement of Huguenots (French Protestants), and the two used that history to inform their complete overhaul of the six-floor townhouse. During the time that they lived and worked in the Weavers House, they also brought another creation into the world—a baby girl—making this project truly a labor of love. Join us for a tour.
Photography by Michael Sinclair, courtesy of Chan + Eayrs.
Ready for more London house tours? See:
- Kitchen of the Week: A Glassmaker’s Imaginative Studio Kitchen in London, DIY Ikea Hacks Included
- Wabi-Sabi in London: A Modest Yet Monumental House by Takero Shimazaki
- Start from Scratch: A Food Writer’s First Renovation in South London
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