'Upside down' living in Maida Vale: Sir Terry Farrell's sleek townhouses feature multiple terraces built around outdoor life

The new scheme also boasts integrated terraces and a top floor living space with olive and blue interiors and vintage furnishings.
David Spittles4 June 2020

Postmodernist architect Sir Terry Farrell is known for his bold, exuberant style — most famously the M16 headquarters at Vauxhall — and his latest project, Lyons Place, on his home turf of Maida Vale, lives up to expectations.

This stylish north-west London development has a roadside façade of vivid midnight blue ceramic tiles and a larger-than-life petrol pump art installation marking the site’s past life as a fuel station.

Alongside a sleek block of 24 private flats and 47 affordable homes is a terrace of five contemporary-design, three-storey townhouses, each with a patio garden and multiple terraces.

Though completed before the pandemic, they could well have been designed for a post Covid-19 eco-friendly lifestyle of home working and outside living.

The standout feature of the houses is an “upside-down” floorplan, with the main living space occupying the top floor. All living and dining rooms have full-height glazing and an integrated terrace with views over landscaped courtyards.

The show house’s interior colour scheme of deep olive and crisp blues picks up on the waterways of nearby Little Venice, while vintage furnishings and objets d’art are a nod to the district’s galleries and antiques shops.

As part of new coronavirus protocols, all communal areas, hard surfaces, door handles, push plates, lift buttons and the like are treated with Zonitise, a liquid coating containing a permanent bond anti-microbial agent.

From £2.5 million: townhouses by Sir Terry Farrell at Lyons Place in NW8, neighbouring Maida Vale

On Edgware Road, the address is a little grittier than the Maida Vale heartland of wide boulevards, neat mansion blocks and cream-coloured terraces.

But the wider neighbourhood is poised for an upgrade as Westminster council has unveiled a £1.2 billion regeneration blueprint for the Church Street ward.

As part of the plan, the council has pledged to favour art and antiques businesses, with the aim of making the noted street market a rival to Portobello Road.

Alfies Antique Market, formerly Jordan’s department store, is already London’s largest indoor emporium with more than 200 stallholders specialising 20th-century art and collectables.

Lyons Place flats start at £895,000, with townhouses from £2.5 million. Call developer Almacantar on 020 7535 2903.