Zoe Chan, along with her husband Merlin is one half of Chan + Eayrs, a holistic architectural practice. The couple have moved into one project from the next but since having her children, Max and River, Zoe describes a longing for stillness and more settled roots.
Their latest find- previously home to the abstract English sculptor Sir Anthony Caro and his wife Sheila and converted by the Caros' friends and Brutalist architects Peter and Alison Smithson, certainly offers stillness, nestled in a bucolic pocket of Hampstead where the bumpy lane and dappled leafy light can trick you into thinking you've left London altogether.
The daughter of an architect, Zoe was taken straight from the hospital as a newborn baby to a potential site. Similarly, POPLIN visited the day before structural works began in Hampstead, as family life hummed alongside the nervy expectation of imminent and dramatic changes. Zoe's excitement about creating a beautiful physical space in which to raise her children balanced by her considered attitude to fortifying her family's emotional foundations.
