How I Work: McLean Quinlan Studio

A year ago, the ground floor of this three-storey red-brick low-rise in Winchester, southeast England, had just seen off a nondescript recruitment agency. Six months later it had completed its metamorphosis into a calm, tactile space that could be the communal level of a family home. Seeing through this transition were the architects of McLean Quinlan Studio, who share an office upstairs and couldn’t have wished for a more convenient opportunity to expand. Their domestic overhaul was no accident — McLean Quinlan is known largely for remoulding residential spaces into warm, woody retreats characterised by earthy materials and subtle whimsy. Using familiar methods and materials, they deftly assembled a studio that is part showroom, part event space and a scene-change for meditative work.

‘Taking the rest of the building over gave us slightly more than we needed, but it was useful to be able to expand,’ says director Fiona McLean, who founded the practice in 1982 and splits her time between Winchester and a small London office. ‘We thought this was a very good opportunity to create a home-from-home, where clients could come see us in our work environment in a part of the office that felt homely.’

Starting with a closed, inward-looking space, the team opened up access from the street and space overhead, dismantling the suspended ceiling to expose ductwork and pipes. To eliminate the echo from hard concrete, they added acoustic panelling, overlapped with tracks of flexible industrial lighting by Orluna. Softening the shell with clay-plaster walls was, says McLean, a decision everyone could agree on. They used a trusted specialist in natural plasters from Cornwall to supply and layer it onto the volume. The result is a natural velvety quality that communicates the house aesthetic without shouting.

McLean says the space comes in useful to round up everyone in the office for meetings or professional development — this area is equipped with a projector. To that end they commissioned a custom table from Ennis & Brown in Tring that accommodates all 15 at once. A suite of Hay J-Series chairs — subtly mismatched by colour if not style — were supplied by Holloways of Ludlow. ‘The chairs were probably what took the most time to decide on,’ says McLean. ‘The mix of finishes and colours is not too jazzy but break it up a bit.’ Occasionally, she says, they have days of ‘making’, Christmas wreath sessions or hands-on craft. ‘We’d love to have a day making pots, but we might regret that.’

A kitchen island, as in a home, is the centrepiece of the open plan. McLean and her colleagues chose a Bulthaup system ‘because we thought it would be good for storage and soft materials, and it also has that domestic quality.’ And like that old saw, ‘people gather around it… especially if there’s food on it.’

Around the corner is a hallway bench by Konk. And select Hay chairs have crept in by the French doors, where sunlight streams in through new planting, indoors and out, by landscape designer Amy Perkins. ‘That makes a huge difference to a space to have this greenery — and it all seems to thrive in our office.’

Beyond those few key pieces is plenty of space to manoeuvre, to breathe and to contemplate the natural palette without the hard sell. Flexibility was an important part of the design, so furnishings could be moved around at will. The only merchandise appears on two discreet sample walls that display stone shards, wood blocks and hardware much like curiosities, reflecting upon the MQ look. That, incidentally, is described by McLean as ‘quiet beauty’, the antithesis of what she calls ‘the icon aesthetic, that idea of architecture being show-off. We’re not shouting anything. Our clients gravitate toward materials. It’s innate in people — they love materiality and touch.’