Lisbon.

A whole flat, taken back and put together again: arched openings cut between the rooms, fluted timber where the walls turn, and lamplight doing the work that downlights usually do badly. Photographed on location in a single evening.

Looking through an arched opening from the hall into the kitchen

The rooms are not doors apart. They are openings apart.

The living room, with fluted panelling, a brass pendant and Matt Smith-Wood walking through the frame

01 · Living

Panelling to picture height, then paint. The wall does the framing so the art does not have to.

The dining room: an oval table, three framed works and a linear brass pendant

02 · Dining

One oval table, one long light. Everything else on the walls, so the floor stays walkable.

03 · The yellow room

The yellow bedroom: a saturated yellow wall above dark ribbed panelling, with two framed works and a brass lamp

The same yellow bedroom seen in a large circular mirror

The only room in the flat that raises its voice, and the round mirror opposite gives you it twice.

The timber stair rising against dark ribbed panelling

Up, and the flat gets quieter on purpose.

A bedroom with a full-height fluted headboard and a ring pendant

04 · Principal bedroom

The headboard runs the full wall and the full height, which is the cheapest way to make a small room feel deliberate.

A second bedroom with two ochre artworks above a buttoned bed

05 · Second bedroom

Two works, hung as one. Colour arrives on the wall rather than in it.

Up close

Waffle cotton, a sheer hem meeting the rug, a ribbed glass shade on a terrazzo base. The layer you touch without looking at it.

Cushions in linen and sage against a boucle sofa

A ribbed alabaster table lamp above a ribbed radiator

Sheer curtain meeting parquet at the foot of the stair

Bedding, an olive cushion and a linen headboard

What it is made of

Ochre, oak, plaster and brass. One warm metal, used once a room.

Two framed woven textile pieces on a pale wall, above herringbone oak and an ochre chair

Matt Smith-Wood at the desk in the finished flat, caught mid-movement

The last evening

One lamp on, the desk already dressed, and Matt still moving through it. Leon Foggitt photographed the flat the evening it was finished, which is why he is a blur.

A whole flat, or one room

Email matt@mattsmithwood.com, or send one photograph of the room and nothing else. That works just as well.

Photography

Leon Foggitt

Every photograph of the Lisbon flat, here and elsewhere on this site