Interiors: Box of tricks

Misha Stefan is an architect whose `soft' modernist approach has made for some ingenious home touches. Dinah Hall reports

ASKING AN architect who his architectural heroes are is a bit like inviting yourself to your own funeral - he will reel off a list of obscure Finnish names and tell you in mind-numbing detail exactly what it is about their synthetic functionalism or conceptual purity that so enthuses him. Death by boredom. Misha Stefan's answer, however, is brief and to the point. "Ants" he says. "Termites" he adds by way of clarification - presumably in case I think he's just being ostentatiously abbreviatory with one of those Finns.

"Ants are fantastic architects. They've perfected a natural air conditioning system without one moving mechanical part. Everyone mucks in and everything's recyclable. Termites have it sussed."

For him, architects who try to become ants are the next best thing - Gaudi in Spain, and Niemeyer in Brazil. His own flat in west London, which he shares with PR Yvonne Courtney, bears no resemblance whatsoever to an ant hill. But anty-heroes apart, there are other things about his flat which indicate he's one of the more relaxed of the architectural fraternity.

He keeps the covers on his books, for one thing, and he lets Yvonne keep all her airport paperbacks. (Most architects only keep hardbacks, minus their jackets. Paperbacks get chucked out because they never look neat.) These paperbacks, however, are strictly arranged in blocks of colour, although he is quick to point out that it has nothing to do with him.

"Oh no, that was Yvonne. She must have been up all evening colour coding them. She's a Virgo."

Misha and Yvonne bought the flat together five weeks after they met: "Everyone said we were mad, but nine years later they've quietened down on that front." The flat already had the mezzanine but there were also walls dividing the living area into separate rooms. After taking out the shaggy brown carpet and removing all the mirrors from the "peche-flavoured" ceilings and walls, Misha set about putting his own architectural stamp on it.

He has a particular fondness for sliding and revolving doors, which is immediately apparent on stepping into the entrance hall, where you are surrounded by angled doors which make you feel you are standing in a prism. He has packed an enormous amount into one tiny space here: a loo, meter cupboards and a real sense of drama. The hallway, he says, is "a little homage to Yvonne" because on plan the wall is shaped in a Y. A tiny alcove with a buttressed ledge was built especially to take front-door keys - a practical touch but also the kind of thing that "gives design its human quality, warms it up. I suppose I'm what you might call a `soft' modernist."

Swinging doors lead from the hall into the kitchen, while a gold-painted swivel door marks the grander entrance to the living area with French windows leading out on to a large balcony.

The bathroom was added to the mezzanine, together with the dramatic supporting wall. A window of glass tiles lets in light and adds to the feeling that he wanted, of this wall being like an external facade. Budgetary constraints meant that they had to make do with the existing B&Q-style cast-iron spiral staircase, but he was able to add a simple but effective "baroque trick" to the mezzanine. Two Ikea bookcases have been put together to make a column which shoots through a circular hole cut in the floor. "If you didn't have that hole," Misha explains, "you would see the room as two floors. It emphasises the feel of a floating platform and makes it more like one space."

A gold swivel door separates the bedroom from the bathroom. Angled in the right position, as Misha demonstrates, it enables Yvonne "to do her boudoir behind it here with all her chemicals, while I can be left in peace to do my teeth". The basin is a beautiful pear-shaped structure that Misha tiled with mosaics.

The kitchen is where we get down to the real design nitty-gritty. The hobs ranged single file along the cooking island are not just a gimmick: they are the answer to burnt elbows gained from stretching across conventional hobs. "I mean, what a daft idea," says Misha. "Just put the hobs in a line." A black guitar-shaped piece of wood attached to the top has an in-built knife rack and holes for utensils - he is thinking of putting this useful little flourish into production - while the storage shelf underneath the counter slides out.

Dangling down over the island is a fisherman's lead weight, used as a pull for the light switch. Its chrome ceiling fitting and chain suggest it should belong in the bathroom. "Yeah," jokes Misha, "when you pull it, it automatically flushes the loo upstairs." A small free-standing sink is not, he now concedes, the most practical of his ideas. But it must work reasonably well because the dishwasher, incumbent for several years, has never been used: it still contains the plastic wrapped instructions and free samples of Finish.

What Misha refers to as the "mechanical wall" is a stunning combination of display and practicality. It's the main storage area, housing china and the washing machine, as well as the celebrated rainbow of books, and manages to make the pull-down ironing board into a work of art. When not in use it folds up neatly into the cupboard, its blue underside concealing its true function.

Since Misha and Yvonne are owners of Mission, a gallery specialising in 20th-century design, a few pieces of iconic furniture around the place are to be expected. They have a couple of wonderful 1950s lights - one a present from Yvonne's mother ("she's really hip"), and the other from a Christie's auction. The two ponyskin chairs Misha thinks are by a designer called Pierre Paulin, currently being celebrated in Habitat's roll-call of 20th-century greats. All that's missing, is a sofa. Actually, not a sofa. It would have to be a banquette, says Misha. More ant-like, presumably.

Mission gallery: 0171 792 4633