Me And My Home: Geof Powell

Jenny Eclair's partner has designed a contemporary classic, says Joey Canessa

The designer Geof Powell lives in a four-bedroom house in Camberwell that he built himself. It has just been nominated for an RIBA award. His partner is the comic Jenny Éclair; they have one daughter.

Back in the 1980s, Jenny and I bought a crumbling wreck of a Georgian house nearby, in a very unfashionable road. We rebuilt it gradually, over the next few years, and found it hugely satisfying.

It was here that I began to foster ideas about building my own house. Luck was on my side - there was a takeover at IPC, my employer, and it was hinted that those of us who were over 50 might want to think about moving on. I put up my hand, and left with a large cheque, ready to start my building project.

I began casting my eye over possible sites and in September 2002, I found the plot. On it stood a funny, old, ugly Fifties' house, built out of engineering brick with a cement tiled roof and possessing no redeeming qualities. It was perfect.

With the help of Robert Dye, a brilliant architect friend of mine, I came up with plans to submit to Southwark, who were fantastic. They frequently encouraged us to be more radical, despite the fact that the plot was on the edge of a conservation area. Finally, planning permission was granted on New Year's Eve, which called for great celebration.

In the meantime, I had hired a builder to begin the demolition of the original house. Unfortunately, he and his illiterate "lads" managed to stretch out the demolition work so that after nine months, the old house was still standing.

Then I came across a fantastic Australian called Cameron, a hulk of a man who arrived on his tiny scooter, fresh from a project in San Francisco..

He and his bunch of muscular Aussie friends were like a light at the end of a tunnel. They knocked the old house down in four days, and began on the building work. Everything happened on schedule - it was bliss. The building works were finally signed off in time for Christmas 2004, and we moved in.

The house is beautifully simple, largely as a result of Robert's incredible skill. The boundaries hold the space of the old building and form an angular shape with small, subtle "twists" in the straight sides. I knew that I wanted a rendered wooden base to the building, with an angled, slatted wooden top. Robert translated my original idea precisely, filtered through his style.

Based on a wood and steel frame, the outer walls are ply, clad in Russian redwood. There is an inner core, rendered in pale grey K-rend, a traditional Irish material that uses crushed rubble and junk. The redwood has been attached leaving a gap behind it, resulting in a floating effect of the outer skin on the inner core. The interior walls are ply too, forming a breathable skin for the building.

The doors throughout are full-height commercial fire doors, edged with intumescent strips. We have used the K-rend for some of the interior walls too, where it seems to take on a velvety appearance. The log-burner is suspended by its own chimney, which continues through the bedroom above.

In the main bedroom, we have used etched glass for the front window, although the building is cantilevered out on the first floor and there is a side window, so that we can still spy on the neighbours when necessary. The windows are positioned irregularly through the house, some reaching almost to ground level, which produces a feeling of extra floor space. I particularly love the window in our bathroom - as you lie in the bath, it forms a perfect frame for the tower of the Salvation Army building in the distance, which is beautiful at night when it is floodlit.

Most of the colours that we have used are fairly muted. I prefer pale grey, but we have let rip in our bedroom with the wallpaper; it's a silver foil background with a paisley flock pattern in vanilla, from Coles. It's only on one wall though. An entire roomful might be rather insane.

Jenny uses one bedroom as her office, and we also have a spare room on this floor. The two are separated by a "Jack and Jill" wet room. You close the door by pulling it into the wet room, along with the door from the spare room. This shuts it off and seals it, leaving a corridor of space between the two bedrooms. We have used a dark wooden slatted floor and tiny circular black tiles from France that are grouted in black, too. The mosaic tiles came on a sheet, so they could be positioned with ease, but the majority dropped off and had to be positioned by hand.

On the spare room wall is a photographic family portrait that Martin Thompson made for us. Although it features the three of us in the same space, it is actually a kind of time-warp mirage, as it is composed from 35 different shots that he took of us all, producing a weirdly surrealist result.

The house has been nominated for an RIBA award. I'm not sure how the process began, but I am extremely excited, and very pleased for Robert, too. The winners will be decided sometime in June, I think. Whether we get all the way or not, it is a remarkable recognition.

The building of this house has been an experience for all of us. The project became my whole life, and I worried incessantly about minute details. Positions of light bulbs, finishes for cupboard doors, delivery schedules, taunted me for 24 hours every day and I did become quite weepy from time to time. I'm off again though - my next project will be a commercial venture - and I can't wait.