With an increasing number of people working from home, there is often a need to find space for an office, whether it is in a spare bedroom or a garden shed. But, in the case of Keith Stephenson and Mark Hampshire, finding a new work space inadvertently provided them with a home, too.

Four years ago, when Hampshire joined Stephenson in the fledgling branding and design company Absolute Zero°, they set out to look for new premises and came across a series of live/work units in development in southeast London.

“It was a privately funded project for 15 units and the terms of the lease stipulated that they must be part work space and part living accommodation,” says Hampshire. “There was no stamp duty to pay, which helped with the financing. Although it isn’t in a premium area, that was an advantage too, because it isn’t too leafy or domesticated, meaning the offices have a business-like atmosphere rather than being overtly homely.”

The unit that is now the Absolute Zero° studio and office consists of a double-height space with a small kitchen area and cloakroom. Hampshire and Stephenson subdivided the back of the room to create a mezzanine where computers, printer and paperwork are discreetly shielded from view. The lower part of the room, furnished with a long table surrounded by numbered stools, is where client meetings are held. The adjacent sitting area features an L-shaped, purple sofa.

At the end of the working day, when their colleague, fellow designer Merryl Catlow, locks up and leaves through the office door, Stephenson and Hampshire open a side door that leads to a staircase and up to their home. At the top of the stairs, on the first-floor landing, is Stephenson’s bedroom, then a bathroom, followed by Hampshire’s bedroom and a spare bedroom. The stairs rise again to the open-plan kitchen, dining and living space, with double doors and windows that open out on to a small, well-cultivated balcony with views of rooftops.

“The great thing is that home is attached to the office but the two are separate – there’s a locked door between them,” says Stephenson. “Our neighbours are also creative types, so we trade skills as well as take in deliveries for each other. There is a real sense of community and, in the summer, we leave our office doors open and people pop in,” says Hampshire.

The other thing that spills over from office to home is the wonderful array of wallpapers. “For years, we have created branding for companies, making visual images, designing packaging and offering copywriting services,” says Hampshire. More recently, we decided to do it for ourselves. We started with a range of wallpapers and interiors accessories and the Mini Moderns collection for children.”

The walls of their home have become a showcase for the designs. In Stephenson’s bedroom, the wall above the bed is covered with green and brown Moo! paper, with images connected to food and farming, including a contemporary wind-farm turbine. A print of a farmyard was found in a Paris flea market.

On the landing, there is a panel of “colour-in” Tic Tock paper featuring 12 clocks, each with their hands in a different position. “This is really a design for children, to teach them to tell the time,” says Stephenson, although, here in the hall, complemented by a Fifties brass and wood timepiece, it looks very grown-up. The next landing has another “colour-in” educational paper called Sitting Comfortably, showing different types of chairs.

Hampshire’s bedroom has a wall covered with one of their early designs, Swallows (a repeat motif of tiny birds in a circular pattern), and a series of chests of drawers from Ikea. “They look better used in quantity,” says Stephenson. The chests support a collection of ceramics, including several pieces by Bernard Rooke, and above the bed are two paintings of fish by Charlie Harper.

In the top-floor living room there is a feature wall of their latest paper, Net and Ball, which was specially created for London’s South Bank Centre. “It’s based on the 1951 carpet designed by Peter Moro. We’ve scaled down the design and made it into a regular repeat so that it can be easily aligned,” explains Stephenson.

The Fifties motif of the paper complements the rest of the furniture in the room, which includes a Danish dining table and chairs and an Eames rocking chair. The Portmeirion Totem china in the kitchen is a little newer, dating from 1963.

And how has the live-work balance worked out for Hampshire and Stephenson? “Many people who work from home feel isolated. Here, we have company on hand and can pool resources and help each other out, while still maintaining our individual space.”

It seems the result is an absolute success.

www.absolutezerodegrees.co.uk

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