The spirit of a place

Words by Hannah Tapping

Pushing the design narrative to create interiors that speak of soul and spaces.

A mutual passion for the ever-changing surrounding natural landscape of the UK’s westernmost county saw Jennie Trethewy and Hollie Milne found Studio Far West. Jennie established her career in London, working for United Designers and Fox Linton Associates. During this time, she designed for exclusive hotel groups including The Waldorf Hilton, Aldwych, The Caledonian Hotel, Edinburgh and the Dorchester Collection’s Coworth Park Spa. Hollie began her design career working on project management and interior design for the family construction company, delivering high-end residential developments as well as full refurbishments, establishing a valuable network of local skilled trades and crafts. Their combined skills and talent have seen them work across various sectors including private residences, hospitality, commercial and residential developments delivering bespoke interior design and architecture packages. 

In conversation with Jennie and Hollie, I was eager to discuss their approach and discover how their backgrounds translate to the designs they deliver today.

Your work is known for its bespoke character. Could you walk me through how a project typically begins and how you translate a client’s needs and a building’s personality into a coherent design narrative?

We begin each project with a complimentary face-to-face meeting with the client on site, which allows us to gain insight into the scope of work and garner initial thoughts and ideas from the client. The ability to collaborate on each project, elevating and challenging the brief to strike the right balance between function, form and style is what makes our partnership so successful. Working together, we build an in-depth design brief that reflects the client’s personality and lifestyle resulting in the creation of beautifully crafted multi-layered elegant interiors. For us, designing interiors is telling the story of a person and place.

Process appears central to your practice. Can you describe how this evolves from concept to completion and how you ensure every detail reflects a sense of place?

Each project is unique, but a common starting ground would be its genius loci. Translated from the Latin, it means the “spirit of a place” and is often where we start the conceptual design. It refers to the unique atmosphere, character, or emotional quality that a specific location naturally possesses. Whether the narrative is one of location, or the heritage of a building, picking up on these cues or features and turning them into a readable interior is always key within our spaces, ensuring they feel harmonious and connected to their surroundings. Concept for us starts with the big idea which is then skilfully curated into hard finishes, FF&E (furniture, fixtures and equipment), all technically drawn for contractors in an installable interior design package. This process may take weeks and months of selections, meetings and amendments to get to the perfect finished outcome. 

How would you describe the aesthetic values that underpin Studio Far West’s identity?

The most common thread through all our projects is colour; we use this in a multidimensional way, often creating bespoke palettes for each room. Location also plays a large part. We see a lot of the Cornish coastal cliché rolled out with interior design in the South West and it is true that some clients want this, but we believe that as designers we should be challenging ourselves to come up with unexpected points of reference within our designs. So, when referencing location whether geographically or culturally we really try to push each project to realise its unique identity and full potential so that it stands alone as a one-off piece of work.  

How do your creative partnerships shape the outcome of your projects?

We are extremely proud of our directory of makers and artists and the working relationships we have cultivated throughout the years. Supporting the Cornish economy and talent is part of our company ethos and we delight in bringing one-off pieces to our interiors for a truly unique design. Works of art, such as paintings and sculptures, can often inspire the colour palettes and design concepts used in interior spaces. 

Many of your projects involve working within the fabric of listed or heritage buildings. What draws you to these kinds of spaces and what are the key challenges and opportunities they present?

Maximising the renovation of listed buildings as an interior designer is all about striking a balance between preserving heritage with modern functionality. The first step is to understand the heritage framework of the building. We research the building’s grade and listing details, identifying significant architectural features that must be preserved. In our view, a successful renovation begins with curiosity and so we conduct extensive research into the history and location of a project, identifying any previous alterations that may have been made over the years. Our established connections with local heritage consultants help achieve a seamless journey through the listed building approval process for our clients. Bringing them into the process early, and establishing a dialogue where the design intentions are shared from the outset, demonstrates our approach of treating such buildings with respect. 

I can imagine that balancing preservation with contemporary living expectations isn’t easy. How do you approach reconfiguring historic interiors to meet modern needs without losing their soul?

One of our current projects is a generous Victorian townhouse with expansive estuary views. Whilst grand in scale and proportion, the property had narrow halls, closed rooms and two existing extensions that didn’t flow well or provide the necessary functions for modern-day living. We worked up several layout options for this property and the client opted for our wild-card. We made a significant impact by re-locating the kitchen from the darker, rear of the house, to the front of the property, achieving optimum sea views and taking advantage of the high ceilings.

We opened up between the two main ground floor rooms to create a statement kitchen, dining room and replicated an arched opening with plaster corbels to match the adjacent entrance hall detailing. When removing walls in heritage properties we always advise to retain original cornices or nibs to show where they once stood and it is always our intention to highlight original period details, restoring and showcasing decorative plaster mouldings or stonework. We work with local craftspeople and traditional trades to celebrate these features and use clever lighting to highlight them. We also focused on visual connections, opening up the narrow hallway through to the dining room with glazed internal doors, maintaining separation but enhancing light through the spaces. 

When modern elements are introduced, we tend to make them clearly distinct yet harmonious, so the old and new remain legible. Every design choice should feel contextually rooted, yet forward-looking. Renovating a heritage property isn’t about freezing it in time, it is about continuing its story. The most beautiful results happen when you let the old and new coexist, each enhancing the other.

Bespoke joinery is also a highly valued element within our designs. Well thought out storage can completely transform how you use a home, particularly for clients with young families where we need to strike a balance between a lived-in home that can also feel calm and uncluttered. We love to design the joinery ourselves and have an established network of craftsmen who can bring our vision to life using natural materials, often locally sourced. 

Particularly in our heritage properties, with their quirky corners and uneven walls, we work up our design layouts to include built-in storage solutions, joinery in alcoves whilst furniture-style cabinetry keeps spaces practical and elegant. 

Craftsmanship is clearly integral to your work. Could you share an example of a recent project where a particular material, maker or detail became a defining element.

When Studio Far West were first appointed to work on an iconic hotel in Cornwall, one of the key areas we were asked to concept design was the restaurant with panoramic Atlantic Ocean views. Lighting was a key element which needed addressing and we wanted to bring an organic sculptural element to our design proposal to replace the rather regular repetitive nature of the existing pendant drum lights. 

Drawing inspiration from local Cornish Rock Samphire we got to work studying the natural form of the stems and thinking about how this could be interpreted and translated into a sculptural installation incorporating decorative lighting.  Coincidentally we had recently come across the stunning work of a local steam bending woodworker. We brainstormed the concept together sharing our initial Rock Samphire imagery and developed hand sketches to design a fixture that had both an impressive scale, yet a delicacy of proportion. Our ideas were enhanced to include a fluted core from which the individual stems were fixed, enabling each pendant to have a unique form. This strategy gave us a central fixing point to work with the existing ceiling light positions and gave flexibility of sizing allowing different shape pendants throughout the space.  

As interior architects, you occupy a space between design and architecture. How does this dual perspective inform how you think about structure, light and spatial flow?

Interior design does tend to focus on the more aesthetic, functional and experiential aspects of interior spaces. We both have degrees in Interior Architecture and very much have this in mind when designing spaces. We have the knowledge and understanding of buildings and what is structurally possible, opening up existing spaces, extending new ones and pushing design boundaries while staying aligned with planning constraints. We can approach full renovation projects from the outset, configuring and planning layouts to ensure the interior space flows in a way that best matches the client’s lifestyle. We will often come up with two to three completely different interpretations of the space, challenging what is possible, finally settling on a hybrid of all the ideas culminating in a very considered design. 

As part of our tender design package, we offer lighting and electrical plans, enabling contractors to accurately price before the job commences on site.  Once the floor plans are set, we locate switches and sockets to suit furniture placement, and advise on lighting circuits to create different lighting moods, from the more practical and functional spotlight setting, to the low ambient lighting created from decorative wall and table lamps.

Looking ahead, how do you see Studio Far West evolving… whether in the types of projects you take on, the collaborations you foster, or the stories you hope your spaces will tell?

Our passion really lies in collaborating with clients, whether that’s a private residential or commercial space, and our core value is the same; pushing design narratives and the potential to create truly one-off spaces that can be enjoyed for years to come.  We hope to continue working on our industry relationships to grow our already strong network to be able to provide our clients with a seamless bespoke service. 

We have a very exciting private residential project starting, which involves a home spa and swimming pool. Drawing on Jennie’s background, we can’t wait to bring our skills to bear on this one… watch this space!

studiofarwest.co.uk