LIVING THE DREAM

Reviving this grand London villa fulfilled a long-standing ambition of both the designer and the owner, creating a luxe family home in the process

- Anna Burnside

Eight years ago, Tatiana Hebel and Anna Saroukhanova were having a coffee in London's Holland Park. Wouldn't it be great, the two friends agreed, to renovate one of these grand stucco villas together one day?

Fast forward to 2025, and Tatiana now lives in the Ladbroke Conservation Area, a highly desirable spot between Holland Park and Portobello Road. The magnificent home she shares with her family has been gutted, extended, renovated, air-conditioned and generally dragged into the 21st century by Anna and her partner Ralf Heckmann. The couple work together as Heckmann Design and Anna is particularly proud of the fact that, although she and Tatiana are great friends, the studio won this job through a competitive tendering process. Knowing each other since they were teenagers meant Anna had a lot of useful insights into what Tatiana would like from her home. She's tidy and practical: her dream house would be streamlined and efficient as well as elegant and chic. And, sure enough, this was The table by the window is a Tom Faulkner design, while the curtains are Kieffer's Reloaded jacquard. The alcove bar area, off the living room, with bespoke carpentry and more Verde Oasis stone. reflected in the brief, with Tatiana requesting “a house that works like a well-made German car”.

So Ralf, an actual German, got to work on the alterations that would inject some Vorsprung durch Technik to the three-storey mid-19th-century property. This involved a discrete upwards extension to create more headroom, while also being conservation-area friendly, en-suites for all the bedrooms, a dressing room off the master bedroom, a new staircase, underfloor heating and enlarged doorways and windows.