Comment: 'London's renters deserve homes with beautiful interiors too'
During my 15 years of renting in London, the only constant (apart from clinical depression) was an Iggy Pop gig poster.
Gifted to me by a friend, it was incredibly lurid, nuclear green and shocking pink, and featured Iggy sprawled on the front of a stage at the height of his punk beauty.
That poster kept me company in a succession of house-shares around Hackney then Camden, bringing a bit of colour to rooms that you may call, ‘hygienically challenged’.
In a funny way, which I wasn’t conscious of at the time, the poster was a bit of comfort during those years; putting it up again on a new wall meant I was doing at least one thing to personalise my living quarters at a time that was marked by unnerving impermanence.
Which is one reason why we loved Katherine Ormerod’s new book about interior design for renters, called Your Not Forever Home.
It is a welcome way for London’s under-pressure renters to lend a bit of love to their properties and make them feel a little more like home.
No grotty music posters are involved sadly, but as Ormerod tells us in her interview, you can do a lot with not very much to improve your living space.
What I enjoy about her approach is the determination not to let the house win, so to speak. Rather than accepting a grim bathroom in the face of landlord apathy, you can come up with clever ways to transform it, reversibly at that.
Creativity to solve crises: it’s the London way.
