Retrouvius is Maria Speake and Adam Hills’s mixture salvage enterprise and design studio: they lead by instance and we’ve been drawing inspiration from them for years. The couple met as structure college students in Glasgow within the early Nineties and, after witnessing lots of the metropolis’s historic constructions being felled, they discovered their calling. “We simply couldn’t consider we had been seeing supplies and constructing elements of great worth routinely discarded,” writes Maria.
They’ve since settled in London the place they rescue historic components—supplies, furnishings, lighting, and fixtures, from Artwork Deco mirrored paneling to picket cigar molds. Whereas Adam hunts down their choices, Maria and her staff tackle design commissions by which they incorporate resuscitated items.
Retrouvius, Maria’s just-published guide, is a compendium of those home initiatives. Shoppers embody Helena Bonham Carter, who penned the foreword (“I keep in mind being in Man and Natasha Hill’s house and considering, ‘Oh, that’s what I want, a museum cupboard to cowl my dishwasher,” writes Helena by the use of explaining how she got here to rent Retrouvius). “Our mission has grow to be to allow and encourage re-use, not simply as a design choice, however as an perspective,” explains Maria. “Accountability, resourcefulness, respect, and restore—aren’t these qualities extra precious as we speak than ever?” The White Home would do nicely to take observe.
Images courtesy of Retrouvius and Rizzoli, from Retrouvius: Up to date Salvage: Designing Houses from a Philosophy of Re-Use, as credited.
