Hanover Terrace

Hanover Terrance is a project by Brian Clarke located in a private home located within in a John Nash terrace in London. It links the ground floor, entrance hall and first floor, and upper levels of the house together through a series of interventions in the form of integral artworks conceived as a 'necklace of experiences'. The vision for the project was located in the ideology of Gesamtkunswerk ('total work of art'), in which a wide range of media harmonises to become an environment in itself.

Hanover Terrace consists of a specially-designed woolen carpet, which leads the visitor from ground to first floor via a sweeping staircase to a room with a stained glass fanlight, windows and skylight and an interrelated hand-cut Venetian glass smalti mosaic floor. There are also painted and gold leaf-covered wall panels and doors with individually designed cast-bronze door handles. The mosaic artwork continues into the rooms adjacent to the landing, covering the floor and the walls of the bathroom, where there is a stained glass window with a text by Charles Baudelaire, rendered in the owner's handwriting.

Together, the project fulfils the Austrian owner's brief of turning an unprepossessing corner of a fine house into an encompassing artistic event reminiscent of the Wiener Werkstatte ('Vienna Workshop'), an association of architects, artists, designers and artisans established in 1903.