Grand Designs: House of the Year x Mountain View x Vlaze

A stunning Vlaze vitreous enamel dining table was recently featured in an episode of Grand Designs: House of the Year. Matt and Laura, owners and creators of Mountain View chose a beautiful vitreous enamel tabletop to feature prominently in the main living area of the house. We also welcomed the Channel Four film crew to our factory to capture our manufacturing process for the show. 

Read on to find out more about this pioneering and original home! 

Mountain View 

Mountain View, based in South East London, is the creative vision of architect Matt and wife Laura. The original house was a hotchpotch of Edwardian spaces decorated in various shades of brown and gave them a somewhat blank canvas. Matt wanted his family’s home to express all the things they were interested in. For example, the prominent 2-dimensional silhouette of a mountain from which the house takes its name, was inspired by pictures of a ride at Disneyland! 

Laura was very understanding of Matt’s ambitious concepts saying, “well, like every idea that Matt initially has, I was very concerned, but I knew that it was his one opportunity, given that it’s our house, to really go for it and do something that he loves.” 

The property has many autobiographical references including painted red and white columns replicating the poles used to map landscapes, while sunken in the floor are survey markers. Both are a reference to Laura’s student days and her love of nature and the outdoors. 

The striking half-demolished walls were originally the back of the house. “We wanted to keep some of the original character of the house, so the brick walls were retained, and if you’re going to keep a bit of wall why not make use of it and use it as a bit of storage space.”  

Sustainability focus 

Photographs by Jim Stephenson

Matt and Laura also harnessed their ingenuity to focus on sustainability. In the kitchen, they used recycled chopping boards, single-use plastics and blue full-fat milk bottle tops to create units and work surfaces to stunning effect. 

On the steps leading to the kitchen, there is the phrase ‘waste not want not’ which feels very appropriate. “So that was something that my (Matt’s) grandmother always used to say in the kitchen relentlessly, so whenever in my kitchen always think waste not want not.”  

Vlaze vitreous enamel tabletop 

Mixed with the clever use of recyclables there are some brand new elements like the striking Vlaze tabletop, which is no less sustainable.  Coated in a vitreous enamel finish which is fully recyclable, non- toxic and highly durable – built to last a lifetime! 

The table became the inspiration for a range he subsequently launched – that went onto win a WallPaper* award.  

The collection, titled Liquid Geology, was inspired by rugged coastal scenery, underwater deep-sea landscapes and Claude Monet’s 1880’s paintings of sunrise and sunset on the River Thames. The tabletops offer a reflective, lightly undulating surface like that of a lake which appears to float on rocky underwater outcrops. 

The tabletops are coated with rich blue, green or orange vitreous enamel and fired in a kiln at 820 degrees celsius, before being hand splattered in a contrasting tone and re-fired. 

C4 Visiting A.J Wells 

Matt reached out to A.J Wells & Sons to create their wonderful tabletop that serves as a focal point in a home that defies all conventional rules. Manufacture involves coating precision laser cut steel with multiple layers of enamel to form a marble effect which “is as individual as a set of fingerprints”. 

The Channel 4 film crew wanted to document our manufacturing process and we were delighted to show them around the factory and let them film our highly skilled team at work. 

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Huge congratulations to Matt and Laura for creating their wonderful, pioneering and very original Mountain View home, and thank you to them both for choosing to use our beautiful vitreous enamel product.  

We’ll leave the final words to, Grand Design’s presenter, Kevin McCloud: 

“It is pioneering and deeply odd and I love that about it. There are so many great qualities that architecture can bring to our lives. Organization, clarity, stories, light, space, connection, narrative all good or actually recognizable. Then there are those harder-to-spot qualities the emotional ones like the joy and the delight that a building can bring to people’s lives… let me tell you that in this building the joy and the delight are absolutely palpable.”