The First House Notes Film: A Cinematic Portrait of an Architect’s Home
Today marks the release of the first House Notes film, a new side project that lets me continue filming architecture in my own visual language, but with the focus shifted away from the buyer and towards the architect.
The first film centres on The Station Lodge, designed and lived in by architect Andrei Saltykov of Andrei Saltykov and Partners. Located in Motspur Park, south-west London, the house occupies a narrow triangular plot that backs directly onto a railway line, a constraint that became the project’s defining feature. The film explores how Saltykov transformed those limitations into a clear, characterful form: a single, dramatic volume that holds both a triple-height living space and bedrooms oriented towards the tracks. The Station Lodge reveals how a personal project can express not just architectural thinking, but the life lived within it.
Much of my past work with The Modern House was about uncovering the stories behind design choices, effectively native content that celebrated ideas, not transactions. Those films weren’t about selling homes; they were about understanding them. House Notes is a continuation of that, but with the subject turned inward. I wanted to hear directly from the people who shaped these spaces, those who have real skin in the game. It’s an extension of a career-long fascination with architects and the creative decisions that define their work, only now that philosophy has been scaled up into the homes they design for themselves.
The film was shot across two days with regular camera op Chris Atkins. The primary shoot covered the interview and the majority of the b-roll, with a follow-up day devoted to capturing drone footage of the property and additional material at the architect’s previous home, a house he also designed, included here as a point of contrast. In that earlier space, sweeping views shaped how the rooms were oriented; in the new home, the absence of those views influenced how intimacy and privacy became part of the design language.
I made the decision to shoot the entire project anamorphically, even adapting the drone to maintain visual consistency throughout. The optical character of anamorphic glass, the slight distortion, the stretch, the way light blooms at the frame’s edges, suited the tone of the piece perfectly. It introduced a gentle imperfection, a cinematic realism that mirrored the tactility of the spaces themselves.
Most of the shoot was handled on the gimbal using the Laowa 32mm full-frame anamorphic prime and Balzar Mantis 25mm, with the 32mm also used for the wide interview setup. The Laowa 28–55mm and 50–100mm zooms provided broader coverage across interiors and details. The result is a film that feels cohesive yet textural, a visual language that lets the architecture breathe.
At its core, House Notes is about slowing down, about meeting architecture through the people who made it, and understanding what home means when it’s designed by the hands that live in it. In many ways, it continues the same ethos I explored in my earlier work with The Modern House, thoughtful, design-led storytelling, but now with longer form, more space to reflect, and a shift in perspective from ownership to authorship.
If you’re working on an architecture or design project and want to capture it with the same care and cinematic approach, get in touch via my contact page.
