In the expansive atrium of the Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour, where design’s future is constantly being reimagined, Brigitta Spinocchia Freund has carved out a reverent, radical sanctuary. Her contribution to WOW!house 2025, The Curator’s Room, is a feminist manifesto mapped in mohair, cast in bronze, embroidered in gold thread and whispered between brushstrokes.
Unveiled on June 3 and open to the public through July 3, The Curator’s Room is a love letter to women artists and designers – both celebrated and overlooked. It’s a space where the names forgotten by art history books are etched into the fibres of bespoke rugs, and where emerging talents like Sarabande prodigy Darcey Fleming sit comfortably beside mid-century legends like Charlotte Perriand and Gabriella Crespi. The room pulses with a layered, soulful energy – both sanctuary and studio, both museum and manifesto.
Spinocchia Freund, the multi-hyphenate visionary behind the namesake London-based interior architecture studio, didn’t merely curate a space, she staged a conversation. “It all began with Ninth Street Women and The Story of Art Without Men,” she tells me, referencing Mary Gabriel and Katy Hessel’s seminal texts which shine a light on the systemic exclusion of women from art history and the legacies of female artists who shaped entire movements but were long overshadowed by their male counterparts. Spinocchia Freund took this as a personal challenge: could she design a space where every object – every brushstroke, every thread – was touched by the hands of women?
