The Fog House. Photo: Openhouse

CELEBRATING its 30th year, the Open House Festival kicks off again next Thursday – the annual chance for architecture and design fans to explore some of London’s best loved and most mysterious homes.

More than 100 homeowners will open their doors and many for the first time, including an eye-catching Clerkenwell building that was once sculptor Marc Quinn’s art studio.

Later the bricks and mortar underwent radical change when broadcaster and Loose Women panellist Janet Street Porter commissioned architect David Adjaye to design something much grander.

The Fog House, in Clerkenwell Close, was created with privacy in mind – “a secret from the outside” – with frosted windows.

Janet Street-Porter. Photo: Jem stone_CC BY 2.0

Ms Street Porter also once lived just around the corner in Britton Street, in a building designed for her by her lifelong friend and celebrated architect Piers Gough. They had met after joining the Architectural Association on the same day in the 1960s.

She moved out in 2001 but the house was recently given listed protection.

While appearing on Celebrity Home Secrets – the ITV show where famous people talk about the places where they have lived – Ms Street-Porter told how one night she returned to the house after winning a Bafta.

“I came home and I was so drunk I put the award on the second-floor window sill and it fell out of the window and I never saw it again,” she recalled.

See the Open House website for the full list of properties to view.