The upper echelon of London’s property market has earned itself a reputation for being synonymous with luxury, attracting some of the most ambitious investors from all over the world.
London’s luxury house market has seen exponential progression, with properties becoming increasingly sophisticated.
But the days where having a rooftop swimming pool and a Jaguar parked outside constituted high living are beginning to fade, with many luxury properties becoming increasingly imaginative.
Now, investors with a love of art will be pleased to know that the first luxury apartment building with its own private art gallery has been unveiled this week.
There are 44 luxury residences at The Chilterns on 24 Paddington Street, with most of them being sold in 2013, as well as a restaurant, 24 hour-hotel style concierge service, gymnasium and a private cinema.
But it is the new art gallery that has proved to be the most intriguing feature, containing a number of original pictures of the local area by David Bailey, which the chief executive of Galliard Homes labelling it as one of the complex’s “most exciting and unique features”.

Views of London

The gallery contains a total of 10 specially commissioned framed prints from Bailey, all of which depict views of the local area including Regency architecture, Regent’s Park and the boating lake, the BBC HQ, Baker Street Underground Station.
Bailey, a former photographer for Vogue magazine, has also lent his extensive expertise and knowledge in helping to choose a further 16 large scale pieces to display in the gallery.
And the 78-year-old says the Chilterns has helped to provide the ideal platform in which to promote his own view of London.
“Marylebone seems to have an abundance of goodies from a great fish and chip shop to Wigmore Hall, Damien Hirst’s office and shop. The best way to see a place is to photograph it. You don’t always see a place, a person, a park until you look at a photograph. So the new collection of work at The Chilterns provides my modest look at Marylebone. Keep looking until you really begin to see,” he told the Independent.
There is seemingly no shortage of people willing to buy into Bailey’s view of the capital, with both Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie once reportedly interested in buying an apartment in the building in 2014.
As well as celebrities, there are all the usual suspects of royals from the Middle East, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
The feature of a private art gallery may well set a precedent for London’s luxury property market. It will therefore be interesting to see how things develop for the rest of the city’s high-class apartment complexes.
Wednesday is Vincent Van Gogh’s birthday and the Dutch painter, who was born in 1853, is making a comeback (of sorts) with a new biopic that hits cinemas this fall. He is also the subject of an unlikely public art piece entitled Van Gogh’s Ear. The Berlin art duo Elmgreen and Dragset created the ear-shaped swimming pool that opens on 13 April in New York City.