THERE are high-rise council flats, industrial gas turbines and a superstore on his Vauxhall doorstep. But Madonna, Elton John and Elle Macpherson love his home. Once past his oversized metal door, you enter a surreal world: a 26,000sq ft former handbag factory. The factory is now a stylish home, office and gallery, where the contemporary furniture exhibition, Mattia Bonetti: a Collaboration with David Gill, is showing from 10 June.

The space belongs to curator, style guru and furniture and interior designer David Gill, a fortysomething art historian who started his career at Christie’s and specialises in revolutionary furniture designers of the 1920s and 1930s. He is also a patron and promoter of new talent, and works closely with his artists, overseeing the design, execution and interpretation of works.

When Gill first saw the factory it had fallen into disrepair.

“Habitat’s designer, Tom Dixon, worked in part of it. The rest had been empty for years. It was derelict,” says Gill, speaking rapidly in his Spanish accent (of Dutch and Spanish origins, Gill spent his childhood in various European capitals). Dixon did not want to buy the factory and Gill was looking for a place for the overspill furniture from his eponymous Fulham Road gallery, where he sells 20th and 21st century decorative art from around the world.

Gill, a self-made man who has always relied on his good eye and intuition to make money, bought the property in 1995.

“I can’t remember how much I paid for it,” he claims. Two years later he got to work masterminding the building works: gutting the property, but retaining its enormous steel girders and original industrial windows. “I worked with the architect,” he says. “I had clear ideas about volumes, walls, types of doors and finishes.” Even the metal banisters and staircases were commissioned to his specification. “A metal engineer lived in the building for a year and built everything,” he says.

By 1999, Gill had turned the factory into a gallery, open-plan office and 2,000sq ft apartment. In the apartment, he constructed three walls, around which he created an L-shaped reception/dining area, bedroom, guest room, wetroom and industrial kitchen. There are no doors: “They restrict your movement,” says Gill. The apartment has exposed beams, polished concrete floors and high ceilings. The walls are white and the window frames grey. “But colour is important,” he explains. He has added highlights of red, yellow, green, turquoise and burgundy.

Gill calls his flat a “studio-in-progress” displaying art and using furniture in it before selling the items. Richard Synder’s Love Slave Box, for instance, was used to separate the hallway from the dinning area, but was recently bought by a collector, so now the artist’s wooden Magician’s Phoenician Chest has taken its place. “Still not right,” tuts Gill. Nearby are Madonna’s shoes, signed and in a glass case. (“Are you certain that’s my signature?” Madonna teased when she visited.) Above Jake and Dinos Chapman’s Piggy Back sculpture hangs Sarah Lucas’s photograph, Complete Arsehole. Count the naked bodies and breasts in Gill’s flat and you would be there for ages.

The look is idiosyncratic and individual. The eight-foot-high Ink Pad by Abigail Lane hangs above the dining table; beside it, a Virgin Mary with a dagger sticking out of her is wrapped in plastic police tape. Gill has Swiss chalet dining chairs by the late French designer Charlotte Perriand, who during her life worked extensively with Le Corbusier, and a Garouste & Bonetti 12-seater oval dining table with a bronze and scagliola top.

Called Salome, he sells it in the gallery for £9,000, but uses one for his dinner parties. When he wants to invite more people, he takes them downstairs to the gallery. Recently he had a sit-down dinner there for 140.

The reception area has a 1930s Eugene Printz sofa covered in burgundy silk velvet, a 1925 Baroque Venetian stucco chair in green satin and gilt, and a stainless-steel and glass “ring” coffee table. “It was Garouste & Bonetti’s last collaboration,” Gill says.

Art books are piled on three contemporary Grillo Demo console tables that run the length of the windows. There is lots of light: natural, low-level and theatre spots. “Spots are flexible,” Gill says. “They allow me to create my lighting at will.”

IN THE bedroom Gill made his white leather bed. It appears to float, thanks to the fluorescent tubes underneath it and behind the bedhead. “I wanted to create the ultimate reading light,” he explains. The room also has a large flat-screen television, a 1960s fibreglass and brown leather chair, and a vast picture of Michael Jackson by the artist Paul McCarthy, beside the bed.

The wetroom has limestone floors and a stone bench that is “very comfortable to sit on and have a shower”. The concrete walls are painted cream. Gill designed the granite sink and there is an enormous Paul McCarthy latex sculpture of a penis and vagina; “to remind me of where I came from,” laughs Gill.

Everywhere you look, there are collector pieces. The stainlesssteel kitchen boasts a Le Corbusier table, Jean Prouvé chairs and an atmospheric 1950s Serge Mouille black lacquered aluminium mobile light. Even the guest room houses Jean Cocteau ceramics and Man Ray and Brassai photographs.

But Gill feels cramped; next year he plans to build a 6,500sq ft penthouse on his roof. “Ahh, that’ll be such an exciting project,” he concludes happily.

HOW TO GET THE LOOK Mattia Bonetti: a Collaboration with David Gill: original, playful and kitsch furniture by Mattia Bonetti, showing from 10 June to 3 July, at 3 Loughborough Street, SE11 (020 7793 1100).

David Gill Gallery: 20th century and contemporary furniture, objects and jewellery. Period pieces by 1950s designers including Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé.

By appointment at 60 Fulham Road, SW3 (020 7589 5946).

Wetroom: from Fired Earth, which has more than 50 showrooms. Call 01295 814399 for your nearest store.

Lighting: Sally Storey’s design service at John Cullen Lighting. Its showroom can simulate almost any lighting mood you want. 585 King’s Road, SW6 (020 7371 5400).

Kitchen: Alternative Plans supplies contemporary kitchens by Italian manufacturer Boffi and German manufacturer Hacker. Call 020 7228 6460, or visit www.alternative-plans.co.uk.

Bed: for one similar to David Gill’s, try Viaduct, which sells a variety of white leather beds, including three styles from Cappellini. 1-10 Summer’s Street, EC1 (020 7278 8456).

Bathroom: Granite & Marble International, 35 Pensbury Place, Westminster House, SW8 (020 7498 2742).

CHAMPAGNE AS PART of Art Fortnight London, two weeks of events and exhibitions from 21 June to 5 July, which celebrate London as art capital of the world, Homes & Property is offering a pair of tickets to one of the exclusive events – A Collector at Home, a champagne reception hosted by David Gill, dealer, curator and collector, in his gallery in south London. The event will take place on 25 June from 7pm to 9pm.

Gill’s collection includes a number of important works by contemporary artists, including Paul McCarthy (famed for his Blockhead installation outside Tate Modern last year) and the latest collection of art furniture by Mattia Bonetti.

How to enter: Send your name, address, and contact phone number on a postcard to: H&P Evening, Art Fortnight London, 44 Duke’s Street, St James’s, London SW1Y 6DD, by Wednesday 9 June. The winner will be notified by Friday 11 June.