The evolution of industrial buildings into multimillion-pound luxury homes was a slow burn. For architect Mike Stiff, co-founder of Stiff + Trevillion, Andy Warhol and his 1960s New York studio and social club The Factory were the “genesis” of the trend. By the late 20th century, loft living had become shorthand for an avant-garde lifestyle. Think of Glenn Close’s gritty Meatpacking District loft in Fatal Attraction; the flat instantly marked out her character as a modern urbanite flirting with danger, compared with the bourgeois “family man” played by Michael Douglas.