These White Walls

What inspired the founding of your company?

The founding of the company was driven by a desire to infuse the built environment with bold feminine beauty, and from a commitment to consciously design legacy spaces that would stand the test of time. I knew that to have greater impact I would need to create a space where designers would be drawn to work collaboratively with a shared vision at the fore, and so building a company as well as a vision has become a vital and satisfying part of the experience.

What is the core philosophy behind your work?

Our design philosophy is one of Blank Canvas Creativity—we believe in an intuitive design approach and allow each of our spaces to emerge as a unique expression of individuality. We like to redefine luxury at a personal level so formulaic design is off the cards at the studio. I do not believe we are here to continue reproducing what is, I believe we are here to continually reimagine what is possible.

We do take a tripartite approach to each project, considering how Narrative, Materials and Artistry each contribute to a scheme’s uniqueness. With this approach we define a vision for our clients and then translate it into a material experience, creating incredible bespoke spaces that enable them to live more beautifully.

Is there a particular aspect of your company or projects you’d like to highlight?

Many people do not realise the full extent of how bespoke we are as a studio. We can actually create anything, from the forks on the tables to the finishes on the walls. Our approach involves crafting unique personal threads that continually resonate emotionally throughout the space, evoking a sense of the person who lives in or hosts the space with those who come to occupy it.

In the obvious examples of HIDE, we represented chef Ollie Dabbous subliminally numerous times throughout each of the dining spaces: in the Hide/Seek rooms guests may notice his necklace cast into the frieze that lines the walls, and elsewhere in The Shadow Room amidst a collection of antique corbels, one of the unique bespoke corbels has the profile of Ollie’s face cast into it so that seen from the side he appears to be coming out of the wall toward the table; and further in The Reading Room, the paper arch is filled with sculptures of artichokes that were Ollie’s chosen ingredient for his inaugural dishes; elsewhere whilst eating his dishes, diners will bite into gilded chocolate leaves shaped by bespoke pastry cutters we had made to showcase Ollie’s seasonal menu… the list goes on.

This aspect runs throughout our designs (many in unpublished private work) and we hope to publish a project later this year that exemplifies a very unique Majlis we designed on a desert plot in the Emirates.

Our client wanted the interior of the building to resonate with the same force of nature that he felt so connected with in the vast desert outside, that would also remind him of his nomadic ancestry. So our narrative for the space began by invoking the eddies of the Shamal winds that shape the desert his ancestors walked through to reach the site, before the permanence of the Majlis was established. We designed a 10 metre x 2 metre chandelier made up of hundreds of golden flutes, as the interior centrepiece. The chandelier is dynamic and twinkles in response to sounds and voices within the space, and animates most spectacularly when the bespoke Steinway (that we had embossed with scrolls of notes and desert flower motifs) is played beneath it, flashing and pulsing overhead in unison with the sounds.

Meanwhile, guests will dine on long tables filled with gold resin drips (connecting with the light piece above) and mounted on twisted sculptural bases that match the floral inlays we had inlaid into the stone floor, and woven into the bespoke rugs that soften the space, resting beside the bespoke benches—one in particular, a Camel Bench we designed for the owner that is upholstered in the genuine tanned hide of one of his past favourite camels… and on it goes, so everything in the interior connects through the bespoke designs, oh so subliminally. Our aim is to create a meaningful constellation of moments for the owner and their guests that will amplify the experience of connection.