The SBID UK Interior Design Icons were selected to recognise leading design practices throughout the UK who have consistently displayed exceptional standards within our esteemed industry network.
This week’s instalment of the SBID Icon Insights series features Ellis Design Studio. The multi-award-winning hospitality interior design studio create daring, conceptually driven interiors, infused with depth and meaning, which are beautifully cinematic, yet anchored in a rich sense of provenance and narrative.
Upstairs at the 1878 – the design is infused with a strong sense of storytelling and a clearly expressed design narrative. The space has a sense of the unexpected and is imbued with vintage-inspired glamour.
At the project’s inception, our team works closely to explore and delve deeply into the essence of the design narrative. This creative collaboration informs all elements of the design process, which continues throughout the design process, to ensure a consistent and clearly articulated design vision.
Interiors are continually being shaped by forces within the broader world around us. We believe sustainability, tech integration and experience-led/experiential interiors will become ever-more important influences shaping the direction of interiors.
As a Studio, we enjoy the challenge of exploring a wide range of design styles. Our approach is based around consistently striving to weave a cohesive narrative throughout the design scheme and communicate the concept through carefully considered touchpoints within the design.
A significant portion of our work is based around the fusion of physical and digital design touchpoints in a luxury design setting. We have become leaders in the creation of spaces with a strong design narrative and a tech enabled immersive element.
Due to the complexity of our designs, we work closely with architects and engineers to bring our creative visions to life. We collaborate with architects on spatial, technical and statutory matters and with structural engineers on a broad range of design elements, including feature bars as well as collaborating to create structures for supporting and suspending ‘showstopper’ elements within out design schemes.
The Studio works with a vast array of suppliers, and we continually seek out new relationships to ensure we’re continually discovering new design approaches. We also work with a range of artists and artisans including fine artists, metal workers, glass blowers, ceramicists, furniture makers etc to help bring our designs to life.
About Ellis Design Studio
Ellis Design Studio is multi-award-winning hospitality interior design studio, based in London. We create daring, conceptually driven interiors, infused with depth and meaning, which are beautifully cinematic, yet anchored in a rich sense of provenance and narrative. We create immersive concepts and extraordinary, memorable, inspiring destinations. Ellis Design Studio specialises in hospitality interior design projects in the UK and internationally. The Studio comprises a strong team with extensive experience across the hospitality sector, including bars, restaurants, 4&5 star hotels, competitive socialising venues, experiential venues and private member’s clubs. Working with clients like Live Nation, IMG, Inception Group, M&C Saatchi & Historic Royal Palaces, we elevate the guest experience, creating immersive, vibrant, surprising and unexpected social spaces.
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Multi-award-winning interior designers, Ellis Design Studio have designed the new flagship Electric Shuffle venue at the iconic London Bridge, located in the very heart of central London. The venue comprises over 8,000 sqft of space, located directly under the concourse of London Bridge Station within five historic Victorian brick vault arches. Ellis Design Studio have converted these grand and atmospheric vaults into a spectacular new venue, comprising two show stopping bars and 10 shuffle table play spaces.
The venue has been meticulously designed to deliver a dramatic, experiential and conceptual space, showcasing the spectacular Victorian architecture still present below London Bridge station. The design takes inspiration from the location of the venue at London Bridge and its function as a major transport hub. This idea of connectivity and dynamism are explored within the design with nods to both the transport aesthetic and the Art Deco period as a golden age of travel.
The main bar design comprises beautifully complex triptych of arches designed to regress telescopically into the geometry of the existing brick archway. The bar includes a layering of hand painted finishes, bespoke wallpapers and custom designed joinery and metalwork detailing. The bar’s design was inspired by the movement of light as it regresses through tunnels. This idea fuses the electrical-inspired aesthetic of Electric Shuffle with the train & transport inspired elements of the scheme.
The second bar comprises a series of elongated sinuous arches, creating a sense of dramatic verticality within the space. The bar sits as a focal point stretching between the last two arches and its design was inspired by the complex arrangements of vaults and arches frequently seen in railway station architecture. Custom made chrome hemispheres set within the hand painted, illuminated arches are suggestive of over-sized rivets and the industrial-inspired ribbed timber and metal strapping details pay homage to the railway inspired aesthetic.
Custom designed lighting and bespoke designed materials reference Electric Shuffle’s Art Deco aesthetic but have been reimagined and overlaid with nods to elements of train & transport inspired aesthetics. Elements such as the dramatic oversized brass chandeliers, which run throughout the venue, have been custom designed by the Studio to pay homage to the iconic lighting found in grand railway concourses of the 20th Century.
Bespoke timber joinery has been designed to run as a central band wrapping the perimeter walls of the venue. This provides a visual and physical framework to the spaces as well as lending a sense of rhythm and continuity. The panelling, which utilises a mixture of ribbed timber, pleated velvets, metal meshes and textured glass, is reminiscent of the forms found within vintage train carriage detailing.
As part of the brief, the beautifully designed shuffleboard tables have been further evolved by the Studio to suit the complex geometry of the venue’s architecture. The shuffle table design is inspired by the aesthetic of the grand ocean liners, on which the game had its original heyday, a design which perfectly complements the design inspiration of the London Bridge scheme. Curvilinear forms in the timber and decorative copper pipework reinforce the Art Deco aesthetic along with inlaid copper details, leather upholstered detailing and laser cut metal elements, which bring together a mix of classic and contemporary, Deco and industrial.
A new dramatic cantilevered metalwork feature, which includes pleated velvet and mesh detailing, has been custom designed for the venue to support lighting and enclose & enhance the tables, reinforces the transport inspired aesthetic.
The idea of connectivity and dynamism are further explored through the use of dramatic wall mural art within the venue. The large-scale hand painted work takes inspiration from the Futurist art movement and in particular pays homage to a school of early 20th Century British artists who worked under the banner of ‘Vortism’. Their work was inspired by the kinetic energy brought to transportation through the use of electricity and the Studio has taken inspiration from this idea of movement electrification and energy.
“The essence of the interior design for Electric Shuffle London Bridge has been inspired by the energy, excitement and the age of early electrical experimentation fused with the dynamism of the early 20th century transport hubs, and the beauty & lustre of the golden age of train travel, all set against dramatic sweeping historical Victorian brick vault arches of London Bridge Station” - Alan Ellis, MD at Ellis Design Studio.
The Studio has created a beautifully designed, dramatic and conceptual interior to form an engaging and original, multi-layered scheme.
Ellis Design Studio weaves together clear design narratives in their work through an artisanal approach, focused on meticulous detailing and beautiful craftsmanship. The Studio works with a range of experts with experience across a vast array of fields including lighting & furniture designers, fine artists, ceramicists, glassblowers, metalworkers and artisans to name a few. Consequently, their work is imbued with a sense of provenance, uniqueness and a carefully crafted element of storytelling.
The Studio has been shortlisted and won several prestigious design awards for its work in the hospitality sector including being shortlisted for a Design Week Award 2020 and recently winning two prestigious Restaurant & Bar Design Awards 2020.
Ellis Design Studio is a multi-award-winning Interior Design studio specialising in hospitality interior design projects. The studio was founded in 2017 with a team who have extensive experience across restaurants, bars, 4- & 5-star luxury hotels, private members clubs and experiential / competitive socialising venues.
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