Come dine with us

BDG architecture + design for Assembly Room
Design: Geoffrey Anderson and Sarah Bunch

With the Queen’s Jubilee and the UK capital being host city for the 2012 Olympics, what better choice as a partner for this brief than Assembly Room, a quintessentially British brand. The Britishness has been expressed throughout the proposed design, incorporated through a number of elements:
• Cupcakes
• Car models
• Photos of all things British
• Flowers
• British teddy bears
• Crockery

As well as being a showroom for Assembly Room, the space’s primary (or secondary, depending on how you look at it) function is as a place to go and eat, and in line with the British theme we have gone for a tea room serving cupcakes.

The space has been influenced by the fashion designer Margaret Howell, with whom Peter Wall, director and co-founder of Assembly Room, has a natural brand affinity. There are also references to Fifties’ design through the use of colour and people in our image to reflect the inspiration used for the sofa/armchair items by Assembly Room from the same era.

The space is functional to accommodate approximately 30 people and the furniture was arranged so that it not only showcases the furniture but also allows users to eat and drink from in a bistro-style arrangement. One area is on a raised level and framed by the manifestation on the glass window to create a sense of theatre.

This helps to draw potential consumers to focus on the furniture when looking in from outside. The raised level has a curved edge in one corner and an inset of carpet to depict the detail of the long Eaton chair at a larger scale. Scale is an important feature of the design and there are several references to the detail of the furniture item, including:
• A carpet insert in the raised floor. It reflects the detail of the padded seat of the Long Eaton chair.
• The leg detail of the Burgess Table, as it has a strong geometry. It creates a sense of enclosure in the back corner and anchors the space (the detail would be in cardboard and painted to keep within budget).
• The use of Assembly Room’s storage system. This creates an element of division and a display vehicle for the British artefacts.
• The circular motifs on the far wall. These are an arrangement of Burgess table tops in varying shades of timber and leather.

The solution is cost-effective as we have little structure in the space, and what there is has been made from cardboard reinforced with timber substrates; graphics have been painted.

The left wall flip downs; the furniture items are fixed to the wall when it is vertical, then repositioned when the wall is lowered.

Keen and Able for Kartell
Design: Eddie McAtominey
Project: Bartell
Kartell, the Italian company that since 1949 has redefined plastics through innovation, introduces its ‘transparently stylish’ Bartell.

The latest in recycled plastics technology and tooling from Kartell’s extensive back catalogue has been used to enable a venue to be constructed cost effectively around floating tiered seating, at two floors, in a gravity-defying ‘Escher’ manner, combining a visual feast of colour, texture, light and fashion… together with a selection from its range of eponymous plastic furnishings.

Enter via a concealed sliding door; glide across a translucent floating floor supported on ruby-coloured extruded beams; be drawn to the clarity of the Luxardo branded bar… Honesty is everything. Take a seat on the richly patterned grandstand seats, choose from lower or upper deck… accessed by a crystal clear staircase.

Get comfortable, sip slowly, the music cranks up, the double-height chandelier bursts into colour… the night is on!

Bartell… Italianesque seduction, pop-up style… the Kartell way.

RARE Architecture for Ligne Roset
RARE’s living showroom project is generated through re/decomposition of Ligne Roset furniture elements, which are modified, composed and associated in standalone pieces and textures to create the various showroom elements.

This sequencing principle is used on a decline both through the furniture and the skin of the showroom, and is thematically organised in a progressive manner to create the space’s layout.

The cycle of conception and production from parts to prototypes to finished products is used longitudinally in stretched furniture elements. The vast range of Ligne Roset’s techniques is exposed from abstraction to materiality transversally while also guiding the envelope design.

In this way the project builds on the unique manufacturing knowledge of the brand and its flexible contract department, used by RARE to create a bespoke spatial arrangement and new architectural elements.

The displayed furniture elements are arranged en masse to create a bar, seating and tables. The outer envelope progresses in scale and material from the transparent extrusion towards textile and upholstery pieces that have made the company famous.

This textured material spans the scale between object and building, with the form resulting from the association of extruded ‘iconic’ brand furniture silhouette. These interlocking components are combined as a self-supporting structure of multiple qualities, diffracting natural and artificial lights, and acting as acoustic absorbents and technical plenum.

The project includes iconic production pieces that illustrate the core concepts through their geometry or material as well as generate zoned lighting atmospheres. The ready-made, inspired space is a unique, sequenced whole.

SHH for Naughtone
Project: Pinch Bar
The idea behind the pop-up Pinch Bar is to allow existing and potential customers to experience Naughtone’s furniture through direct use, rather than observation – as well as taking the showroom environment to another level by adding some artful theatricality.

The Pinch Bar is named after a seat in Naughtone’s collection that we have chosen to use in alternating green and grey as the seating for our pop-up dining area. The backless seat has a relaxed and casual feel, making it a good fit.

At right angles to the dining table is a bar for guests to gather around on arrival. The short-life plywood bar, which would double as a waiter station, is also based on the Pinch seat in both shape and profile. Bar stools are Naughtone’s Audrey, while hexagonal Pollen stools offer a further lower-height seating option.

For the dining table itself, we have chosen Naughtone’s Trace Table, directly mirrored by a bespoke overhead light, which replicates the table’s shape and is coated in electro-luminescent tape. Further overhead drama is added by a hanging installation of multicoloured examples of Naughtone’s Ped chair, inspired by workshops, where every bit of available space is used. At night, the ceiling area would be lit to maximise shadowplay from the hanging chairs.

The disposable tablecloth is laid anew each time, pulled from an industrial-feel roller set away from the table. The paper cloth is illustrated down its centre with working drawings by Naughtone. Each place setting focuses on an iconic photograph of a Naughtone furniture piece, surrounded by sketches and production details. Bespoke tableware uses abstracted geometric details from the working drawings.