Design direction and interior design and build for Nitrogen Icecream Parlour and modern confections shop in Camden .
Brief: Commissioned by The Chin Chin Club (Founders: Ahrash Akbari-Kalhur and Nyisha Weber) to define the direction, and design the interior, of their nitrogen ice-cream parlour in Camden. Customers visiting the shop order and experience the making of bespoke ice-creams frozen onsite with liquid nitrogen, while the rest of the space is an experimental kitchen dedicated to the development of modern confections.
Concept: The studios approach was to build a theatrical laboratory, where the performance of making the products was the key focus of the space - molecular structures and diagrams formed the foundation for the identity and interior. The Camden branch was given the subtitle of Chin Chin Laboratorists.
Solution: Each stage of the ice-cream making process (decanting, mixing, freezing, topping, etc) has been separated and translated into its own workstation, taking its visual character from the particular tasks performed at that point in the process. The stations connect together across the space to form a self contained, three dimensional schematic diagram of a nitrogen ice-cream making machine.
Stations are built using a framework of scaffolding which holds colour- coded boxes. These boxes house the equipment and ingredients needed for each stage, floating at optimal heights throughout the space. Electrical wiring runs internally through the structural pipe work, taking power sockets directly to the locations where they are needed. Lighting is an extension of the scaffolding framework, terminating in directional task lights for illuminating work areas. Outside the shop (in the sunny spot) are bench seats and swings made with the same construction methods as the interior.
THE CHIN CHIN LABORATORISTS
Creative direction and interior for new establishment, The Book Club, in Shoreditch.
Photographs by Sylvain Deleu.
The Book Club was conceived as a meeting place for creative industries- aside from a comfortable environment for casual dining and drinking, it was to become a venue for meetings, workshops, exhibitions and experimental music nights. Somewhere that would be busy night and day, full of interesting activities, conversations and people.
By experimenting with everyday materials and techniques, the space was built as a collection of site-specific installations, rather than specified elements, that work together to create an uncommon-common environment. For example, a ceiling of 23 thousand household light bulbs that hangs in the basement.
The furniture is a combination of found seating and a specifically designed range of tables and benches. Long canteen benches work with wing-tables to allow for flexible, informal communal eating. The adaptable frame construction method extends into the bar stools, a competition size ping pong table and portable DJ booth.
Conduit lighting is arranged into constellations that work their way across the room at varying heights. The conduit becomes an exposed electrical diagram that runs throughout the space, selectively illuminating areas to create a bright communal atmosphere by day and one that is intimate and subdued at night.
Common bar and restaurant features like mosaics and hand painted signs were reinterpreted, stripped of their historic motifs. A collection of prints were made up into curtain panels and cushions, the overlaying prints and textures introduce a continuous colourful element that runs throughout the space.
THE BOOK CLUB
With Jordi Canudas
Buon Appetito transforms waste paper into a growing sculpture within the city and has travelled to London, Milan and Tokyo. We ask the question, what if; instead of disguising our rubbish in neat bins we actually experienced it as part of our every day scenery?
It’s a place where recycling becomes a public activity, where the paper each person adds makes a visible difference to the growing volume being collected for recycling. People will photograph its progress, and pose next to it, parents will explain it to their children, passers-by will wonder what it is, some will even stop to sit, lean or climb on the soft volume that the crumpled paper creates.
BUON APPETITO
Design Direction and Interior for The Queen of Hoxton, a venue for the appreciation of locally produced art and music.
The interior of the Queen of Hoxton was reinterpreted from its previous life as a restaurant to a completely different kind of venue that held music events of emerging labels and houses permanent and semi-permanent artworks from local up and coming artists.
The project was approached as a design for an inhabitable exhibition space that could reflect the diversity of the artists working in the area. As far as possible, existing furniture and features were used as raw materials united by a palette of dark grey, neon pink and black in a variety of finishes. The palette extended to the exterior, textiles, print and number of key spatial elements which were commissioned to a selection of artists and designers.
Aside from all the black paint, several ‘landmark’ elements were designed, including a neon sign of a winking Queen, an overgrowing vegetation of ivy overhead and transforming the existing light boxes above the bars into illuminated cinema signs to publicise the programme of events over both floors.
THE QUEEN OF HOXTON
A workshop with undergraduates on the Product Design course at UNITEC in Auckland.
The programme was intended to explore narrative as a starting point for projects, encouraging an approach that is driven by a very specific context rather than generic market placement.
Students were encouraged to spend the majority of the workshop developing their brief writing skills and exploring reasoning and rational behind concepts, they were asked communicate their thinking through quick cardboard models. This direction was intended to free students from constraints presented by materials, making ability or a predetermined idea of outcome.
“When we talk about stories or narrative we are talking about the story of an object, why it exists, what it does and how it does it.
By being clear on these three points the process of design becomes a series of answers to these questions of why, how and what.
In this way the object becomes a character within the story of its life.” Excerpt from brief
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE CORRIDOR
An opening event for newly completed industrial units in Kumeu, New Zealand. The party was intended to introduce the units to the community and give potential tenants a chance to meet their new neighbours.
The invitations for the opening event included planter sticks that held seeds of local trees embedded at optimum planting depth with gelatine- a memory to last long after the event.
A 25 metre long trestle table was made that held individual wooden platters of locally sourced food. The platters created a table surface that was gradually eaten away during the course of the evening- leaving a skeleton frame once the party was over.
KUMEU INDUSTRIA
This system is based on a series of connectors, wall and floor mounts that enable the linking of 3 various lengths of 5mm spring steel rod. They will be connected together enabling the user to create his or her own sculptural environment or object.
Photographs by Sylvain Deleu.
It is able to be used in various scenarios, such as a clothes horse, pin up for children’s drawings, to hold a flower pot, etc. It enables the creation of general purpose objects including displays and storage systems for everyday household applications.
The connecters allow a wide range of configurations so as to create shapes that are individual to the user’s needs. The connections are colour coded and can be assembled and tightened without the need of tools- A flexible environment built from spring steel with a range of connections that allow for on-site building to fill any space.
Materials: spring steel, aluminium, textile.
