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DHA Designs are delighted to be part of the winning team for the competition to create the National Holocaust Memorial, located in Victoria Tower Gardens near the Houses of Parliament.
The competition was conceived by the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation to remember the 6 million Jewish people that were murdered during the Holocaust, as well as all other victims of Nazi persecution.
Casson Mann‘s design for Eneko at One Aldwych has won the award for Best restaurant in a hotel at the 2017 Restaurant & Bar Design Awards. The awards, hotly contested over thirty categories from best restaurant to best Middle Eastern & Aftrican bar, are judged by a team of industry-recognised figures and were presented at King’s Cross Events Space on 6 October.
Casson Mann’s scheme was judged to be the winning scheme from a shortlist of seven entries that included the designs of the new Devonshire Club in London, Rofuta in Birmingham & Refuge in Manchester.
The design of the restaurant necessitated a complete re-think of a difficult space: below ground in a corner of a large London hotel, with no access to natural light. The scheme created a grand staircase entrance to a mezzanine bar that floated over the restaurant below, giving a sense of spaciousness and airyness to a space that had had little of either before. Casson Mann’s palette of textures and materials reflected the heritage of chef Eneko Atxa’s Basque heritage, using local woods for the tables and ceramics typical of the area for wall claddings.
DHA were engaged to provide the lighting scheme, including elements of concealed lighting so that diners are given the impression of being surrounded by natural light, despite being metres underground. Shane Holland Design was brought on board to create handmade suspended light fixtures over each booth table to a particular design by Casson Mann’s creative director, Roger Mann.
Michelin-starred Eneko Atxa’s stylish Basque
restaurant and wine bar opened in the heart of London in September.
DHA Designs worked alongside Casson Mann who introduced a sleek copper staircase from street-level to mezzanine and revealed and restored the original steel columns to give a greater sense of space to the below-ground dining room.
DHA Design’s scheme features concealed LED sources to give the impression of natural light falling into the space, making the restaurant light and airy by day, then switching to a cosier ambience from warm colour temperatures after dark.
The space is relaxed yet theatrical with each curved booth spotlit like a stage, with a backdrop of sculptural flowers.
© Nick Rochowski
DHA Designs provided lighting schemes for both the majestic central Hintze Hall, and the coinciding exhibition Whales: Beneath the Surface. To accompany the The Natural History Museum’s unveiling of the new Blue Whale in the Hintze Hall, a new exhibition opened at the same time emphasising the museum’s shift in emphasis from extinct marvels to endangered wonders.
Whales: Beneath the surface provides visitors with the chance to encounter some of the largest objects in the museums vast collection, and to reveal the complex lives of the biggest animals on the planet. On display there are more than 100 specimens which range from huge skeletons, skulls and most impressively the preserved flipper of a blue whale.
Whales: Beneath the Surface. ©Natural History Museum
The exhibition is open until February 28, 2018 at Natural History Museum, East Lawn, Exhibition Rd, London SW7 5BD, United Kingdom.