Summer News – July 2009

SHH is delighted to announce that one its favourite creative partners – garden designer Kate Gould of Helios Designs – has once more been declared a winner at London’s world-famous Chelsea Flower Show.  Kate was awarded a gold medal and her ‘Eco Chic’ garden given the title of Best Urban Garden at this year’s show, repeating her 2007 success, when she also won a gold medal and was declared the winner of Chic Garden section.

 ’Eco Chic’, which judges told Kate was ‘faultless’, really struck a chord with judges and visitors alike at this year’s show, taking as its subject the potential of under-used city spaces and the re-use of potentially wasted materials on building development sites. The garden shows how such spaces, where there is no obvious water source or proximity to other greenery, could nonetheless offer garden-lovers an elegant oasis of tranquillity.  The garden’s ‘eco’ credentials come from the integrated use in the build of discarded surplus elements left behind by builders and contractors, from scaffold boards and paving to ballast and planks.

Summer News – June 2009

UK government body The School Food Trust (chaired by Michelin-starred chef, writer and entrepreneur Prue Leith), commissioned SHH to work in close consultation with The Sorrell Foundation on two test projects to improve school dining areas.  Both schools – one a primary and one a secondary school, both in the Southampton Area – suffered from poor dining environments (either because of too many functions and clutter or poor layout) and the challenge to SHH was how to create the maximum change possible on extremely tight budgets. 

For The Cherbourg Primary School, SHH created a series of graphic and furniture interventions, which allowed a separate feel for each activity (dining, teaching, sport, storage), with improved lighting, acoustics and storage, nicer furniture, better queuing at lunchtimes and quicker service – as well as creating a fun sense of nature, colour and pattern.  The Applemore College secondary school dining area had much more complex issues, but a strong new graphic treatment has improved the space beyond measure, both functionally and aesthetically, with a ’streetwise’, urban feel and new spill-out area furniture, made from belisha beacons set into screeded-off concrete stools.

Summer News 2009 – May

SHH is delighted to announce that the company has received its 25th award this month: a huge and rare achievement in the industry and one which reflects very well on the company’s highly talented and hard-working team.  The award in question is the ‘Gold Award for Design Excellence’, awarded by ADEX in the USA and sponsored by the American Design Journal, for the interior design of Kensington House.  This is the second award to be given to this project, which was already recognised on this side of the pond in last year’s Daily Mail UK Property Awards, where it won the 4* prize for Interior Design projects over £100k.

Spence Harris Hogan SHH – Spring News

 

February News – SHH’s Interior Decoration and Styling team has created a highly original and quirky home, designed to suit the personality and lifestyle of a private client (an international man of mystery!).  The property, an elegant Georgian terrace in London’s Marylebone, is elegantly proportioned over 6 floors, from lower ground to fifth and includes further existing extensions to the rear, made up of a very large family kitchen and an underground swimming pool.   The overall brief for the project was to ’surprise all those crossing the threshold’, using the client’s art collection of original hand-drawn and -painted cartoons to full effect against a classical background, that would fit seamlessly with the grand Georgian architectural features that define the house. 

 

 

March News – SHH Associate René Dekker, who was on the receiving end of several major awards last year – including the Bathroom Designer of the Year Accolade (for North London House) and a 4* Award for Best Interior Design for his team’s Kensington House project at the Daily Mail UK Property Awards – has now been asked to be a judge for two leading awards ceremonies in 2009.  The first is for the kbbreview Awards – the industry’s leading kitchen and bathroom industry awards – which will take place on May 10th at London’s ExCel.  The second is for the Rugmark Awards, which take place in June.  René is particularly qualified for the latter as he not only specifies the very best in rugs for his luxury residential projects, but also designed a range of rugs (The Darlington House Collection) for well-known British Carpet supplier Tim Page Carpets, under the brand name ReneDekker@SHH.  The large-scale bespoke damask design rugs are made to order in three sizes, three styles and three materials – and in any colour a client might wish!

 

 

April News – SHH has created a full branding package – including identity, environmental graphics, signage, menus, place settings and staff uniforms – for a new pizza/pasta restaurant and takeaway concept called ‘Italiano’, which opens this month.  The first outlet, located in the food court of the Al A’ali Mall in Bahrain’s capital city Manama, has been undertaken for client Al-Hilal Enterprises Group, for whom SHH recently designed and branded the highly successful Nu Asia new-build restaurant (about to roll out to a new second site in Bahrain).

 ‘We were allowed to build quite creatively on the basic concept,’ commented SHH’s lead designer on the project, Ashley Thompson.  ‘The colour blue was already a definite given element of the scheme, as was the new brand’s name.  We added a strong vibrant green to the interior to balance the cool blue and to add a fresh and obviously Italian element to the mix.  We then created a bi-lingual (Arabic and English) identity with a marque representing the map of Italy, made up of classic pasta, pizza and vegetable shapes with a wood-cut grainy look, inspired by pasta’s textured ribbing.’

 

Most Recent Project -

Italiano

Client: Al-Hilal Enterprises Group

Full branding package, including identity, environmental graphics, signage, menus, place settings and staff uniforms, for a new concept pizza/pasta restaurant and takeaway concept called ‘Italiano’.  The first outlet is located in the food court of the Al A’ali Mall in Bahrain’s capital city Manama.  SHH created the bi-lingual identity, marque and applications using a map of Italy, made up of classic pasta, pizza and vegetable shapes using a wood-cut grainly look, inspired by pasta’s textured ribbing.

 

identity design
environmental branding
signage
branding application (signage, menu, place settings, takeaway packaging, staff uniforms

To view images from this project, follow this link

 

Architects

Interior Designers

Chartered Architects Practice

Branding & Graphics

SHH – News

December 2008 ICIAD.ORG

 

SHH are celebrating the end of a great year of awards success with no less than three further wins at the prestigious ICIAD (International Council of Interior Architects and Designers) ‘Ring’ Awards, held on December 2nd in Guangzhou, China.  The awards were hotly contested and featured submissions from major practices from all over the world.  SHH’s Managing Director Graham Harris was on hand to receive two category awards: a gold award for champagne bar Dion in the ‘Best Bar’ category and a silver award for St Petersburg cafe concept Teaspoon in the ‘Best Restaurant’ category.  The evening did not stop there, however, and, at the end of the night, the Silver Grand Award for the runner-up best project of the whole evening was given to our recent office project, Manchester Square. 

The ICIAD began as an independent design movement in America to promote the awareness of art, design and the appreciation of aesthetic beauty and now ‘sets the global standards for the design industry’.  Judges at the awards included the President of the French FNSAI, the President of the American International Interior Design Association, the MD of the German iF (International Forum Design), the Principal Partner of DEGW (Australia), the Principal Partner of Figure 3 (Canada) and leading academics from Ireland, Austria and Germany.

 

November 2008 NU ASIA BAHRAIN

 

SHH have completed a stunning new-build, three-storey, 300-seater restaurant in Bahrain called Nu Asia for client Al-Hilal Enterprises Group.  Aimed at both a family and young adult demographic, Nu Asia offers a selection of four leading Asian cuisines: Chinese, Indian, Japanese and Thai.  The building has been designed as three elegant interlocking volumes, each one larger than the last and variously clad in timber, glass and stone.  SHH also created the restaurant’s identity and all 2D graphic applications on the project, including menus, placemats, chopstick packets, serviettes and a set of postcards, which uses close-up photography of ingredients, underlining the high-quality of all sourced products. 

‘SHH have been inventive and creative at every stage’, commented client Hamad Isa of Al-Hilal Enterprises Group, ‘and have created an exciting environment with great cuisine and a great atmosphere.  Most of our customers will not have seen anything like this before!’

SHH – News September ‘08

Our residential Interior Design and Styling team, led by René Dekker, are celebrating this month over the news that their headline-grabbing Kensington House project has been named a winner in the Interior Design (over £100k) category of the Daily Mail UK Property Awards 2008.  The awards, which will take place next month, were judged by a panel of leading independent professionals, chaired by the British Shadow Secretary of State Eric Pickles and including Channel 4’s Phil Spencer, BIDA Chairman Diana Yakely and Peter Bolton King, CEO of the National Association of Estate Agents.  The high-style dream project, answering a simple brief to create a ‘cream, off-white and funky’ interior, has graced magazines the world over, including four front covers – ELLE Deco (India), Contemporary Home Design (Australia), The Home (Bulgaria) and Hoom (Sweden).  The project is now being considered as a contender for the World’s Best Design Awards, to be held in the USA in November

SHH – News July ‘08

SHH have completed a bold and striking new design concept for Russian tearoom operator Teaspoon, with the first outlet to house the new design now open in the new-build O’Key shopping mall in southern St Petersburg.  Teaspoon is an existing, 6 year-old and 70-strong Russian chain of tea and pancake houses, based mainly in St Petersburg and Moscow region and sited in high street and hypermarket locations. 

We were briefed to create a highly contemporary concept, but one that was specifically Russian and non-generic!  The strongest new design feature – a 6m-high wraparound ceramic wall – took the existing orange of the Teaspoon brand and added two further tones of orange, along with black and white for contrast.  Taking inspiration from traditional Russian folkloric art, the colours were combined to create a location-specific, huge scale ceramic wall, which dominates the space. 

Igor Kolynin, Marketing Director of Teaspoon, commented on the design: ‘This is a great design concept which exceeded all our expectations.  One of the main tasks for the design was to raise the average spend by 30%.  Encouraging customers to spend more money is not a matter of pricing, but a question of the environment, which should encourage longer dwell times and higher spend.  Early signs of success include an increase in customer numbers and average spend is already up by 30%.  We really wondered if foreign designers could understand Russian style, rather than giving us a tourist’s view of Russia.  We wanted to move from the fast food to the casual dining sector and with the new design we have succeeded in this.’

SHH – News May ‘08

We are delighted to announce that the creative efforts of our hard-working graphics team were recognised at the end of last month, when a bespoke front cover we created for property development client Dandi for leading property magazine Estates Gazette won a prize at the Property Marketing Awards 2008.  The daring silver cover, which made use of the highly-effective butterfly identity SHH developed for Dandi, was a real break from the norm for the magazine and was voted as Estate Gazette’s ‘Cover of the Year’, winning one of the prized 18 trophies given at the event on 30 April, in front of an audience of 500 people at The London Marriott Grosvenor Square Hotel.

SHH – News April ‘08

The success of the initial More London outlet of 37º – the new health and fitness centre concept from operator ARK Leisure Management Ltd – has led to the commissioning and completion of a second outlet for the chain within the grounds of London’s Olympia complex. ‘The More London site is thriving’, commented Mhairi FitzPatrick of ARK Leisure Management Ltd.  ‘We have 3,500 members and are definitely the club of choice for More London tenants, as well as holding our own against all the other major brands on the site.  The club is busy, vibrant and has a great atmosphere, particularly during the week.  The common areas are standing up really well to the wear and tear, especially the changing areas, where the spare, functional but stylish design is the key.’
The new outlet is sited within a Grade-II listed, six-storey building in London’s Kensington Olympia, with all architecture and design by SHH.  The 27,000 sq ft centre features a massive gym area (with boxing ring and kinesis system), pool, steam room, sauna, juice bar, treatment rooms, physio rooms, yoga, dance and spin studios and a golf simulator lounge. The top floor, where the lift over-rides, will be the location for a further future development SHH are currently working on – a rooftop sun terrace – scheduled to open in Summer 2008.

SHH – News March ‘08

Rene Dekker, SHH’s Head of Residential Interiors, has been named this month as the Bathroom Designer of the Year (project cost over £15k) at the KBB Review Industry Awards 2008, held at Birmingham’s Metropole Hotel as part of the massive annual KBB (Kitchens, Bedrooms & Bathrooms) show.  Rene won for his work on the North London House bathroom – an ultra-luxe affair – which the judges called ‘completely insane and totally mad’, noting ‘it just shows what you can do if you re limited only by imagination….very, very impressive’ .  This is the third time in six years that SHH has won this title, having bagged the winning scheme in both 2006 and 2004, when we also won the corresponding ‘Kitchen Designer of the Year’ and ‘International Kitchen Designer of the Year’ for the Hampstead House project.