PALIMPSEST

Mayfair, London, UK

How to create a timeless lobby interior? How to design one space, adressing the taste and interests of six projectmanagers?

To avoid endless discussions about colour and furniture selection, this interior concept is based on the historic context, as a Palimpsest.  PLP architecture is working on a new development for Grosvenor in the heart of Mayfair, London. On this project I was assigned the task of creating an original design for the lobby. The Grosvenor development is replacing a British Council Building, but during my research into the history of the area we discovered that before that a church had also stood on this particular plot of land. With this palimpsest in mind we based the principal design on superimposing the traces of the earlier layers of architecture onto our new building. The structural walls of both the Church and the British Council are traced as imprints on the Portland stone floor surface and the bespoke rug. The traces are also expressed in the shapes of the desk and the banquet seating. Where the floor pattern meets a wall or a door, the palimpsest marks continue even as the materials of the surface changes. These are subtle details that might only be noticed at a closer look, but which add to the continued experience of occupying or exploring the space. We pursued this idea even further by incorporating into the design also the ridge history of not only our plot of land, but Mayfair as a whole.

I designed this interior while working for PLP-Architecture.