.
.
.
Client: Hakkasan
Project: Hakkasan, Mayfair, London
Concept Designer/Architect: Guillaume Richard / Gensler
Ben Dawson worked closely with Michelin-starred restaurant Hakkasan, French interior designers Guillaume Richard and international architects Gensler on the design development and manufacture of bespoke furniture for Hakkasan Mayfair in London.
The work is unmistakably contemporary but with strong reference to classic forms and proportion. Opulent materials, including solid timbers; bronze and custom leather are enriched with embroidered Chinese dragon symbols and embossing.
Whilst Hakkasan Mayfair expresses a heady mixture of dark oriental mystery and a contemporary European aesthetic, the furniture has to meet the many technical challanges of a restaurant environment serving several hundred covers each day.
Client: RBGE
Project: John Hope Gateway - Restaurant
Architect/Interior Designer: Edward Cullinan Architects
Client: The Scottish Parliamnet
Project: Holyrood Parliament Building
Architect/Interior Designer: EMBT / RMJM
One of our strengths is, undoubtedly, our ability to get fully involved in the early stages of a project, working through drawings to mock-ups and finally to fully developed design. This was particularly true for the Holyrood project where, as part of a huge team of architects, structural engineers, cabling contractors, disabled access consultants and experts from many other disciplines, we played a key role in realising the project’s central vision of providing Scotland with a truly world-class building.
Throughout the project, we aimed to translate the striking architectural language of the building into the furnishings, allowing them to become part of the fabric of the building. Using solid and veneered oak for desks and storage walls throughout the building, we introduced complex wood bending, shaping and inlaying techniques to fulfil the architectural vision. Our attention to detail even extended to manufacturing specially made stainless steel fittings for desks.
The Scottish Parliament has been the most challenging, yet ultimately rewarding, project that Ben Dawson Furniture has undertaken to date.
Client: The National Assembly of Wales
Project: The National Assembly of Wales
Architect/Interior Designer: The Richard Rogers Partnership
Following the sucess of our Scottish Parliament project, Ben Dawson Furniture was appointed to work with the National Assembly of Wales. As with the Socttish Parliament, a key component of the Welsh brief was to translate the striking architectural features of the new building into furniture that was visually outstanding and highly practical.
We chose to work with solid oak which both met the strict environmental standards defined by the Forest Stewardship Council and reflected the predominant native timber of Wales. To acheive optimum stability in manufacturing, the sawn timber was conditioned in our workshops, while our design team worked on 3D CAD models of the proposed designs. Issues they addressed included incorporating conference technology into committee room furniture and building in flexibility which allows for a variety of meeting room formats. As is our standard practice traditional samples and scale models were also created to give the client a real feel for the finished product.
Client: The Royal Bank of Scotland Group
Project: Workplace Design Standards
Architect/Interior Designer: RHWL / Michael Laird Architects / Swanke Hayden Connell / Sheppard Robson / Roger Ferris & Partners
RBS Projects Include: Bishopsgate, London; Guernsey; Ulsterbank, Belfast; Paris; Gogarburn World Headquarters, Edinburgh; Castlerock American Headquarters, USA
The furniture brief for The Royal Bank of Scotland's executive furniture had two distinct parts: the first to create bespoke pieces for boardrooms, meeting rooms and dining rooms; and the second to provide an off-the-shelf system for desks, tables and cabinets in serior executive offices.
Our clients were delighted to find that commissioning Ben Dawson Furniture for both tasks was no more costly or time-consuming than giving the second element of the job to a volume manufacturer. Quite simply, our design skills and sophisticated CAD proccess allowed us to tailor one of our standard collections to provide standard furniture for the senior executives, using the same materials and design elements and the bespoke pieces.
To enhance the crisp moderist interiors of the Bank's offices, we selected figured weathered sycamore for all of the furniture, from a single source in Europe.
Client: Kuwait National Assembly
Project: Members' Building, Kuwait City
Architect: HOK
Furniture Consolidator: Dia Behbehani
Manufacturing Consultants: I.F.T. / John David Edison
Ben Dawson designed the furniture for Ministers and Members of the Kuwait National Assembly working closely with international architects HOK.
