Albannach Scottish Restaurant, London

12 May 2010

Albannach Scottish Restaurant, London

Abbie De Bunsen returns to the Albannach Scottish restaurant in London six years on to revamp her original design, and adds some more unique touches to an outstanding taste of the Gaelic in the English capital

Details

Project: Albannach
Design: Abbie De Bunsen Design
Size: 1,000 sq m
Completion time: Nine months

Project Description

Think of a Scottish restaurant and you’ll probably expect seats upholstered in tartan and claymores on the walls, but designer Abbi De Bunsen has been much more subtle and creative than that in her recent redesign of Albannach, a restaurant bar near London’s Trafalgar Square.

Albannach (the name means Scottish in Gaelic) opened six years ago and it was De Bunsen who designed the original scheme, so when the owners decided it was time to freshen-up the look recently they asked her back.

Where the original design was all about bringing a contemporary but very Scottish brand of hospitality to London, the new design is more modern, elegant and paired down with what De Bunsen, who studied history of art before she became an interior designer has called ‘dreamlike Daliesque elements’. Even so, there’s no mistaking the clever Caledonian references. In a luxurious bar with a double-height ceiling, chandeliers are created from white lacquered antlers lit by LEDs which sparkle at the end of each point. Antlers also frame several large mirrors in the bar area and toilet.

The central floor area is filled with low-level, comfortable, furniture upholstered in chocolate brown and a warm, buttery yellow, which echoes the rich amber of Scotch whisky. And the ‘king o’ drinks’, as Scottish author and poet Robert Louis Stevenson called it, is naturally well stocked in a ceiling high ‘Scotch library’, fashioned from thick, weathered oak where each of some 120 bottles is lit from beneath.

The reflective, polished bar is clad at the front in smart, chocolate-coloured leather, studded with chrome nails to form distinct horizontal bands. To the right of the bar, the original Mackintosh-inspired, wrought iron balustrade has been lacquered white making it look like an abstract floating sculpture.

The walls of the bar area are a sumptuous chocolate brown, which contrasts beautifully with white lacquered tulip chairs and tables placed around the edges of the room.

‘What I enjoyed most was evolving the bar from what I had created six years ago and taking it in an entirely new direction, but within the same parameters,’ says De Bunsen. ‘It was interesting how much demands had changed in terms of what drinkers look for now in a bar, as opposed to six years ago,’ she continues. ‘We had to make it all feel much more relevant without alienating the loyal customer base Albannach already had.’

It may have been fun to revisit an old project, but De Bunsen didn’t have much time to reinvent the interior. ‘The biggest challenge was the very short time frame we had to do the work in,’ she says. ‘Being a commercial space the bar could not be closed for a significant period, so the work and installation were organised like a military operation!’

Moving away from the colour palette of the main bar and restaurant, the new Private Dining Room upstairs feels like the inside of a shimmering, sparkling jewel box. Overlooking Admiralty Arch and The Mall, the opulent room is decorated with pearlised wallpaper from Osborne and Little and has a black glass-drop chandelier designed by De Bunsen and made by Ochre.

Downstairs, the ambience changes significantly. The A-lounge has a more sophisticated, grown-up feel with intimate booths that have been transformed from stark Victorian bank vaults (the building used to be a bank) with gilding on the ceilings and velvet seating. Each is lit with a single chandelier that twinkles against the mirrored wall on which it hangs.

The main area of the downstairs bar is dominated by a mythical looking mirror framed with gilded antlers, and a full-size sculpture of a stag, lit from within, which was made by South African artist Michael Methvan.

Inspired by Albannach’s collection of whiskies, the charcoal-coloured velvet seating is glamorously buttoned and piped in gold.

According to De Bunsen, the most successful element of the scheme is the antler chandeliers and mirror frames with their while lacquering and LED lighting.

‘It’s a fresh, modern take on essentially very traditional Scottish pieces and they look strong and dramatic against the dark chocolate interior,’ she says.