Pamela Buxton looks at six projects where the choice of materials and surfaces has had a profound influence on the final outcome of the venue’s appearance

Project:
Chrysan, Broadgate West, London
Designer: Yoshiaki Nakamura

Yoshiaki Nakamura, a master craftsman, carpenter and designer from Kyoto, has created the new Chrysan restaurant for upmarket restaurateur the Hakkasan Group. Nakamura had previously designed all the Japanese restaurants for Chrysan's chef, the Michelin-starred Yoshihiro Murata.

Nakamura is well known for combining tradition with contemporary design, and that is certainly the case at Chrysan, where natural materials are used in the restaurant with Japanese cypress panelling and sliding screens, bubinga and cypress tables and a timber grid acoustic ceiling. This contrasts with glowing, luminous surfaces in the washrooms. The chef's approach is that customers should be able to relax and enjoy their food and conversation and so the design is understated but less formal than for traditional fine-dining.

Details for the restaurant have been designed to signify specific elements such as the wind, earth and the seasons. Murals of mountains with cherry blossom and the moon represent spring and autumn respectively. For summer, mobiles represent wind, while random pendants in the corridor represent the falling of winter snow. The mobiles, made with shoji paper reflectors, are designed by Kisa Kawakami and made by Koseki, Nakamura's products company.

The washrooms feature Luna washbasins by Toto, made from Luminist, a translucent but hardwearing epoxy resin material that is illuminated from underneath by LED lighting to give a glowing effect.

Project:
History Gallery, Château de Versailles, Versailles
Designer: Projectiles

There was certainly no shortage of content for the Château de Versailles's new History Gallery, which occupies 700 sq m of the historic palace's north wing.

The chateau, now a world heritage site, began life as a hunting lodge nearly 400 years ago and is probably most famous as the opulent palace of the Louis X1V. Over the centuries it has been successfully enlarged and embellished. The latest addition, the history gallery, has been designed by Paris-based architecture practice Projectiles and tells the story of the palace's development.

The practice chose to take a deliberately contemporary approach in the 11 rooms of the gallery, in contrast to the historic nature of the palace architecture. Central to this is the use of 1000 q m of DuPont's Corian solid surfacing as variously a wall covering, exhibition panel and lighting.

In each room, low-level 19th-century panelling has been conserved and repainted but combined with extruded rectangular Corian boxes. These vary in size to match the dimensions of the panelling and are backlit to display information on the exhibits.

Above, instead of traditional tapestry wall coverings, Projectiles has introduced an engraved 8mm skin of Corian mounted on an aluminium substructure that forms a backdrop to the paintings.

Each engraved pattern, designed by the graphic studio Change is Good, relates to a different historical period. The depth and width of engraving decreases as the pattern nears the bottom of the walls to give a disappearing effect. This highly precise process was time-consuming, with each linear metre of wall taking half a day to engrave. In total, more than 50 different graphic patterns were engraved.

The third Corian element is the lighting, which consists of suspended blocks of engraved Corian of varying dimensions to suit the shape of the room and the nature of the work on display. These also integrate spotlights and video-projectors.

The budget for the History Gallery was €1.5m (£1.2m).

Project:
Designed to Win, Design Museum, London, now touring
Designer: Urban Salon

A sense o f speed and dynamism was core to Urban Salon's concept for Designed to Win, the Design Museum's recent exhibition on the relationship between sport and design.

The result was a chute running the length of the gallery lined entirely in bamboo. Themed displays open off this main axis, which runs between the central aisle of the exhibition space.

'We were interested in trying to make something that seemed a little like a velodrome or a bobsleigh run, or a running track, but that wasn't too literally associated with any particular sport,' says Alex Mowat of Urban Salon.

The designers considered various sports materials for the chute but in the end chose bamboo for both the 3mm veneered curved side wall and the 15mm flooring. They were able to get an exact match of tone, grain and finish using the moso species of bamboo, supplied by MWC Group's Bamboo Surfaces. (mosobamboosurfaces.co.uk).

'Because it's all taken from one product, you can match very thin veneer for the walls very precisely with the floor,' says Mowat, who has been using bamboo extensively because of its sustainability, stability and strength, durability and consistency.

Bamboo was also used for the 18mm-thick lettering of the exhibition title mounted on the chute. This was laser cut with the edges painted fluorescent orange. Further graphics, designed by Studio Fernando Gutiérrez, are overlaid on the bamboo to evoke movement. On the floor are inset panels of four sports surfaces for visitors to test out, as well as a white lane stripe.

Portals in the chute lead to themed displays on training and safety, power and performance, and fashion and sport, with a sub-gallery on design controversies. Here, exhibits are given a dark blue/grey background with all objects facing in one direction to further the sense of movement, ending with a wall filled with head-camera shots of sportspeople in action.

The exhibition is now on international tour, in Qatar 13 February-5 April.

Project:
33 Gracechurch Street, London
Designer: MoreySmith

MoreySmith used white gold leaf and lacquer surfaces to upgrade the tired foyer area of a 19th -century office building in Gracechurch Street in the city of London.

'It was a vast, extremely dated reception area and needed a little tLc,' says MoreySmith director Nicola Osborn, adding that the challenge was both to give the 'very bland' 150 sq m space a high-end look while creating more of a street presence for those passing by the building.

To give the reception more focus and dynamism, MoreySmith introduced a large fabric canopy into the double-height space above the reception seating area. The nylon weave-structured fabric was suspended on a 5m wide x 3m high powder-coated steel frame, with LED lighting along the base of the frame.

This was combined with new surfaces for both wall and floor. The 'oppressive' dark stone flooring was replaced with a limestone with plenty of fossil content and a patination that gives a much-needed texture to the expanse of floor. This is supplemented by a rug directly below the canopy.

On the wall behind the leather-clad reception desk are fitted bespoke gold leaf panels (handmade by specialist finish company ochre) to provide a softer ambience. These continue on to the right-hand wall where they are interspersed with beige lacquer panels (by Hick joinery) that continue towards the window. These reflective finishes bring light into the space, along with a 6m-high etched bronze mirror wall.

On the opposite wall, 957 resin and acrylic painted tulip wood cubes have been installed in a pattern by artist Stuart Hartley.

Project:
Museum of London Docklands reception, West India Quay, London
Designer: Isomi

HI-MACS solid surface has been used to form a bespoke new reception desk at the Museum of London Docklands.

The desk was installed by furniture company Isomi, which specialises in reception and public spaces, and forms a 16m-wide reception area in the centre of the ground-floor space.

The cream material and curved form contrasts strongly with the brick walls and wooden rafters of the Grade 1 listed former Georgian warehouse. It is underlit with integrated LED lighting to give the impression that the new intervention is hovering above the floor. 'Installing a bold, graphic structure to contrast with an older building can work far better than trying to replicate the authentic materials and finishes already in the space,' says Isomi designer Paul Crofts.

It is the first application of Isomi's new bespoke Mono system and was produced in six weeks. Its tailored nature allowed the desk to fit snugly around one of the museum's timber pillars. Modules were bonded on site for a seamless installation using a durable and impact-resistant finish. Mono desks can be configured to suit the space and include space for built-in storage and scope for a DDA-compliant recess.

Isomi was set up by Crofts with solid-surface specialists Nick Welsh and jenny Davies.

Project:
Touch, London
Designer: Philippe Malouin/Post-Office

Canadian designer Philippe Malouin has been based in London since 2009. His practice Post-Office recently completed new offices in Shoreditch for Touch, a digital retouching agency for fashion photography.

The challenge was to create premises in a warehouse space that were bright and airy while also providing the low-light environment that staff needed when carrying out the image retouching via computer screens.

Key to the solution was the use of felt and parquet wood panelling. The design created retouching booths in the centre of the space, conceived by the designers as minimal sculptures rather than individual workspaces. These are lined in grey felt to give a colour-neutral background for the retouchers and also acoustically dampen sound from the open workspaces. These vertical grey panels swivel to control the light or adjust the amount of privacy. On the outside, the felt slats are backed in pale wood.

According to Post-Office, the aesthetic of the space was influenced by Scandinavian classic modernism and Sixties' corporate American grandeur. The former is best represented by the eye-catching expanses of herringbone-patterned wall panels and flooring. Dark furniture sharply contrasts both with these surfaces and the outsides of the booths.

This article was first published in fx Magazine.