Nothing in this room is old. The brick is new, the arches are new, the beams are new. The work was in getting a fit-out delivered on a modern programme to read as though it had been standing there for decades.
Where the age comes from, and the one thing that would have broken it.
Context and Materiality
Convincing age is mostly a matter of inconsistency. Machine-perfect coursing reads as new no matter what colour the brick is, so the piers here were laid with visible variation in tone and a mortar joint deep enough to throw a shadow. The wall lanterns are mounted at the height a real fitting would have been placed, which is lower than a designer would normally put them, and they are spaced by the structure rather than by the ceiling grid. Ceiling beams follow the spacing of the piers below, so the room has one logic running top to bottom instead of a modern ceiling floating over a traditional wall.
Interior Atmosphere
The framed paintings are the part guests notice, and they are hung the way pictures accumulate in an old room - different sizes, different frames, lined up on a consistent centre line rather than a consistent top edge. Furniture is the one place the room is honestly contemporary. The chairs are modern shapes in teal and green on plain tapered legs, and they do not pretend otherwise. A reproduction chair here would have tipped the whole thing into pastiche. Keeping the seating current is what lets the shell read as old rather than as a theme.
Published in Awards • Dec 2025
