London Design Week – The Ermesponti report.

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Last week the London Design Week 2016 was on so we went to the Design Centre Chelsea Harbour in different occasions.

The Design Centre in Chelsea always tries to offer the latest directions in interior design and displays a good example of global names of the luxury interiors.

During this week, the place has been buzzing with people especially interior designers and – actually – if you are an interior designer or decorator, this is the place to come.

There are more than one hundred of shops offering materials and products (fabrics, carpets, wallpapers, trimmings, furniture and lightining) ready to be screened. Some products we saw were really inspiring and we found really close to what we think is beauty, unicity and luxury.

Among them, the trimmings by the Sevinch Passamanterie were beautiful pieces of art, handmade by artisans who master a very antique technique in making tassels and trimmings. This artefacts are so precious and unique, they are mainly produced for royal palaces and historycal houses (like The Wallace Collection Museum where we took pictures of few tassels weeks ago, without knowing where they came from!).

This year, the London Design Week also offered some brief insight from the hospitality world with two events.

We found very interesting the experience of Pasrichan Sharan, who took care of developing the Hoxton, well known place where-to-go in Shoreditch, especially among young professionals. The task of his team was to find the potential right location, to understand the right target and how to attract them.

The same task, although with a more ‘mature / high-end’ target, was undertook by another guest, Brian Clivaz in developing and managing an exclusive men’s club in Soho, the Arts Club.

The room they concentrated on was the main lounge area, the social space, where people come and gathered together. In both experiences (young professionals the first one, royalties and high society, the second) design plays a very important role. In order to create a smooth atmosphere, bespoke interiors with a few design pieces are used, some are vintage, in order to give a distinctive but recognizable character, a lifestyle, they are trying to sell to the customer.

Very interesting was also the meeting with Bernie Gallagher, chairman of the Doyle Collection, a family company, owner of eight boutique-hotels located in Ireland, England and US.

As they move to redesign and transform their hotels, the main thread for all of them was to deliver something “to be desirable and forever”.

For this long project, Bernie has been working with the architect Denis Looby from Sheehan & Barry Architects, met long time ago. Amazingly, every Doyle Collection Hotel is bespoke-designed, each with “a wholly individual look and feel”, combining fine architecture with elegant, modern interiors. I felt the views  this lady shared with us were really sensible and condivisible: a good manager spends with care, invests in the long run, has to aim high to be sure to deliver the best. We think they spotted it.

THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT ERMESPONTI BESPOKE INTERIORS IN LONDON:

1 – Ermesponti bespoke interiors has a London-based Export manager: to contact her is as easy as sending an email.

2 – Feel like checking out Ermesponti’s international references? Here you are!

3 – Ermesponti bespoke interiors has just completed a bespoke interior project in the heart of London.

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Nightingale Lane, London. A timeless bespoke interior project by Ermesponti – part 1: the kitchen.

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 Ermesponti has developed many projects in UK, with a special focus on London.

Recently, word of mouth and a mutual friend brought us in touch with a young couple.

Over drinks in a pub we chatted about their needs and showed them samples of our work and materials. They were most enthusiastic about the excellence of what we do. We soon felt they were on our wavelength and they engaged our services.

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The Concept Layout

A second meeting, after a couple of weeks, involved us producing fresh samples and three-dimensional drawings of the project which now came to life.

They were keen to proceed immediately following rough details of budget and timescale.

A final meeting on site covered a thorough survey of the home and details of custom-made materials, final drawings and costs. Time was of the essence and it was crucial in the final agreement.

It took us just a week to finalise our production drawings, to order all the necessary materials and allocate the work to our craftsmen.

All in all, production in our workshop was finished in a fortnight.

Then our same craftsmen were able to install everything on site in the space of a week.

  • DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT

The main aim of the project was harmonizing the Arts-and Crafts style of the house and the new concrete extension on the backyard. We designed a timeless bespoke interior where the furniture is completely dovetailed to the architecture.

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Palette of selected materials and colours


The project consists of three main parts: the kitchen with a special
cupboard overlooking the living room; the wall panelling  in the dining room with a small seating area inside the bow window and a niche for the wine in the corner; the bookshelves divide the dining from the sitting room.

Each part is different but related to the other and  you can easily find a common thread which gives harmony to the overall ground floor.

In line with the owners’ needs, we designed a unique interior using minimalist forms and custom-made materials. The subtle contrast between the different materials gives a sophisticated impression.

They are the perfect expression of Ermesponti craftsmanship that gives careful attention to each single detail.

  • THE KITCHEN

kitchen mini sketchThe owner loves cooking.

Her kitchen has been specially designed accordingly with a wide range of appliances and units.

Each unit, for example, is made of marine plywood that is completely water resistant, is the highest quality and normally used just for yachts.

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The kitchen: the full-size render as we imagined it

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The kitchen as we realised it, pretty much like we described it in our presentation

The texture of doors and drawers is engraved oak made just for the owners in our workshop, paying special attention to the tones of the varnishing.

So much care was devoted to every single wish or need of the owner.

A further example was the three pull out units to display such a collection of herbs and spices you can see in the following pictures: the end result met with her complete and full satisfaction.

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kitchen PULL OUT

The pre-installation stage of the three pull out units in engraved oak (still to be varnished in the final colour)

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The final result of the kitchen with the integrated pull out units, near the ovens

.Stay tuned for further updates on the Nightingale Lane home: coming soon, as soon as we get more pictures done!

London Calling… Italian Bespoke Design at the London Design Week 2016.

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There’s a lot of talk, these day, in London about design, for the London Design Week taking place in Chelsea.

In particular, it seems like the home-extension market is having quite a development, due to an increase of taste for quality interiors among Londoners.

Well, being in London right now, developing several projects, we can witness that… yes, it’s true!

And it’s also absolutely true that the taste for exquisite Italian quality for bespoke interiors – and by that expression we mean “interior architecture projects uniquely and purposely designed for that specific use of that specific person” – has increased a lot.

As in every great city of the world – we feel at home in London, but we have worked quite a lot in other world capitals – we feel a growing demand for what is perceived as the ultimate luxury:

NOT the super-rich material or the overrated and hyperexpensive design piece, BUT the interior made just for oneself, in a single, custom realized piece noone else in the world will ever have.

We are used to say that our interiors are like portraits of the people that are designed and realized for…

A home, in our opinion, must speak the one and only language of the personality of its inhabitants, and our precise role as architects and interior designers is to understand, interpret and give back in terms of architecture and interiors such personality.

Noting more, nothing less… in London and anywhere else!

Download the Programme of the LondonDesignWeek 2016
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LondonDesignWeek2016