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Right: the Bonhams
development on Bond Street.
Below: LDS’s reinvention
of the Oxo Tower began the
transformation of London’s
South Bank
obituary, Oxo Tower Wharf ‘proved that it was possible to mix high
glamour with everyday design, chic eating with low-rent homes’. Oxo’s
‘recolonisation’ seeded the rebirth of the entire South Bank.
One way in which development can raise the profi le of an area is with
art galleries and museums; another is with sports facilities; but the snag with
all these facilities is the astronomical cost in relation to their nebulous
returns. However, you can take the grottiest part of town – the more driveby
shootings and drug pushers the better – chuck in a decent restaurant and
people will fl ock there because they think it’s cool. Food is the precursor to
so many other things that lead to an area’s rehabilitation.
Th e same approach seems to work for brands that need a little perking
up. After the Oxo Tower, LDS revived the top fl oor of Harvey Nichols’
fashion store in Knightsbridge in London and turned it into the Fifth
Floor, a dazzling emporium that wraps fi ne food in fi ne design, with an
elliptical fl oor plan, domed ceiling and walls that change colour. Th e Fifth
Floor laid the foundations for Harvey Nichols’ subsequent expansion into
the provinces, hitherto considered beyond the reach of fashion. Turning
east, Sandilands/LDS gave Tsvetnoy Market in central Moscow a similar
Cinderella-esque makeover, with even more spectacular results. Th e entire
ceiling of the top fl oor of the cavernous store has been lined with shiny
beaten steel to refl ect the hubbub below, while providing the all-important
bling factor that Muscovites demand. ‘A colleague came up with the idea
when she saw a satellite picture of Dutch tulip fi elds,’ says Sandilands. ‘Th e
fi elds of colour gave us the idea for a ceiling mirror that refl ected the
market below.’ Sandilands adds with a shrug: ‘Inspiration comes from the
strangest places sometimes.’ Speaking of outer space, Tsvetnoy reminds me
of the golden foil coating of the Lunar Module of the Apollo space
programme, as if the top fl oor of Tsvetnoy were about to take off , which
indeed metaphorically it has.
Sandilands and his team are now working for La Rinascente, the 11link
chain of Italian department stores which dates from 1865, but which
lost its way under the Agnelli family. By 2005, the brand was in dire need
of its own rinascente when a consortium of investors appointed Vittorio
Radice, ex-CEO of Selfridges, to act as midwife to its rebirth. Among the
designers he turned to were Sandilands and co, whom he tasked with
Thirty-Two
transforming the Rinascente store in Milan. As with Harvey Nichols, the
showpiece top-fl oor food hall has been transformed and now marks the
return of La Rinascente as a retail force in Italy’s industrial fi rst city. New
stores are planned for Verona, Venice and Bologna.
Th e Sandilands touch has non-foodie read-across. He is presently
working on the redevelopment of the Bond Street headquarters of
Bonham’s auction house, part of a £50m upgrade of Bonham’s global
saleroom empire. Th e project involves knocking seven buildings into one,
and fi tting three new double-height salerooms, ‘skyboxes’ (where clients
can watch sales anonymously), preview galleries and a cafe. Robert Brooks,
chairman of Bonhams, who bought the brand 11 years ago and merged it
with Phillips (so combining Britain’s fourth- and third-largest auction
houses), is determined to break the saleroom duopoly of Sotheby’s and
Christie’s, and make Bonhams the ‘best selling space in the auction world’,
thereby recovering business lost to New York and Hong Kong.
Looking to the future, developers Qatari Diar and Delancey have
appointed LDS to transform the Olympic Athlete’s Village in
east London into a vibrant residential quarter, to be called East Village.
Residents of the 2,818 homes will enjoy shops, restaurants and views
of the city and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, with the fi rst
apartments ready in spring 2013. It all fi ts perfectly with the LDS vision.
‘We care about the world,’ says Sandilands. ‘We want to create spaces that
are useful, long-lived, innovative, challenging and are something that
people become fond of.’