The design narrative at Nobu London Portman Square focuses on creating an atmosphere of timeless elegance and contemporary luxury. Japanese design is touched on throughout the hotel through small sensitive touches and subtle references which David Collins Studio has reinvented in a way so that they sit at ease within the building.
Creating the right ambience was vital and Dernier & Hamlyn was chosen by David Collins Studio to design and manufacture lighting that delivered throughout the day the most spectacular areas of the hotel including wall, ceiling and pendant lights in the restaurant, bar, private dining room, atrium, lobby and ballroom.
Unlike a restaurant that may only be open in the evening, it was vital for the hotel to feel like a completely different space for a 7am breakfast guest to a 2am dinner, drinks and dancing guest. The lighting needed to be able to change the scene and highlight different tones and materials during different times of the day.
Dernier & Hamlyn’s artisan team were required to work with a wide range of materials and utilise varied skills to produce the 100 individual bespoke lighting pieces. While they were all crafted from brass and hand-finished in bronze, there very different lighting as art pieces in different areas of the hotel.
• In the lobby lounge, the lighting includes a pendant some 1,600mm square and four square luminaires that sit atop cabinets containing wines and spirits. They consist of hand-crafted brass frames fitted with handblown glass panels between which are bespoke Japanese-inspired parchment paper shades brought together through uniformity and repetition. The wall lights in the lounge mix classic Japanese clasp details inspired from temple design, and Raku glazed tiles, with an elongated contemporary lamp layered with 3 different types of glass to bring luxury and sparkle.
• Above the sushi bar in the restaurant, four bronze pendants finished in antique brass some 1,300mm in length that were hand cut, shaped and welded and fitted with bespoke handmade seeded glass shades.
• The 12 ceiling lights in the main restaurant feature reeded glass tubular shades and hand formed brass end caps. They are fixed using one-metre long, handcrafted brass rods fitted with solid brass spheres.
• An 80-metre brass track system was also designed and made by Dernier & Hamlyn to accommodate hand-folded, white-paper shades created by Danish bespoke shade maker Le Klint.
• 12 colonnade wall lights are in the lobby ceiling. They were formed from brass sheets cut by hand, all pieces were individually silver-soldered and finished in a unique bronze shade created by the David Collins Studio team. Light is softly dissipated through the 22 shades created by sandwiching luxury Spanish parchment between glass panels.
• In the ballroom there are two completely different but complementary types of wall lights. One with leaf shaped glass shades and the other with glass elements to brass stems fitted with dimmable LEDs. Pleated shade floor lamps created from hard wood stained to a custom colour specified by David Collins Studio and brass have been placed at almost every column in the atrium to create impact and repeated in other areas of the hotel too.
