Luke Hughes and Company, recent news

Luke Hughes & Company have again been collaborating with designer Tomoko Azumi at TNA studio to increase their range of specialist furniture designs for the luxury hotel spa market. The company has, since the first installation at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Knightsbridge in 1999 (designed by Eric Parry Architects) now completed major projects with:-

The Peninsulas’ - Hong Kong, Chicago, Bangkok and Tokyo
Bahia Del Duque, Tenerifie
Metropole Spa, Monaco
Maryborough, Ireland
Mar Menor, Spain
Grand Lisboa Hotel, Machau
Gleneagles Hotel Scotland
Hotel Europe Ireland
The Address Hotel, Downtown Burj Dubai
The Reval Hotel Riga
The G, Ireland
One and Only Palimia
Ritz Carlton Hotel Powerscourt, Bahrain and Moscow
Loch Lomond, Scotland
Sofitel St James, London, UK
Captains Club, Dorset , UK
Mandarin Oriental Knightsbridge

The first major project for the new designs was recently delivered to the Hotel Europe in Killarney. This has been followed by further orders from the Reval Hotel in Riga, Latvia. The new designs are an expression of Luke Hughes & Company’s commitment to meticulous research into the ways in which furniture enables sensitive architectural spaces to work, both efficiently and economically. Natasha Woodbridge and Naomi Greig head up the Spa team at Luke Hughes & Company. For more details, visit the Luke Hughes and Company spa beds site.

A radical new holy table has been designed by Luke Hughes for St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh and in June 2009 was approved by the Office of Worship & Doctrine of the Church of Scotland. The table will be made out of a solid 3-ton block of marble, quarried near Carara and is expected to be installed in the autumn of 2009. There have been intense discussions about the liturgical symbolism of the table and this has led to visits to various quarries, including the romantic, abandoned quarry on Iona, where Columba first re-introduced Christianity in the 6th century. Eventually, the choice of stone was for a Calacata marble which will be worked by Mauro Rovai in Pietra Santa, near Pisa in Italy.

During 2009 Luke Hughes & Company have continued to supply Unilever’s prestigious HQ with executive boardroom and dining furniture to match the original pieces designed to complement the highly successful rebuilding of Unilever House by architects Kohn Pederson Fox in 2007. ‘It is very pleasing to see how much the newly designed furniture is working and how well it is appreciated by the client’, said customer manager, Wendy Graham.

Earlier this year, Luke Hughes & Company was appointed to consider new liturgical furniture for the nave of St Albans Cathedral and, in April, the resulting designs were approved by the Dean & Chapter and English Heritage. The designs include altar, altar rails, clergy seating, choir stalls and a radical storage arrangement under the organ loft that will deal with the storage problems associated with the inevitable clutter of a busy cathedral. The scheme has evolved in collaboration with the cathedral surveyor, RIchard Griffiths and the artist, John Maddison, who has designed a painted panelled ceiling for the storage area. ‘There are many challenges in working in one of England’s finest Romanesque ecclesiastical interiors, not least enabling the space to work for worshippers and and cathedral staff. It may be challenging, but it is certainly stimulating - as ever, we are committed to getting the details absolutely right’.

This month saw the completion of the building works of the new Supreme Court, for which Luke Hughes and Company has designed the library fittings to fit in with Feidlen and Mawson’s architectural scheme. This appointment follows Luke Hughes’ award-winning designs for another major law library - the Supreme Court Library in Edinburgh, completed in 2004. Luke Hughes & Company have also designed, in collaboration with Tomoko Azumi, the furniture for the three new courtrooms, as well as the furniture for the Justices’s new private rooms. The completion of the library, manufactured by joinery company E.E. Smith as sub-contractors to the Kier Group, has presented unexpected challenges including incorporating water-sprinkler fittings within the book-stack lighting. It has also meant collaborating again with the letter-designer, Richard Kindersley, who also designed the lettering for the Luke Hughes Millennium Altar for Bristol Cathedral in 2001.

http://www.feildenandmawson.com
http://www.justice.gov.uk/about/supremecourt.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_Kingdom
http://www.kindersleystudio.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/oct/25/uk-supreme-court-tradition-modernity