Craftsmanship in stainless steel

The search for a new design language

The British arm of Unilever, arguably Luke Hughes biggest corporate client and one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, commissioned the design of high end office furniture. Occupy the recently refurbished Neoclassical Art Deco Unilever House at the north end of Blackfriars Bridge, London. 

The curved façade and giant Ionic columns of this famous building, designed by a trio of architects and boasting panels designed by Eric Gill, have given that part of London’s Thames Embankment its imposing character since the early 1930s. At the turn of the century, Luke Hughes had been developing two ranges of tables with stainless steel frames and tops in a variety of materials for some time. The Curzon system was originally conceived for the DTZ building in Curzon Street, and the Mercury for a Pearson fitout.

Working with stainless steel requires the same craft attitudes as with oak, maple or walnut, but the Unilever contract also demanded ‘smart’ design moves that ensured flexibility and value engineering for the client, and a radical approach to office cable management, then a major office design headache. 

The design team at Luke Hughes worked hard to find a design language very different from anything on the commercial furniture market for Unilever, which was undergoing a top-to-bottom re-organisation and rebranding. The client needed our high end office furniture designs to reinforce its reputation for innovation and originality.

Crafting stainless steel

With stainless steel tables, just as with buildings such as Rogers and Piano’s Pompidou Centre in Paris and Rogers’ Lloyds of London, the uncompromising engineered steel and glass aesthetic depends on painstaking hand work, especially in the final finishing.

Working in stainless steel is very different from mild steel, not least because it distorts when heated, so any jointing must be executed in a way to minimise this effect. Polishing is crucial; it is done entirely by hand, especially on structures as complicated as the cross-braced and triangulated frame of the Mercury system. It seems ironic, but at the time a machine simply could not make the required finish.

Used in this context, steel was not being used as an industrial product, but more like wood, requiring a very high degree of craft skill.

Both Mercury and the simpler Curzon range, based on a twinned post-and-beam structure with a curved chassis-spring-like foot, were used for Unilever.

Our Mercury design had already developed from the initial concept into something more sophisticated and easier to make; it was the same refinement process as developing a chair.

Installation & site work

A high point of the Unilever project is the expanding round table in the executive dining area. The glass centre section makes the ‘main table’, but the timber veneered surround, added in sections, doubles it in size. In a highly unusual mechanical solution, the underframe leg assemblies swivel through 180 degrees to support the expanded top. 

The design team is also proud of the flip-top versions of the Curzon range, whose lever and sprung hinge mechanism locks the tops in place, open or closed.