B3 Designers on restaurant and bar design


Pamela Buxton talks bars and restaurants with Mark Bithrey, of B3 Designers.


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For such a prolific practice in the hospitality sector, it's surprising that B3 Designers doesn't have a higher profile. Perhaps it's because Mark Bithrey and his team are just too busy to make that much time to talk about themselves, completing no less than 300 bars and restaurants since the practice established in 2002.

Based in Wapping, B3 Designers has steadily grown to a team of 14. Projects range across the market from £200,000 to £1.8m, with an average new fit-out spend of around £800,000, working for clients such as casual dining chains Nandos and Las Iguanas and independents such as La Gavroche. It recently won best standalone restaurant for the champagne and hot dog bar Bubbledogs/Kitchen Table in the 2013 Restaurant and Bar Design Awards.

Kitchen Table
Kitchen Table

Bithrey studied interior design at London Metropolitan University and set up B3 after working for Din Associates, Revolution and Portland Design. Although he'd worked in other areas as well, he felt naturally drawn towards hospitality sector, and the connection such work has with the people who use it. 'Our projects take us right into modern-day culture, creating spaces people can enjoy, hang out in and talk about. It really gets in touch with people,' he says.

He sees the practice very much as interior architects who enjoy getting to grips with the fabric of the buildings on the site: 'We are confident pulling buildings apart - with a structural engineer - and putting them back together. We love taking brown sites and giving them new life.'

This is particularly useful given the current fierce competition for restaurant sites in London, which has led clients to take on more challenging properties, either rambling spaces full of nooks and crannies or - increasingly - former offices. 'It's harder and harder to find A3 sites for our clients. That's the downside of the boom,' he says.

He describes B3's work as creative and bespoke, favouring natural materials and paying particular attention to lighting.

One Kensington, London
One Kensington, London. Photo Credit:Adam Luszniak

It especially enjoys using reclaimed materials and mid-century vintage pieces that have a backstory to bring individuality and authenticity to the design: 'We're happier around being gritty than polished. We're very much down-to-earth. There's no pretence. We don't like to do anything twice. We like pushing boundaries to a sensible extent and bringing creativity and fresh ideas to the environment. We strive to be classic, so it [the design] has longevity...we'd be very disappointed if it was ripped out in a couple or even five years,' adding that in the past 12 years, none of B3's projects have needed more than a little refreshing.

B3 enjoys working with the characteristics of the host building and using these as the design inspiration for the new restaurant. For chef James Lowe's restaurant Lyle's in the Tea Building in Shoreditch, B3 picked up on the mahogany woodwork and tiling of the common parts to establish a design language for the new restaurant, created in a former gallery on the ground floor.

'We're bringing the identity of the building into the space. It feels like its been there for years,' he says.

Lyles, in The Tea Building Shoreditch, London
Lyles, in The Tea Building Shoreditch, London. Photo Credit:B3 Designers

For Bubbledogs and sister restaurant Kitchen Table, B3 preserved the Charlotte Street frontage by creating an entrance shared with offices upstairs. Inside, exposed brickwork and floorboards are contrasted with a new copper-clad bar and seating in nooks and crannies.

Customers for Kitchen Table enter through the bar and into the eating space at the rear, where seats are arranged around the kitchen to allow diners to watch chef James Knappett at work. For One Kensington, the design references the building's former life as a bank, with a large bar where the bank counter stood.

Bithrey particularly enjoys identifying the least appealing space in the restaurant and addressing ways to make this more desirable. This problem-solving approach worked well at La Gavroche, where B3 recently created a private dining room out of an awkward space that was cut off from the rest of the restaurant by the route to the kitchen doors.

But sometimes the main space lacks character and B3 has to make all the running to create a distinctive identity.

Nando’s, Bristol
Nando's, Bristol

This was the case at Nandos in Bristol, where B3 turned a bland rectangular box into a rich and lively eating space, creating undulating fin-lined walls and utilising scaffolding planks, reclaimed timber and barrels. At nearby Las Iguanas, the same problem is solved by using plenty of downlighting to create a more intimate atmosphere in the lofty space, plus rich colour, bespoke tiling and curved banquettes arranged down the centre.

Bithrey embraces the different challenges of any scale or type of restaurant. Part of the appeal of Kitchen Table, for example, is its secretive nature, which Bithrey particularly enjoys. 'I like little building projects, and what that brings to the culture of the city.' Not that B3 shies away from larger projects, particularly those that give new life to fine old buildings. And it doesn't get much more distinguished than the next project in its sights - two restaurants within a prominent riverside building in London.

When it goes ahead this prestigious commission, B3's biggest to date, should certainly help put this busy practice even more clearly on the map. b3designers.co.uk








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