---

We look at eight unique projects and the choice and use of surface materials that help make them outstanding.

---

Words by Toby Maxwell

The Blues Kitchen, Brixton
The Blues Kitchen in Brixton, South London, offers a mix of late-night live music, authentic BBQ and a large selection of bourbons. Located in what was once the old Electric Social premises, the cavernous ground-floor space is dominated by a flamboyant ceramic-tiled bar, designed and hand-manufactured by specialist tile company Craven Dunnill Jackfield. This contemporary installation of Victorian-styled ceramic tiles breathes new life into this traditional art form and highlights the practicality of ceramics in a bar environment.

The bar is faience-tiled (a traditional tin-glazed pottery technique, prevalent in the Victorian era in the UK), stretches 10m and is set off against a backdrop of white and blue brick-shaped ceramic tiles and amber dados, which define arched recessed areas. The venue promotes its own BBQ and drink specialities by writing on the white glazed tiles, which can easily be wiped clean and replaced with fresh promotions.

The faience tiles at the front of the bar date back to the 1880s in style and are hand-made at Craven Dunnill Jackfield's works in Shropshire. There are five designs of tile that clad both the bar and five floor-to-ceiling pillars.

Each of the central convex large green tiles measure 245mm x 600mm and weigh around 10kg each. The deeply textured relief-design dates to the late 19th-century and features a repeating urn motif. These tiles are bordered by four styles of decorative dado tiles in blue and amber. The same designs are featured on the 2.5m-tall pillars, which are capped with deep capital tiles, decorated with an acanthus leaf design. cravendunnill-jackfield.co.uk

Garden of Contemplation, Winnipeg
A Finalist in this month's Surface Design Awards 2016, the Stuart Clark Garden of Contemplation at Winnipeg's Canadian Museum of Human Rights joins just two other finalists in the public building interior category.

One of the museum's grandest spaces, the light-filled water garden, named after a Canadian philanthropist, is a unique gathering space in its atrium. It features vertical and horizontal surfaces formed from more than 600 tonnes of black basalt stone, treated with the VOC-free stone sealant FILAFOB ECO.

The museum was created by Antoine Predock as design architect, and Architecture49 as executive architect. It is placed on a site that has been a meeting place for indigenous peoples for thousands of years, near the forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers. It is the first national museum to have been built outside the capital, officially opening in September 2014. Its distinct exterior -- designed to LEED Silver standards -- features glass, limestone, steel and concrete that wrap around and cocoon the building's exterior. The light-filled Stuart Clark Garden of Contemplation sits beneath the huge 1,300-paned glass 'Cloud', modelled on the wings of a peace dove, and a spiral staircase that leads to the 100m-high Tower of Hope.

The volcanic basalt stone was specified by Picco Engineering and supplied and installed by stone contractor Brxton Construction.

Holiday Inn, Vilnius
In the heart of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, the Holiday Inn hotel has recently undergone a full refurbishment with Corian solid-surface material used throughout its 134 superior rooms.

Geert Snaet, general manager of the hotel, says: 'Our idea was to create a guest room that stands out from the crowd, and we knew we had to take some risks. Most Holiday Inn clients may not remember the decor of their rooms, but these renovated rooms are daring and our clients have been giving us an overwhelmingly positive response.'

The project's central focus pivots on a creative use of light combined with the translucency of Corian, as well as on a design that appears to seamlessly extend from the bedroom into its bathroom. Project manager Fulvio Cancelli of Spekas explains: 'We wanted a design that would distinguish the hotel in the minds of our guests, one that would ideally tie together the various decorative elements from the living and bathing areas in a continuous flow.'

The new bedrooms are equipped with a headboard made in Corian, which frames twin beds that appear to be suspended. These have been installed with an ingenious sliding mechanism so that the beds can be easily joined together to make a double bed, or remain separate.

The bathrooms are characterised by an eye-catching shower enclosure that also acts as a partition between the bedroom and bathroom, and which is made with two different thicknesses of Corian in the ultra-translucent Glacier Ice colour. When the shower LED light is on, this filters through the thinner band accents, and when showering a subtle illumination diffuses into the bedroom space that includes glimpses of the silhouette of the showerer.

In addition to its innovative design idea, the sheer quantity of Corian used in the project -- and the relatively brief time taken to complete the design -- have been distinctive features of the renovation process. Jurgis Garmus, of fabricator Gforma, says: 'It represents one of our most successful projects, but also one of our most challenging because of short deadlines and the vast quantity of Corian used.

'An interesting technical feature of the fabrication is that two separate thicknesses (6mm and 12 mm) of Corian were used for the construction of the shower columns. The hotel never closed during the refurbishment, so the work schedules were intensive and had to be completed in a short time frame of about six weeks, to ensure guest comfort and uninterrupted business operation.'

Architect Edgaras Neniskis, of Lithuanian Arches architecture studio, adds: 'Each room is organised as a single space in which the private environment of the bathroom is established by translucent partitions. The design is based on a clean, contemporary look and a connected floating-furniture system made from what appears to be a single ribbon of Corian. Thanks to the extreme versatility and homogenous properties of this material, we could use it to also create the functional bathroom furnishings, unifying them with the furniture.'

Chocolates Brescó, Barcelona
Estudio De Interiorismo Desafrá specified Neolith by TheSize, a brand of natural sintered compact surfaces, for the Chocolates Brescó bakery in Barcelona, a family business of master chocolatiers established in 1875.

Colours Avorio and Chocolate, from Neolith's Colorfeel collection, were selected for the 200 sq m of flooring as well as for the cladding throughout the bakery, with their beige and brown tonal qualities being the perfect visual representation of chocolate. The transformed areas include the entrance, cafe and multimedia space.