Holloway Li won a competitive pitch to design a new showroom and co-working space in Clerkenwell for bathroom brand Coalbrook.
Upending typical expectations of a showroom, we used the space to convey Coalbrook’s brand identity, inspired by the town of Coalbrookdale, the site of the world’s first iron bridge and cradle of the Industrial Revolution.
Our design references the lost forms of the Industrial Revolution- the chimneys which towered over the skylines of cities, the searing heat of the furnaces and engine rooms and rough chiselled quarries.
The Ground Floor is designed to appear like a landscape of industrial chimneys, with ghostly casts of Victorian bathroom wall panels in piercing orange and amber resin.
The Basement is a dark, watery space with the atmosphere of a subterranean engine room, occupied by two oversized industrial ‘boilers’. A collaboration with a steel foundry brought to life a set of cast iron heritage backdrops, modelled digitally and moulded in the form of a traditional Victorian bathroom.
The two floors are joined by a new post-tensioned solid stone staircase with a rough quarried edge. Cut from a single block of Limestone and chiselled on site, the edge profile becomes rougher as it approaches Basement level, as if hewn from the ground itself.
Photos: Nicholas Worley