Paul Thrush, director of STAC Structure, explains his agency’s work on Nando’s chains.
Phrases by Kay Hill
THE PREMISE behind chain eating places is commonly comparatively simple – the common roll-out of a single brandled design that makes prospects really feel immediately at residence whether or not they stroll into the department in London, Luton or Los Angeles.
Nonetheless, as an alternative of this company method, Nando’s, the restaurant chain which blends African and Portuguese culinary traditions to create its legendary peri-peri hen, calls for far more from its designers. Paul Thrush, director of STAC Structure, is a veteran of 69 Nando’s eating places – and each single one has been distinctive.
This concept noticed a variation within the corrugated sheeting utilized in Greenwich. Courtesy Of Stac
‘Nando’s has 4 design homes and we’re certainly one of them,’ says Thrush. ‘The corporate’s temporary is that no restaurant is to be the identical – each one must be distinctive and a brand new expertise. It’s nice from a design standpoint, as we’ve complete freedom and may have quite a lot of enjoyable, though the draw back is that in spite of everything that arduous work you’re solely in a position to make use of the design as soon as!’
There’s extra to it than simply developing with one thing unique each time, nonetheless. ‘In addition to being distinctive, it additionally must be a Nando’s – it has to feel and appear instinctively like a Nando’s, however not a Nando’s that you’ve ever seen earlier than,’ Thrush explains. On the coronary heart of every of STAC’s designs is the intelligent and progressive use of supplies – from outdated automotive components and wood shutters to fully bespoke surfaces.
Croydon’s Nando’s residence features a wall of terracotta ridge tiles. Courtesy Of Stac
‘Nando’s has a South African heritage, [so] they like issues to be genuine and authentically African,’ explains Thrush, who was born and introduced up in South Africa himself and studied structure on the College of Cape City. ‘My method to supplies comes from my upbringing in South Africa. In Africa, nothing is wasted, all the pieces is reused. I grew up seeing that all the pieces may be artwork, or may be practical or may be reused, so a part of my method is to alter the notion of supplies and use them in ways in which they haven’t been used earlier than.’
Thrush put this ethos to work within the very first restaurant that STAC designed for the chain again in 2013, which was set in a former automotive dealership and petrol station in Loughton that had been an area landmark for the reason that Fifties. ‘The neighborhood grew up with that and had been treasured about this outdated automotive dealership, so the design wanted to be sympathetic to what it as soon as was. To maintain that spirit alive, we coated the partitions with automotive components, by flattening doorways, bonnets and panels and turning them into cladding. We even made chandeliers from automotive headlamps.’ So as to add a standard African contact, he constructed a curved rammed earth mud wall contained in the restaurant – however utilizing clay dug up from the Thames estuary close by for native authenticity. The group’s vibrant creation for the brand new Loughton restaurant received a Restaurant & Bar Design Award, which turned out to be the primary of many, with STAC’s designs for Nando’s in Peckham, Harrogate and Swindon additionally successful awards.
Croydon’s Nando’s residence features a wall of terracotta ridge tiles. Courtesy Of Stac
Thrush’s private favorite of the portfolio to this point is the Nando’s in Croydon. ‘We got this plain retail field on a retail park and we needed to create one thing that was a vacation spot and felt particular,’ he explains. ‘The answer was to take extraordinary supplies and use them in extraordinary methods, so we had a 20m-long wall made with common terracotta Victorian ridge tiles, used vertically as cladding, plus a light-weight sculpture working by means of the center of the restaurant like a backbone.’ The important thing, he says, is to take one thing extraordinary and on a regular basis and remodel it into one thing extraordinary.
‘I prefer to be fairly intelligent with the price range; some designers may specify an costly tile however solely have the ability to use a little bit. I’d quite discover an on a regular basis materials that’s a fraction of the fee per sq. metre and lower it up or do one thing totally different and artistic with it,’ says Thrush.
The chain’s Peckham restaurant makes use of vivid yellow windowsill tile panels to attract guests in, whereas outdated shutters had been utilized in Glasgow. Courtesy Of Stac
So, at Peckham, for instance, he created a complete arched infrastructure of wood blocks throughout the field of the restaurant, creating the phantasm of strolling in by means of a railway-arch fashion tunnel, earlier than main prospects by means of to the again of the restaurant the place they’re greeted with a vivid wall clad in shiny, off-the-shelf yellow windowsill tiles. Different uncommon materials decisions embody utilizing the corrugated sheeting used for reasonable roofing; within the Greenwich restaurant he lower it into small items with a CNC cutter and utilizing them to clad a curved wall, with the shapes altering slowly because the wall progresses.
Maybe essentially the most shocking is the cork ceiling in Nando’s in Soho. The restaurant firm has a coverage of supporting younger South African musicians by facilitating collaborations with established UK artists. As a part of this programme, they wished to incorporate a recording studio within the restaurant – and STAC was tasked with making it distinctive. ‘We took certainly one of these songs and used a bit of kit that generated the sound waves into a visual wave, then put Nando’s peri peri salt on a platform and used that sound wave to generate a sample. This knowledgeable a form that was then sculpted out of a extremely sustainable cork block,’ explains Thrush. The cork was chosen due to its Portuguese heritage that fitted in with Nando’s Portuguese-style meals, in addition to its environmental credentials. ‘We discovered a cork materials that didn’t have any chemical substances or binding brokers however was merely compressed underneath excessive strain and warmth, and we used a CNC machine to chop out the sculptural shapes and types.
Generally our work positively blurs the boundaries between inside design, structure and artwork.’
