Judge's comments:

Layered raw and refined, Faradays masterfully blends textures and elegant luxury in a transformed building, showcasing meticulous craftsmanship and a curated selection of items that collectively create a sophisticated and abundant retail experience while emphasizing the ethos of thoughtful design and conscious abundance.

Description:

Faradays leavens luxury with rawness. Presenting collections from some of the world’s strongest fashion houses, the store repositions the beauty of an old building through the reimagining of luxury retail. The project is constructed from tensions, in which elegance is the common ground between tradition and innovation, rawness and refinement, softness and precision. In addition to fashion, footwear, homeware, and fragrances, faradays also includes a florist, bar and is home to selected artworks.

Luxury without care is only decadence. Our goal was to help shift luxury from an economy of scarcity to an economy of abundance. That means moving value away from rare, non-renewable materials, towards plentiful, low-carbon materials through the alchemy of thought, craft, and care. The existing building shell is rich and heavily textured, rough on its surfaces with regularly spaced columns. At Faradays, simple canvas transfigures from a dirt-cheap commodity into a sinuous and sensual line, forming bays and eddies of private space, stretched tightly, slashed like a Fontana, then peeled open to unveil carefully arranged treasures. It provided a soft, neutral backdrop for objects, tying together luxury and rawness, the machine-made and the hand-crafted.

We believe in design as brave craft, not as specification and shopping. We partnered with our favourite collaborators to shape almost everything in this space, from the plinths, ottomans, mirrors, tables and light fittings, down to the curtain clasps. Against the soft backdrop of the canvas, each such piece quietly harmonises with the store's own collections. The feeling is of a grand, brave living room filled with thoughtful and exquisite things.