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Architecture Art Design Developers Luxury People Restaurants

Dariana Café + Lounge Bar Dandi Wembley London

Reaching New Heights

Dandi Wembley is like a hotel with all its facilities, only residents stay for at least six months,” explains Lifestyle Director Samir Kerchiched. We’re chatting over Champagne in the Dariana Café on the 16th floor of this exclusive residential scheme. Sunset is streaming in through arched windows, silhouetting the carved chaise longues and evergreen mature trees and splashing fountain. A glazed openable roof intensifies the flood of natural light further. “This restaurant is Persian style serving Middle East influenced food. It offers all day dining, opening at 7am. Breakfast dishes are British classics.” And, as it turns out, it also serves the best launch canapés for the selected chauffeured few.

Momo, sketch Mayfair and W Hotel have all been sprinkled with Samir’s stardust. “Dandi has its own factory and all the joinery was made there. Everything you see was made in the London Borough of Brent. That’s good for carbon footprint, quality control and efficiency.” Everything breathes luxury and romance from the gold plated fire extinguishers and Parisian style panelling to the views over the roof of London Designer Outlet towards Wembley Football Stadium.

“We have created a theatre of light!” exclaims Ali Reza Ravanshad, Founder of Dandi, with some understatement. “Dandi Wembley has been a labour of love starting with the Persian mosaic lining the entrance lobby. That floor is made up of 1,000s and 1,000s of tiles! We try to do beautiful things that will be here in 10, 30, 50 years from now. We are very proud of everything being made locally. There are not very many qualified joiners in London so we set up a programme in London to train them. This is a collective work: everyone has got a part to play.”

We head off on a tour of the communal areas for residents and guests which stretch over the top two floors. Dariana Lounge Bar on the opposite side of the lobby from the Café is equally glamorous – and sunlit. There’s the Garden Terrace with a barbeque on the 15th floor, as well as the Micro Theatre, Artist Residence Room and Wellness Studio. It’s not just all fun and games: there are also meticulously fitted out workspaces (Dandi Works) and meeting rooms (Dandi Meets). Heaven is in the height and the detail: the lifts are lined with horticultural framed prints that make you wish you weren’t ascending so speedily.

Ali Reza adds, “We are very proud of the team behind this project and the community that has been created here. Our tenants are so engaged – some of them are employed now in the building. They are the wider part of the Dandi family! It took just 91 days to fully let all 355 studio and one bedroom apartments.” We’re off to see one of the studio apartments, all 25 square metres of it. The studio is slickly fitted out: marble kitchenette; sliding breakfast bar, rainfall shower; seamless panelled storage; and bespoke furniture. But where’s the bed? Overhead! The floating bed descends from on high, balanced by invisible pulleys behind the wall. Metal framed windows are a reminder of the building’s previous life as offices.

“Ultimately we want to reimagine city living,” Ali Reza comments. Dandi partnered with Dukelease Properties to deliver this scheme. “Together with Dandi,” says Richard Leslie, Chief Executive Officer of Dukelease Properties, “we have placed huge importance on the quality of the finishes and functionality of the design. This provides an enhanced way of living that is aspirational for our residents.”

“The show will go on! See you at our next project,” ends Ali Reza. We’re on standby for Dandi Battersea launch.

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Art Luxury Restaurants

Christmas Champagne Breakfast + sketch Mayfair London

The Morning and Night Before Christmas

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Afternoon tea and champers are, by definition and nature respectively, not before noon. But this is sketch Mayfair, the restaurant cum bar cum gallery which invents the rules. Or abandons them altogether. Case is a case in point. Lower is the new upper. What’s not to love sipping like dowagers while untying ribboned cheesy toastie sliders. Bûche de Noël anyone? The zany interior has gone even more cuckoo now that the season to be very jolly is round the corner.

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Opening the front door of sketch is like entering C S Lewis’s wardrobe. Florist Carly Rogers has gone to town – and country – with a snowy forestscape called Hollow Way. Carly says she “takes inspiration from across the creative world: painting, fashion, interiors, pottery, textiles, architecture and more!” So the eclecticism of sketch is the perfect partner for her displays. Fairies by florist JamJar float around the ceiling of The Glade, sketch’s bar. As Elizabeth Bowen would say, “Upstairs is crazy with dreams or love.” In The Lecture Room, the first floor restaurant of sketch, Tony Marklew’s rose strewn Christmas tree Let It Snow fits neatly under the domed ceiling.

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Architecture Art Design Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Clea Irving + sketch Mayfair London

A Play on Words

Sketch Mayfair Parlour Ceiling © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

sketch, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is, “A rough or unfinished drawing or painting, often made to assist in making a more finished picture.” Or, “A rough or unfinished version of any creative work.” Or, “A brief written or spoken account or description, giving only basic details.” Or, “A short humorous play or performance, consisting typically of one scene in a comedy programme.” Or, “A comical or amusing person or thing.” sketch is also Mayfair’s most up for it eatery with so much art and music it’s institution as installation. If art makes what was not there before, sketch creates what was lacking.

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“Over 50 artists are represented here,” relates the beautiful Art Curator, Clea Irving, gazing at Annabel Karim Kassar’s Trophée Stag Light, Mark Lawson’s Bell Ash Tray, Ron Gilad’s Dear Igo Spider Lamp. Names, names. “My job is curating, assisting artists – sourcing plates!” she laughs. A conduit. Melbourne born UCLA educated Clea also arranges Sunday evening art classes in the Parlour from life drawing to lessons on design. The salon reborn. “It’s a Grade II listed house. It was previously the home of a balloonist, suffragettes, occupied for a spell by Dior, then RIBA. We’ve 190 staff but no elevator, just the original staircase. As the bar is being cleared at 4am, the pastry chef arrives. We’re 24 hours, front of house, back of house. It’s a little bit Downton Abbey.”

Sketch Martin Creed Gallery © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Glade is a verdant decadent fecund indoor garden brimming with 1950s French rattan furniture. “It was dreamt up by partners slash life partners Carolyn Quartermaine and Didier Mahieu, both artists,” explains Clea. “An enchanted fairy tale forest in central London. A postcard provided inspiration for the découpage walls.” Mrs Delaney on weed. The Gallery, a colourful cavernous cacophony by Turner Prize winner Martin Creed, is about to be revamped, given a rollercoasting makeover by Turner Prize nominee David Shrigley. Both downstairs restaurants serve Viennoiseries and afternoon tea with Dubonnet and Gin, the Queen’s favourite tipple. The menu is decorated with images from the 1902 Sears Roebuck catalogue.

“Restaurateur Mourad Mazouz oversees the interiors,” explains Clea, “And master chef Pierre Gagnaire looks after all the restaurants including the two Michelin star Lecture Room and Library upstairs. The interiors personify Mourad’s style and taste, his sense of humour. They’re purposely over ornamental, over the top, exuberant, playful, funny, tongue-in-cheek, about performance. Unlike Christo and Jeanne-Claude revelation through concealment, sketch’s décor is extrovert!” A barrel vaulted coffered kaleidoscope, a translucent tectonic Teutonic tartan, hovers over a pale monochromatic moonscape. Enigmatic eggs, USOs (Unidentified Stationary Objects), hatch humans (completely out of the loo). Blue steps for boys; red steps for gals.

JP Eating Afternoon Tea at sketch © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

She suggests, “People like to feel intimate when fine dining. Even though there are 46 covers in the Lecture Room and Library, the padded walls create that effect, softening the acoustics, adding ambiance.” Designed by South African born London based Gabhan O’Keeffe, burnt amber upholstery merrily zigzags across carpets and chairs, a marble Adam fireplace adding a moment of sobriety. Found and reflected objects fuse to become an eclectic whole. The restaurant as gallery, the Gallery as restaurant. Visual stimulation for digestion. “London’s where it’s all happening. There’s access to the best history, teachers, media. We’ve five of the best art schools in the world: Central St Martin’sCourtauld, Goldsmiths, RCA, Slade.” And with that, Clea finishes filling in the outline of sketch. The picture is complete.

Easter at sketch London © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley