Image Credit : Images courtesy of Lanelay Hall Hotel & Spa
Project Overview
SpaceInvader has completed the transformation of a formerly under-used restaurant at the luxury boutique hotel and spa Lanelay Hall in South Wales, creating in its place a vibrant, exciting, new offer, offering a fine dining menu based on seasonal British produce. The restaurant has been re-branded as BLOK and features a new interior with an open, theatrical kitchen and a rich, textured and layered treatment. Stand-out features include a new, modular, central booth area and a botanical theme, generous indoor planting, and a warm and natural palette. The restaurant also boasts an upgraded and exclusive private dining space and two new, full-height glass showcases displaying wine and curing / ageing meats.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Project Owner - Lanelay Hall Hotel and Spa
Contractor - Dawnvale
Interior Designer - SpaceInvader
Project Brief
The existing hotel restaurant space looked a little tired and didn’t suit the dining intent - it was overly formal, with a feeling of spaciousness and high ceilings that didn’t attract potential diners looking to experience an intimate environment. The space was populated with only loose furniture settings that didn’t ground the space in any way, and a grey carpet running throughout did nothing to highlight the beautiful period features. The overall interior treatment was light and cool-toned, which worked against rather than with the space’s listed Georgian oak panelling features.
The brief was clear: to completely transform the 134 sq m restaurant, with a new menu at the heart of the vision. ‘Fine dining by fire’ is the new menu concept that naturally calls for warm, cosy spaces with a nod to the theatrics of fine dining. The new concept needed to use the space better and create visual interest through scale, texture, fabrics and lighting to create a new intimacy for diners. The brief also covered the restaurant’s new private dining area, which needed to attract special occasion diners, but also offered some flexibility to the hotel’s owners to allow overflow from the main restaurant space in particularly busy periods.
Project Innovation/Need
A significant revenue stream was being lost due to the space's unfilled potential. The restaurant’s generous proportions and beautiful heritage features offered the opportunity to become not only a surefire winner for hotel guests but also to attract local diners as a destination venue in the area.
Two major moves helped ground this transition. The first was the design of a central, modular, 16-seater booth area at the heart of the restaurant to create visual interest, break up the identical rows of tables and create that much-needed intimacy, further supported by striking sculptural planting separating diners on either side. This also permitted a new spatial arrangement, boosting seating from 48 to 60 covers. This section was key to the concept’s success, with everything else feeding off it. Additional furniture in the space was bespoke-made for the project by Dawnvale, and new seating throughout is both more contemporary and more of a statement.
A second major intervention is the new glazed areas for wine display and a meat-ageing fridge in the private dining area. Guests can also see the wine display element from the restaurant exterior, allowing inviting glimpses into the space beyond. Views into the ‘theatre kitchen’, just beyond the private dining room, have also been maximised by incorporating new tiling, pulling the eye through. Smaller tables are additionally set into the private dining area’s bay window so that inbuilt flexibility exists for main restaurant overflow at peak times.
Design Challenge
The restaurant featured listed 3m-high, Georgian oak panelling throughout. As we couldn’t touch this, we decided how to transform and elevate the space into a memorable, contemporary and dynamic offer, working with and not against this beautiful expanse of wood. The client was very open to the restaurant having its own identity, separate from the main hotel, although also harmonious with it, which provided scope to be more playful with certain design elements. We played into the new concept of ‘fine dining by the fire’ to bring out warm, fiery hues and rich, earthy tones from the showcased meats and wines, using these to complement the existing timber and building on this palette with bold injections of colour.
One key requirement of the brief was to create a more intimate atmosphere, for which lighting played a key role. Chargeable lamps are on all the tables—a flexible, easily moveable addition as they don’t need to be hard-wired—with a focus on mood lighting at a smaller scale for each table. Additional lighting comes from floor-standing lamps where needed.
The new flooring throughout is a herringbone timber LVT to maintain the heritage feel of the space, and it works well with the timber panelling on the walls. New fabrics in the scheme include solid-colour ribbed fabrics, which follow a linear theme, referencing the Georgian period, when linear fabrics were highly fashionable.
Sustainability
Much of the space's wall and ceiling finishes were retained, and new interventions were considered for their timelessness and durability.
The existing space's period features revealed its potential. The design was built around these, leaving elements ‘as is’ or simply refreshing them. The beautiful period ceiling with its fantastically detailed feature cornicing was retained and enhanced, repainted in warm cream, and outdated chandeliers were replaced with new decorative lighting for a more sophisticated appearance, completely transforming the feel of the space.
Many newly added elements were designed and selected to respect the space’s period features, ensuring a timeless rather than trend-led finish, providing longevity in the design and reducing the need for regular interior updates. The new patterned wallpaper features above the walls and for border areas where the wall isn’t panelled. It is a tropical scene drawn in Old English style to suit these heritage features while tying in the botanical feel of other new elements within the space. This was also selected for its washability to reduce the need for future replacement due to marks or wear and tear. Other finishes were selected for this reason, with booth seating featuring darker upholstery to disguise any potential spillages or marks and a few lighter finishes allocated to loose furniture items, which would be less wasteful to reupholster or replace if needed.
Interior Design - Hospitality
This award celebrates innovative and creative building interiors, with consideration given to space creation and planning, furnishings, finishes, aesthetic presentation and functionality. Consideration also given to space allocation, traffic flow, building services, lighting, fixtures, flooring, colours, furnishings and surface finishes.
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