Apparatus: Take a look inside its London design gallery

Last month APPARATUS unveiled its first International gallery in a historic Grade II-listed building in Mayfair. Staking a claim in one of London’s most illustrious design destinations, it marks the studio’s first gallery in Britain. The 3200 square foot space on Mount Street, which dates to the 1890s, acts as a living expression of the studio’s work; an immersive environment imbued with a sense of drama and sensuality. The experiential space will house APPARATUS lighting, furniture and objects.

Co-founded in 2012 by Artistic Director Gabriel Hendifar, APPARATUS is defined more by its all-encompassing approach to design, than any narrowly prescribed aesthetic. Born in Los Angeles, Hendifar studied theatre costume and scenic design at UCLA, before working in the fashion industry for close to a decade. Each of the studio’s carefully curated collections, which are designed at their headquarters in New York City, and brought to life at their dedicated Brooklyn factory, are conceived as part of a wholly imagined world.

Informed by film, music, visual art, and human emotion, each piece goes on to become part of a permanent, and ever-expanding, catalogue of designs. “I believe that the objects in our homes have the power to help us understand ourselves more clearly,” says Hendifar. “Design is an expression of who we are and what we value. It is about identity, connection and humanity.”

Together with their spaces in New York and Los Angeles, the London gallery offers guests the chance to be fully immersed in the fantasy of the APPARATUS world. Located on a prominent corner site on Mount Street, the grand red brick and Portland stone property was acquired in 2021. Drawing inspiration from London’s internationalism, its historic architecture, as well as the comfort and seclusion associated with its long heritage of private member’s clubs, the space is a distillation of influences both old and new.

Set across two floors, guests enter through a vestibule sheathed in patinated brass, into the main gallery space whose walls and floors are composed from rich Italian Calacatta Classico marble and subtle, hand-trowelled plaster. Geometric motifs in the plaster work are a contemporary deconstruction of classical architectural references. The dramatic scale of the interior is punctuated by a series of imposing columns, and a vast suspended internal ceiling, both set within a bronze mirror border which lends the space a subtle otherworldly atmosphere of a spacecraft.

At street level the space is populated by some of the studio’s most notable designs, including the SEGMENT dining table, and the REPRISE and HORSEHAIR pendant light fixtures.

To the rear of the ground floor is perhaps the gallery’s most arresting design moment: a sweeping staircase, entirely clad in burl panels, complete with textural suede balustrade, which descends to the lower floor. It nods to the restrained, modernist beauty of the stairwells at Eltham Palace in South London and Villa Necchi Campiglio in Milan, both constructed in the 1930s. At times autobiographical, the interior walls are hung with portraits of Hendifar’s maternal grandmother, Shazdeh, and his mother, Afsaneh – his parents moved from Iran to LA in the late 1970s.

“In many ways, the London gallery is conceived as a fantasy home for my grandmother,” says Hendifar. “It is through these Persian matriarchs that I developed my own understanding of gracious hospitality, and what it means to welcome people into a space.”

The luxuriously burl-lined staircase gives way, on the lower ground floor, to what Hendifar calls, the Lounge. An utterly enveloping room, entirely surfaced in bronze mirror and dominated by generously proportioned sofa, it’s here that guests will have the chance to browse the studio’s elevated library of materials, and to linger a for a while.

Melding simple, polished forms with soulful, textural materials, the London gallery is a reflection of the wider ethos of the studio, which endeavours to strike an equilibrium between the machine-made and the work of the hand; between modernity, history and humanity.

“We’re incredibly excited to arrive on Mount Street. London is such a vibrant centre of architecture and design, and a window onto the rest of Europe, Asia and the Middle East. It’s a place which allows us the freedom to fully express the idiosyncrasies of the APPARATUS brand,” says Hendifar.

Over the last decade, APPARATUS has become known for originating bold, pared-back collections which both draw on the visual language of design’s past, and are defined by the warmth and eclecticism.

To view all APPARATUS collections and to find out more please visit apparatusstudio.com