What sets Selfridges apart from other high
street retailers is reinvention, according
to architect Roz Barr, whose firm designed
Selfridges Creative Studios. She calls the
studio the ‘brains’ of Selfridges, where 80
people collaborate to keep the store fresh and
relevant. The challenge was to transform a
nondescript floor in an office building on the
Selfridges campus into a framework for the
creatives to let loose. Barr describes the result
as a ‘container’ for personalisation. Birch
plywood walls for meeting rooms double up
as informal display cases for objects, books
and magazines. MDF boards in pale yellow,
grey and black provide surfaces for controlled
creative explosions, while concealing storage
space. Existing plan chests were relocated
from the old office and repurposed with new
steel frames and laminate worktops. ‘While
it’s not a corporate space, it had to have
order,’ says Barr, who dubiously notes an
unruly house plant where it shouldn’t be and
an unusual plastic construction pinned to a
smooth plaster wall – but after all, creatives
are going to create. A matte black lino floor
with high skirting helps to tether everything
down. ‘I was looking at early Bauhaus stuff
and 1920s and 1930s offices,’ she says. ‘Surface
is one of the first things I address on any
project. Here I wanted to set a heavy black
base so everything else sort of lands on it.’
And while Selfridges is a brand known for its
canary yellow bags, that colour is nowhere to
be seen here – the team wanted to claim their
own identity. ‘It was important to set up a
language,’ says Barr. There’s boldness in the
orange resin table by Muller Van Severen;
an industrial spirit in the ‘back-of-house’
aesthetic of exposed plasterwork and copper
pipes; and warmth in the domestic touches
throughout, such as the sweeping blue
and silver Kvadrat curtains and cosy Vitra
meeting booths. Barr’s process is a delicate
combination of adapting, reusing and adding –
she often works on refurbishment projects
of existing buildings and has just been
shortlisted to update the V&A’s Fashion
Galleries. ‘Architects have a responsibility to
think about harmonising space, but it’s also
about orchestrating all the other elements
that come together,’ she says. While Barr’s
design for the Selfridges Creative Studio is
made up of many moving parts, the space
is a coherent piece of work, cleverly layered
to achieve the simplicity required to balance
the creative noise – or ‘cut out the crap’,
as Barr says with a smile. rozbarr.comROZ BARR, PHOTOGRAPHED
AT SELFRIDGES CREATIVE
STUDIOS WITH ITS BOLD
MATTE BLACK LINO FLOOR
AND ORANGE RESIN TABLE
BY MULLER VAN SEVEREN
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