Designing a Tropical Surfer’s Paradise

For it’s sixth season, we collaborated with Coppa Club to design and curate the transformation of their Tower Bridge terrace. This year we decided to go for a Surfer’s Paradise theme to warm the Summer months. One of the most noticeable additions is the Vintage VW Camper van bar from Beetle Juice, that sits in place of the front two igloos. This was a perfect fit to the theme and terrace, providing customers with amazing drinks and surfer’s vibes.

The pods also got a makeover by the wonderful team at Cameron Gardens. They dressed the pods with tonnes of leafy foliage and cute little hanging pineapples. We paired this with tropical plants supplied by Patch, that work together to create a lush paradise.

It wouldn't be a surfer’s theme without some surfboards. We gave them a splash of pastel colour and placed them around the terrace and entrance. We also used one of the surfboards to display the Bar Menu which leans casually against the camper van.

Another great aspect of this year’s terrace, is the ‘epic swing’. A bespoke surfboard swing that sits in the corner of the terrace, perfectly framing Tower Bridge- one of the many curated photo ops! A stainless steel ‘Surfer’s Paradise’ sign completes this little corner, along with tropical plants and rocks.

If you haven’t already, we highly suggest going down and enjoying a cocktail this Summer. Hurry, they're booking up fast!

Gucci's Pop Up Decor Apartment

One of the main events in the design calendar has come and gone with a bang. From nature inspired kitchens designed by Tom Dixon, to an 8ft sculpture of the Maesta Sofferente sat infront of Duomo di Milano. There were heaps of quirky, creative and inspiring installations with many great suppliers showcasing their designs at Milan Design Week.

Amongst the weird and wonderful, Gucci opened a pop-up apartment to house their latest houseware collection. The apartment itself can be described as Gucci overload, with maximalist decor covered in the brand’s signature patterns and prints.

The actual homeware collection is displayed in real life scenarios, depicting how they would be utilised. Gucci created lovely vintage scenes with such luxury and sophistication poured into them. Velvets, bold prints and a huge marble fireplace, help make this space feel majestic.

For anyone who missed it, the store will remain open till June.

Pop- ups are even taking over museums...

Social media does not only change the way use restaurants and the way we design restaurants for its scenery to be used for the perfect photograph. There is also a big change in the museum culture. While it used to be normal that it was forbidden to take photos it now is actually encouraged to take photos in museums like Moma and co.

There’s a new kind of art installation popping up in cities across the world. It isn’t designed to showcase classical paintings, or to house impressive historical artifacts — it’s designed to be photographed for Instagram. These might not feel like real museums, but they’re a reflection of a real change happening in the museum world right now. As much as we love Kusama’s art, it is actually a mirror room installation that makes us queue for an hour.

Museums — both new pop-ups and traditional institutions — are capitalizing on smartphone culture by creating spaces whose main appeal is being a backdrop for a great selfie. As more kinds of retail experiences move online, spaces like this — where digital reproducibility through social media is an active part of the design — are only going to get more common.

Check out this video and learn more about how “instagram traps” are changing art museums.

Igloo Mania - Coppa Club Igloos ... how everything began 2016

It actually all began that we wanted to create an outside space that guests could enjoy throughout Summer and Winter.

Coppa Club Tower Bridge opened in May 2016 and the terrace was in full every single day throughout the Summer, then as soon as it got colder we immediately saw our numbers dropping. 

The problem is that due to our location being next to the tower of London, we are very limited with what we can do to cover the terrace. A fixed pergola/awning structure is not an option, as this would block the view to the tower. So we had to come up with a solution that would be temporary, would not block the view and have the ability to be installed very quickly to avoid any additional loss of traffic and revenue. Would also mention here that we still wanted our guests to still be able to enjoy views of The Shard and Tower Bridge.

That’s when then the idea of the igloos was born. They are off-the-shelf products from Germany that could be delivered within a week. The rest was quite easy for me to design. I grew up in a ski resort and just brought the charm of the alps to the river Thames in London! People got very attached to them and so were we.

The igloos were announced in the Evening Standard on a Monday evening, by the Tuesday morning we already had 5,000 emails with booking requests in our inbox, on Wednesday that number was 20,000!. No one expected that we had to hire 10 office angels to take care of the bookings. As soon as we were able to answer all these emails, we realised we could not even come close to meeting the demand.

In a nutshell:

PRE-LAUNCH

 25k sign ups to the newsletter through partnership and social media competition with Secret LDN 

DAY ONE

Demand was so high that the website crashed within 10 minutes

•14.5k cover bookings in the igloos

•28.4K opening rate on newsletter - 50% (21.71% industry average)

•18k click through on newsletter – 63% (1.33% industry average)

Website Page Views www.coppaclub.co.uk

•Day one total - 112k (daily average 10k)

•Day one by hour – 15k (hourly average 500)

Social Stats

•2k+ new Instagram followers in past 7 days

•1k Instagram likes on the igloo announcement

•32K reach on Facebook post

•12.9k impressions on announcement tweet

featured in:

https://archpaper.com/2016/11/london-pop-igloos-thames-riverbank/

https://www.cntraveler.com/story/at-londons-coppa-club-dine-in-an-igloo-along-the-thames-this-winter

https://www.timeout.com/london/blog/rejoice-those-igloos-by-the-thames-are-coming-back-101217

https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/restaurants/coppa-clubs-riverside-igloos-return-to-tower-bridge-a3660036.html

http://uk.businessinsider.com/coppa-club-tower-bridge-festive-igloos-by-the-thames-winter-season-2017-10

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2017/nov/19/are-pop-up-igloos-the-new-christmas-markets

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/best-winter-pop-ups-in-london-from-cosy-igloos-to-rooftop-ice-risks_uk_5a05cc4ce4b05673aa58fd95

https://thenudge.com/london-things-to-do/winter-pop-ups/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-42012732

https://sheerluxe.com/2018/05/15/summer-pop-ups-you-need-know-about

https://theculturetrip.com/europe/finland/articles/this-arctic-igloo-resort-is-winter-honeymoon-goals/

https://metro.co.uk/2017/10/27/all-the-cosy-igloos-you-can-visit-in-london-7029729/

https://www.ad-magazin.de