The Best of Design in London (with Perrier-Jouët) | Partner Content
They say truly great design is invisible.
Which, no doubt, annoys truly great designers no end.
So we’re here to assuage their angst by very deliberately pointing out the very best of London’s most beautiful-yet-somehow-also-practical bars, restaurants, and hotels. …And they also happen to be a great place to get an equally beautiful drink, too.
The Sanderson | Originally built in the ’50s, this prestige-hogging hotel has always looked pretty, well, pretty – but it was when they bussed in Philipe Starke to redesign the place fro the ground up that it became truly gorgeous. With an 80ft long bar, and tranquil courtyard garden, and ever-so-slightly surreal touches, it’s hard to beat for looks. And as for drinks? Well, you can get a design-it-yourself Champagne cocktail in their Enchanted Garden until the end of the year – your flute of Perrier-Jouët Grand Brut NV will come with a cocktail tray of handmade liqueurs and botanicals for you to personally bespoke.
Sea Containers London | Topped neatly by the excellent 12th Knot cocktail bar, and all overlooking the Thames, Sea Containers London matches the beauty surrounding it with a gorgeous Tom Dixon-designed space inside. Playful touches, elegant furnishings, and sleek lighting all co-mingle to create a striking nautical theme without a hint of wood or bass.
The Imperial | Helped out by Perrier-Jouët, The Imperial is adding to its own elegant Victorian/modern blend by launching a garden pavilion including a long white oak table planted with live flowers …and a site-specific art installation made of several hundred white butterflies circling a botanically-inspired chandelier. Just for good measure.
McQueen | Steve McQueen was hardly a terrible-looking fellow, so a bar/ restaurant/ nightclub with his name on it should look commensurately good. And Shoreditch’s McQueen certainly does. It’s dark, moody, and atmospheric without ever seeming uninviting, and the NY loft-style vibe makes it feel like the kind of place Steve himself would hang out if he were still around today.
Sosharu | Jason Atherton is no stranger to great design. And his Clerkenwell bar/restaurant is no exception, modeled after Japanese izakayas and traditional Japanese minka house design, with an abstract timber structure framing the room. And the cocktail bar below isn’t too shabby either… especially since it serves their signature cockatil the Champagne Papi, which comes with both Perrier-Jouët Grand Brut NV and a token for an arcade-style vending machine which dispenses capsules containing absinthe-soaked sugar cubes (and a Japanese proverb).
Rotunda | The real majesty of Rotunda’s design is – like so much great design – easy to overlook. Placed smack-bang in the middle of London’s busiest commuter hub (King’s X) its cool lighting, panoramic canal views, and splashes of colour somehow create a laid-back, classically British, pastoral atmosphere which manages to cut right through the frenzied pace of life surrounding it.
And if you want to drink something just as beautiful as the place you’re in, spring for a bottle of Perrier-Jouët. You won’t regret it.
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