Goddard Littlefair creates striking interior and lighting features at the new Hans’ Bar & Grill restaurant, taking inspiration from Sir Hans Sloane’s love of natural history, adventure and discovery.

Hans’ Bar & Grill is a new neighbourhood restaurant in Chelsea London’s Pavilion Rd. Featuring striking, contemporary interiors, created by leading interior designers Goddard Littlefair, the new venue offers an exciting extended café-bar space and restaurant.

Making use of a newly-covered former courtyard space, within the 11 Cagodan Gardens hotel, the new restaurant and bar is set to appeal to a wide range of day-to-night guests.

Named in honour of Cadogan family ascendant Sir Hans Sloane, one-time physician to the royal family, as well as a celebrated natural historian, the new 106-cover restaurant encompasses 18 covers within the café-bar, 46 covers in the courtyard area forming part of the main restaurant, plus a further 42 covers in the dining area of the main hotel building.

A further private dining space, ‘The Curio’, inspired by Sloane’s love of adventure and discovery, can seat 16 guests and is located directly opposite the internal restaurant entrance.

The first café-bar space is located within a converted former news garage on Pavilion Road, where it sits alongside other converted garages either side, to form a new suite of upmarket, independent boutique retailers, from barbers to cheesemongers to specialist purveyors of wine and bread. Architectural works on this, as well as the courtyard refurbishment, were carried out by ReardonSmith Architects.

The bright and airy café-bar space has a clean and contemporary feel with a monochrome colourway, along with interesting, textured finishes, such as white slatted timber wall cladding and an original, exposed yellow-stock brick wall to the left, plus white tiling behind the bar, where vertically stack-bonded Solus ceramic tiles create a great handcrafter feel.

The bespoke feature bar front is in split-faced stone, with a natural, honed grey basalt bar top, providing a clean contrast. The ceiling in this space is exposed and painted light grey, with architectural lighting on tracks and features lighting consisting of five industrial-feel brass wall lights from Istanbul-based Topos Workshop along the left-side brick wall. Alongside this, there are seven Nordlux Strap pendants over the bar, which hang from leather straps.

As you move through to the first courtyard section of the restaurant, it is filled with natural light thanks to two large-scale feature rooflights, from which green and black blown-glass Amp pendants by Holloways of Ludlow hang, interspersed with bespoke spun-brass bowls full of natural planting. This subtle nature theme extends into the main restaurant area where small pots feature throughout on the waiter stations and along the back bar.

The restaurant has a contemporary classic feel and makes use of bespoke, shallow brushed brass chandeliers, which were custom made for the project by Northern Lights. Adding glamour to the space, one is situated in the wine room and the other in the rear restaurant section that follows and completes the scheme.

The rear section is also the indoor restaurant entrance for guests coming from the hotel side. A Gubi Multi-Lite pendant in brushed brass hangs over a six-seater booth here, complemented by art inspired by Sir Hans Sloane and including a series of tropical birds, flowers and feathers, painted by artist Rebecca Jewell and curated by art consultants Artiq.

Outside the main restaurant directly opposite, is the 16-cover Curio lounge space, which can be used for breakfast overspill or for a further 10 covers.

For Lucy Robinson, F&B Associate at Goddard Littlefair, the design process on this project was a relatively straightforward one as the client had realistic ambitions in terms of the space becoming a workable project. “The brief was to create a classically contemporary café bar and restaurant that had complementary but contrasting interiors to the hotel interior,” Robinson tells darc. “It needed to suit the Chelsea market and sit well on the newly-refurbished Pavillion Road.

“We used decorative lighting in the scheme to add personality and warmth to both the café-bar and restaurant spaces throughout the day. At night, the lighting scene has been set to turn off the majority of architectural lighting so that the decorative fittings really come into their own and provide the glow, sparkle and comfort in the spaces.

“In the restaurant, blown glass fittings in the former courtyard space work well with the indoor-outdoor feel and hanging plants, while bespoke brass rings were used to suit the lower ceiling heights and add to the timeless feel of the panelled rooms. In addition, we used decorative lighting in black and brown for the café-bar to complement the space’s graphic feel.

“The lighting is crucial in achieving a day-to-night transformation for the space, allowing the client maximum operational flexibility, as well as helping to demarcate zones and respond to the different character and feel of the three sections of the space – from the exposed brick and white tiling of the café-bar to the well-lit former courtyard space and the more intimate, lower-ceilinged rear space and wine room.”

Goddard Littlefair’s Co-founder and Director Jo Littlefair, adds: “We’re very excited about the opening of our first London restaurant project. As a design studio, we’ve built an extensive portfolio of residential developments in London and an extensive portfolio of hospitality projects outside the capital, so it’s great now, to have a completed restaurant project in the same city we work, eat and play in – and also, to have been able to do it for such a prestigious client and in such a great location.”

www.goddardlittlefair.com