For
the design of the British Olympic house, the team at London-based
Innovision, led by Claudia Douglass, chose to abandon tired British
clichés for a peppy, colorful space—the perfect foil to the
19th-century building that hosts the U.K. delegation in Rio.
They collaborated with an array of homegrown talents, from a
backgammon board maker to fabric and furniture
designers to
installation artists. “The guiding principles of British House are
celebration, inspiration, and collaboration. Most importantly, we
needed to represent a ‘relaxed’ Great Britain, in celebration
mode,” Douglass says. “Our logo, created by British illustrator
Caroline Tomlinson, and brand identity defined our environmental
design.”
The
setting for Britain’s Olympic house is Parque Lage, a 19th-century
stone mansion designed by Italian architect Mario Vordel for
Brazilian entrepreneur Henrique Lage’s wife, a renowned opera
singer. This handsome structure will be illuminated by carefully
crafted lighting effects that will change with each celebratory
moment.
The
central courtyard of Parque Lage once housed a pool fed by a natural
spring that would perfectly reflect Corcovado mountain, home to Rio’s
iconic Christ the Redeemer statue. To fill this space, Douglass and
her team enlisted installation artist Liz West to craft a group of
colorful prismatic boxes that, as Douglass explains, “create an
inverted stained-glass window.”
Inside
the villa, wood-paneled walls add a traditional touch to the lofty
space. Central to the team room is the Britannia sofa, designed by
Philip Watkin specifically for the house. Whimsical shelving with
custom-printed patterns was provided by British furnituremaker DFS.
Editor’s
Note: This post was originally published in Architectural
Digest and
Posted July 13, 2016. Text By Ayesha
Khan
Photography by British
House.
