For the Rothschild Bank’s London headquarters, Dutch architecture bureau OMA, in collaboration with the TextielLab, translated an image of a typical English landscape into a textile wall, covering the entire 30-metre length of the panoramic space on the 15th floor.
After designing the core (the empty building with the core structures) and shell (facade) of the Rothschild Bank’s headquarters in 2005, OMA was also commissioned to design the interior for the private and VIP spaces in the rooftop Sky Pavilion. On the 15th floor, OMA designed a multifunctional panoramic space, offering impressive views across the City of London. The space, intended to host large presentations, meetings and banquets, can also be transformed into three separate meeting rooms. In contrast to the modern building of steel and glass, OMA focused for the interior on the history of the banking family.
Encompassing letters, sculptures and busts, silver artefacts and gifts given to the family since the 1800s, OMA used the Rothschild Archive as a central source of inspiration for the interior. Combined with extensive research on historical English interior design, OMA incorporated the history and private collections of the Rothschild family in interior spaces that are respectful of the Rothschild family’s rich and quintessentially English history. The previous building which occupied the New Court site had a typically English interior feature. The number of clad walls inspired OMA to repeat this method using a modern fabric in the new building.
OMA took as its starting point the landscape design of one of the Rothschild country estates, called Gunnersbury, depicted on a photo of a watercolour from the archive. Given the large surface area of the walls, OMA magnified the small photo (10 x 3 cm) to 5 metres high and 30 metres across. Experimentation is one of OMA’s key traits: a new ‘palette’ of materials is composed for every project. This textile wall featured saturated colours and a muted gold. During the design process, OMA also experimented with more vivid colours, such as hot pink and bright green and yellow, to achieve a contemporary look.
Founded by Rem Koolhaas, architecture bureau OMA has branches in Rotterdam, New York, Beijing and Hong Kong. OMA has been involved in prestigious architecture projects and urban planning concepts all over the globe, including architecture projects for Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Qatar National Library.
