Tom dixon on design, independence and storytelling

On beginnings: serendipity and locality

Q: How did this project reach you and why did ‘local’ matter?

By chance. Joseph turned up at our door because the bell wasn’t working and he couldn’t get through. He’d come about furniture, but as we spoke and realised the site was literally across the road, the conversation evolved into interiors. There was a sense it should be a local designer for a very particular, very unusual project, and that’s how we began.

King’s Cross, from infrastructure to ideas

Q: How did the area’s history and long‑term vision shape your approach?

It’s a continuous story about Britain’s economy. We’re on the Grand Union Canal, the original artery of the Industrial Revolution. This neighbourhood has been rail infrastructure, then nightlife, and now a carefully planned 20–30 year vision with Central Saint Martins embedded, pedestrian routes, and a community that replaced what used to be a rough patch. London isn’t the prettiest or the most efficient, but it has unrivalled breadth. We’re incredibly connected here, across the city, to airports, to Europe and that diversity feeds the design.

Light as material

Q: How did the building’s grand shell inform lighting and atmosphere?

The brief was diverse. Some spaces are subterranean and entirely artificial; higher up, the plan is symmetrical with light pouring in on all sides. The job is to keep the daytime connection to the city, the St Pancras views, while making the interiors feel intimate and domestic. Ten‑metre ceilings are hard to humanise, so we combine architectural washes on walls with precise, pinpoint emphasis on features and moments, our lamps included.

Narrative and stewardship

Q: You often speak of design as narrative. What story is told here?

The building already holds a thousand stories. It still houses a working registry office for births, marriages and deaths: life’s milestones. It’s Grade II listed, with a beautifully preserved council chamber at its heart. That balance lets us place modern, future‑facing interventions alongside a London that’s largely vanished. The aim is to keep a sense of Britishness while welcoming a global audience.

Material culture: marble, pewter and digital craft

Q: Talk us through materials and collaborators.

Culture is woven into Joseph and Emilie’s thinking: they come from education and even music, which is energising. Given the organisation’s Italian roots and our own love of Italy, access to quarries and stones felt natural. We lean into materials in their raw state: warmth and texture from Tuscan marble, the existing wood panelling and Portland stone, and colour where it’s intrinsic, digitally printed carpets, for instance. We’ve also brought in collaborators like the artist Von Wolfe to embed digital art into the fabric of the building.

Q: And the staircase everyone talks about?

The entrance had to do a lot; guiding people through and one stair felt too functional. We wanted a moment of arrival, that cinematic transition from greeting to grandeur. We clad the stair in hammered pewter. Soft, human, a medieval British metal, reshaping it away from the square and rigid. We’re told it’s the largest import of pewter ever into the UK. It sits against serene white Carrara like a secular temple, a deliberate contrast.

Scale and care

Q: Did your studio have to adapt to the building’s size?

We’re comfortable at scale-hotels, co‑working, big lobbies in places like Australia, but every site has its quirks. Here it was planning constraints, landlord expectations, and restoring warmth to areas stripped back to office spec. In the listed spaces, it was more restoration-respecting proportions and decoration-while elsewhere we re‑introduced cosiness and a sense of history.

Q: How did you integrate state‑of‑the‑art tech without losing character?

Joseph and Emilie brought in some of the best people in projection, electronics and show‑making. It’s a specialist field, and collaborating with experts was essential.

Britishness, longevity and export

Q: Your work often balances rawness and polish. What does “British design” mean here?

London is constantly evolving and so are we. Much British design is effectively an export service; teams here work all over the world because of the city’s overlaps; finance, software, car design, science, culture. In King’s Cross alone, you’ve got the British Library, major museums, research institutes, AI, the big music companies. Being British is being international, but based where those overlaps spark new ideas. Style should be of the moment without being fashionable; the test is whether it improves with age.

Collaboration as method

Q: Food, art, technology; the mix is intentional. Why break the silos?

A restaurant brings heart and life; the smells, the making of something. Downstairs, the events programme can feed the club: exhibitions, car launches, all sorts. A club should extend you beyond your usual circle; it’s about exchange and meeting people unlike you.

Personal stakes

Q: What does the project mean to you?

We often work a long way from home; some of our best projects are in places like Australia or Hong Kong. Being across the road makes this personal. It’s a client who believed in narrative, and a project with a very unusual constitution and ambition. If we’re clever and a bit lucky, we’ll have made something that doesn’t exist yet.

Return value

Q: How do you want people to feel-on arrival and on return?

Like there’s more to discover. Town Hall is a journey through many rooms; each should feel distinct. The best places reward repeat visits: expected comforts with unexpected reveals around the next corner. With the scale here-and exhibitions and media that change, there’ll always be something new.

Q: Finally: what makes a great space?

It should feel exciting on first encounter and somehow inevitable, as if it’s always been there. Be sensitive to context; don’t paste the same look everywhere. Aim for style, not fashion. And leave space for evolution, so you can layer in art and culture as people make the place their own. In the end, it’s about the people.