Free range Check in

The interior designers and interior architects of the Andels Hotel and conference centre, Jestico & Whiles, continue to sprinkle their golden creative dust and lavish us with 'colourful interventions' such as this intriguing ovoid feature wall behind the extensive reception desk.

All this is housed in a former Aldo Rossi building in Berlin's Prenzleur Berg. Apparently according to Sleeper Magazine it is the first building to have 'Truck' lifts that are capable of carrying up to 28 metric tons, so delivery and installation of this reception desk wasn't a problem .

Fashion, turn to the left

Sorry but we are going to be lazy and cynical with this reception desk posting today . There's only one Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso Giorgio Borruso . Thanks to Muslim Rahman for imageparation.

Right to contre-Partie

Marquetry is a much overlooked craft by designers in commercial interior design. In the right hands it can produce a suitable effect and is not that an expensive process. So we find it encouraging to discover QJS Marquetry's reception desk incorporating designs by Leeds based artist Alan Pergusey .The abstract motifs represent the library, gymnasium and swimming pool in a sports complex building and if you look closer you will discover the inspiration hidden in the radial arrays.
For further information visit the website of Wales based Anita marquetry and their mine of designs as well as their inspiring sister company Aryma.

'Nothing at all'

The Malvern Hills is the home of the workshop of wood maestro Lester Hartman and his original reception desk , a true designer/maker realisation.
You can glean a little of the reception desks complexity from this single image but it would be nice to view more than just a tantalising glimpse, and get some close up detail. The Oak manipulated piece of furniture sits pride of place in the reception of a newly refurbished and quite homely TV Studios.

From small springs do greater things flow so from a region long known for its mineral water therefore we can not see this creative and skilled well running dry. The label on this bottle is pure 'Class'.

Purple,violet,indigo

A complimentary hand clap and 5 stars to Jestico + Whiles architects for the reception desk at the Hilton, Canary Wharf, London. Breaking the chains of the predictably horizontal by introducing a little bit of verticallity with these phials of amber.
The desk is apparently predominately honed stone and the effective golden glow high level signing counters constructed in coloured glass .
Get on the Docklands Light Railway or just read and learn more on this project at e-architect ,'The Hilton reuses the steel skeleton of the World Trade Centre, which was severely damaged in the Marsh Wall bombing in 1996'. Photography - James Morris.

We are normal ...

The very small man on the desk made the other desk too.

If the 'insatiable' Ted Geers sticks to his guns 'never replicating furniture that has been done to death' we may be soon seeing some further interesting furniture coming out his workshop down in Fort Wayne, Indianapolis. It was this primary coloured reception desk that intrigued us enough to find out more and it was the name of his company that nailed this post -YBNormal Custom Woodworking, what a great handle! If we were ever going to change our blog name 'Y B Normal' would be top of our list, just above a single worded 'WHY' in number 2 position.
We are glad to feature this joyous clown of a desk from serious craftsman striving to ' push the envelope in design , physics and functionality', and my that is a big envelope.

Hot Diggity Mod

'Buying CNC shaped panels should be as easy as buying a Pizza' are the encouraging words from the website of The Cutting Room, the Huntingdon based CNC routing firm who manufactured and constructed this stomping Reception desk. The sinuously sublime design is by Amr Assid at the very productive Buckley Gray Yeoman Architects for the iconic brand of Fred Perrys reception area in London. The Cutting Room are very proud of their work and quite modest about their acheivments, to us they have an obvious skill .There is definitely more to this than just mere operating and assemblage.

The facts : 7290mm (287 in) in length -1800 metres (5905 ft) of hand sanded edges
70 no. 10'x4' sheets of 3/4" (18mm) birch plywood - resulting in 2.5 tonnes of weight.
We have included the architects concept sketch and his 3D drawing to emphasise how from a seed of an idea it developed into this fully formed monster of a desk snaking down from the stairs and roaring out from the laurel motif to the street beyond. We hope to see more from these architects, manufactures and method of build.

i taken care in Mianyang

Todays posting derives its interest more from the immediacy of this photograph than the simplicity of the reception desk. Thanks to iphoneLomo.com- The iPhone Lomography of Tony Lece and his 'snippets of life' . Here you'll find an honest attitude to photography inconjunction with the participatory phenomenon in communal image sharing that is Flickr.
It's a nice piece of drama being enacted between two players - the warmly dressed confident man and the efficient attentive nurse. A great composition with a suitable dynamic. We like the unintensional play between a series of subliminal arcs - desk, typography and structure.
The reception desk itself is an appropriately prescribed design, unfussy semi circular footprint in curved and shaped glass that is clinicaly effective.

Cannon and Ball

100 today ! How better to celebrate this posting milestone other than with bespokereceptiondesks.co.uk a.k.a. Whiteleaf Design Ltd . Originally we were just going to feature the solid stainless steel counter component ,a unique engineered reception desk accoutrement , but Neil @ W.D. furnished us with all the necessary background images and we felt obliged to display all. The geometry of the curved and conical structure must have been a headache for cabinet maker Brian Chick but he pulled it off to a T . The desk concept was by American Interior designer Anika Johnson in conjunction with furniture designer Neil Whiteleaf .

Whiteleaf Design - Design,Make, Surf.

Which one's Pink ?

We could leaf through Morey Smith's website for days without design fatigue syndrome setting in. These designers have their own particular form of inventiveness that has more than a hint of of old school capital 'C' creative with a fresh mix of modern vision. Look once, look twice, think Morey Smith.
Thanks to Cresent Lighting for this reception desk image ,manufactures and distributors of Fibre Optic lighting & LED lighting equipment for the UK and the rest of the reception desk world.

Tartan Funkadelic

The Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh is a building conceived to dispel political dreich. It doesn't flinch at the flank shy but stands confident in the main line ,a slaugh-gairm to its detractors. So it is nice to find internally a calmer corner, away from heaped praise and slung mud, to an area of cerebral craft and thus to the reception desk from the
award winning London born Furniture designer David Colwell, based in Wales.
Who is better placed to deliver such work to the foyer of democracey other than a designer who's chairs Michelle Obama has sat on. And in his words :
'The Reception Desk, is like a plant, rooted to the architecture but drawn along with the flow of people, both formed by and forming their movement into the building. It is intended as a point of human reference to the building and the institution'.
Davids work comes under the banner of Trannon Furniture, stylish and timeless eco furniture so for us his work shines brightly in Reception Desk World.

Seattle seen

There are a whole shelf full of superlatives from A-Z on this receptions home - The Seattle Public Library. Amongst other things it has been described as 'Disco' by the New York Times and we might agree on the face of it that this interior looks 'hot' but to push through such design you have to be Koolhaas a cucumber. Digging into our bag of assumptions we presume that this reception desks aperture is constructed in glass fibre, but I would like to be proved wrong.
We have particular space in our own reception for ENVIRONMENTAL's blog for pointing us to the work and manifesto of Bruce Mau and his geodesicly clever studio team ( their graphic language abound this building).

before and after

On the website where we found this the captions read :

1.Site condition prior to construction
2.Lobby + Reception desk + Exhibit space

Upside - down monkey bread

Before anybody, from a quizzical group of 3, points out referring to previous 'I conic' reception desk posting, the item in question I wax on about is in fact the 'Baobab Range of desks' by the one off Philippe Stark. We would have featured it anyway and mentioned that it is made from Polythene Foam with a polyurethane foam skin captured in 5 colour ways .We curtsy to Vitra for their images so please do marvel at all their products, they're good for a party too. As for the Baobab it gave the best performance in the film 'Australia'.

Seasoned Investment

This led us
to this :

The work of Brent Comber Studio caught our eye while leafing through some virtual pulp in the form of a small advert in the Contemporist .On his website we discovered the novel Maitre D' stand he created in solid western ceder for the Four seasons Hotel in Seattle. The conception of this piece is from across the International Boundary ( for you in the UK -an amazing straight line running approx. from Buffalo Point in the East to Tsawwassen in the West) by Vancouverian Brent. He's a true celebrator of all qualities wooden, always seeking 'authentic wood, wood with powerful character and capable of telling the strongest and most vivid of stories'. We are particularly taken by his sylvan gladed 'China Grove' art installation. The hotel interior is by the designers of the reception desk, Brayton Hughes Design Studios, in the lower image panelled to perfection for Elevation Partners in San Francisco.Where else but in this region would you get such creative use of timber (Top) and crisp detailed case goods (Lower)? A country that oozes Lignin and cellulose.
Top image by Joy Von Tiedemann

Shiney,shiney,shiney dance boots

A moody stage set of an interior captured in these couple of photos with some sinister angles right of Dr Caligari's 21st century cabinet. This reception desk sits within a space that can improvise as a fourth dance studio within this contemporary dance theatre complex.The image is not quite close enough to give away much detail of this desk though we think the footprint is interesting enough to include it, and its stainless steel facade polished to a mirror finish nicely in step with rehearsal studio walls. 3LHD architects perform their best for Zagreb with choreography by photographer Sandro Lendler. Zoom in on 3LHD's contact page, a nice creative touch.

Ash of the loam

These two bespoke reception desks are streets ahead in design and execution compared to their 'off the shelf ' cousins if stood along side each other.They are considered pieces, designed and made foremost for the people that will interact with them. They could quite easily be a family of desks in their own right .The 'Gull wing' sketch shows this concepts breadth and versatility. These are not corporate barriers but just honest welcoming forms of fluid ash. It is so good to see the use of solid timber for the counter top and desk top that will improve with age.

Designed with no preconceptions of what a reception desk should look like, form over fashion yet not conservativly presented as they are lit cleverly with a contemporary twist. A metaphorical hats off to Roy Tam, product designer, industrial designer, furniture designer maker, Senior lecturer at Plymouth University, and a vocal and hands on practitioner of sustainable design. And all this in the south west of England!

In Roy's words:

Make less, buy better, make things last.

The Red Circle

At last and not before time a reception desk from the mighty Dubai where there must be loads of equally good examples worth featuring here, as there are some great designers and companies working out there even in these Johnny Belshazzar times.
This reminds me of some suspect carved souvenir brought back from a great Aunts travels. The desk its self does look a little unfinished internally with the exposed ribbed structure on display, but that might be deliberate. We are also intrigued as to what is the surface finish but sadly I think we may never know. Thanks to Freestyle Electrical for this charged input.

Hi Diddle Riddle

The people who made this :

Made this:

and made this :

I think that is enough visual stimulation for me to say nothing more about this company down in the vale; Margan Ltd . They've got to be good as they do work for David Linley but it is their founding skills that impress us the mostest. Thanks to our mate Baz the upholsterer for flagging up this pool of skill.