Keane Brands designs interiors for Royal Albert Hall’s Verdi restaurant

Verdi is an Italian casual dining restaurant that replaces the former Café Consort venue, and is the result of a £1 million refurbishment. According to the Royal Albert Hall, the branding and graphics were designed in-house by the restaurant operator Rhubarb.

Keane Brands was appointed to the project last summer, undertaking the space’s first refurbishment in around ten years, according to the consultancy’s managing director Jeremy Scarf.

‘They wanted to do something a bit new and contemporary’, says Scarf. ‘We tried to bring in something visually quite different’.

The logo and interiors are based around a light blue shade, with other colours drawn from the wood and tiles of the existing interiors.

The Royal Albert Hall is Grade 1 listed, and as such, there can be no changes that are ‘too radical’, explains Royal Albert Hall project manager Matt Mann.

Verdi is divided into five bays, and shows the existing floor art and other original elements of the Royal Albert Hall building, such as Victorian tiles.

The bar and lighting features are formed of a number of interlocking steel poles, which curve around the circular space.

Features include leather banquette seating and a 14m-long zinc-topped bar for serving drinks and hot food. Mann says, ‘I suppose it has an industrial feel with the zinc, stained ash, timber and tiling’.