Giraffe restaurants walking tall with Lucy Tauber-designed interiors

Independent architect Lucy Tauber has designed interiors for family restaurant chain Giraffe’s latest venture in London’s Muswell Hill, which opened last week.

According to Giraffe managing director Russel Joffe, Tauber was tasked with giving the new restaurant a ‘more mature’ atmosphere, without compromising the ‘fun philosophy of Giraffe’.

‘The other restaurants’ interiors work very nicely during the daytime, but we wanted a moodier look at Muswell Hill to improve our evening trade,’ he explains.

Tauber says she has used deeper versions of the brand’s cream, pistachio and orange colour palette, and introduced dark timber floors and furniture. A curving bar, constructed of orange-painted ash panelling, evokes ‘Africa, summer holidays and boardwalks’.

The lighting, a mixture of directional spot lights and hanging, woven grass lanterns, ‘creates a more atmospheric interior and improves [the restaurant’s] ambience at night’, she adds.

Tauber, formerly of architects Waugh Thistleton and Muf, won the work last October on the basis of her previous relationship with Joffe. She collaborated on the project with furniture manufacturer Benchmark, Into Lighting Design and architect Sampson Associates.

Mystery Design, which created the chain’s brand identity, designed and Muswell Hill site’s interior signage and graphics.