Missed Clerkenwell Design Week? Don’t worry, London’s design district is worth a visit all year round. Here’s everything you need to know…
Clerkenwell Design Week comes around once a year in May, but the neighbourhood has year-round appeal for designers and specifiers thanks to the 160-plus permanent design showrooms that are to be found in the area.
Within a few streets of Farringdon station – on the Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan and Elizabeth lines, and Thameslink – a dense cluster of permanent showrooms makes the EC1 postcode arguably the most useful destination in the country for building designers and specifiers.
The materials, interiors, furniture and lighting showrooms are centred on and around Great Sutton Street and St John Street – here to service the hundreds of architects based in this part of town.
Just turn up and you risk overwhelm and missing the right specialists for your next jobs. So do your research before you come and book two or three appointments in advance if you want to talk about particular projects – the specialist knowledge is the point, not just the displays. You can find a list of showrooms on the website of Clerkenwell Showrooms, a social enterprise that works to promote the area’s showrooms. Check opening hours before you visit.
Leave some time to just mooch, too. If you need a refreshment break, there are lots of great restaurants and cafes locally – particularly around old Smithfield market.
To whet your appetite, here is a small sample of the area’s showrooms…
>> EH Smith design centre
EH Smith’s Clerkenwell showroom designed by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris is a one-stop-shop for all things brick, with over 1,000 different types on display alongside ceramic and terracotta rainscreen, natural stone cladding, GRC and other facade materials.
The go-to place for serious facade specification – the technical team’s knowledge of weathering, bonding, texture and envelope detailing is why so many practices treat this as the standard port of call on any masonry project.
> Look out for: the Light As Brick installation, a collaboration between Simon Astridge, Arcitile and EH Smith showcasing glass bricks as you’ve never seen them before.
> Address: 38–42 St John Street, EC1M 4DL
> Hours: Monday to Friday, 9am–5pm
> Appointments: Worth arranging in advance for technical guidance and sample discussions. Walk-ins welcome.
>> Havwoods
Celebrating 50 years in business, Havwoods is a leading timber surface specialist offering flooring, cladding, panelling, acoustic solutions and even timber terrazzo, TreeAzzo. The Clerkenwell showroom is the flagship, recently renovated for the firm’s anniversary, and now displaying their new Lateral furniture range, which is ideally placed to capitalise on the trend for wooden office furniture.
> Look out for: FlameLESS, Havwoods’ fire-rated engineered wood flooring, developed to meet fire safety standards without compromising on aesthetics or environmental performance.
> Address: 26–27 Great Sutton Street, EC1V 0DS
> Hours: Monday to Friday, 8.30am–5pm
> Appointments: Walk-ins welcome; appointments helpful for detailed trade conversations
>> Industville
Contemporary British lighting brand, known for thoughtful designs and trusted by brands from Soho House to Liberty London. Signature materials of metal and glass remain at the heart of the brand, but are now supplemented by natural mixed-material designs featuring linen, alabaster and travertine. Industville’s Clerkenwell showroom occupies part of the historic Cannon Brewery building.
> Look out for: The new Noho collection (above). Building on the success of Industville’s bestselling Brooklyn collection, it takes a more refined, design-led approach while maintaining robust production values.
> Address: 152 St John Street, EC1V 4UD
> Hours: Monday to Friday, 9am–5pm
> Appointments: No appointment needed. Both residential and commercial customers are welcome.
>> Architile
Designed to be “like a Willy Wonka’s sweet (well, tile?) factory not a clinical showroom”, a characterful, design-led tile studio occupying a beautifully fitted-out space on Carthusian Street. Architile is a passion project for founder Darrell who is often on hand, and the showroom lends itself to proper conversations about crafted tiles, unusual finishes and bespoke project detailing.
> Look out for: Atelier’s high-gloss tiles inspired by Moroccan zellige tiles, which deliver a handcrafted look as each tile is unique. Made of 60 percent recycled content, they bring the warmth and surface variation of traditional north African tiles to the demands of modern specification.
> Address: 7 Carthusian Street, EC1M 6EB
> Hours: Monday to Thursday, 9am–5pm, Friday, 9am–3pm
> Appointments: Recommended if you want project-specific advice
>> Taylor Maxwell
Another great place to stop by if you’re looking for facade, rainscreen, cladding, timber and brick options. As well as a showcase of product samples with a focus on sustainability, services offered at the showroom include: specification and design support, brick matching, and CPDs, plus the company has its own cladding fabrication firm, which helps if you are looking for something bespoke.
> Address: 63 Central Street, EC1V 3AF
> Hours: Monday to Friday, 8.30–5pm
> Appointments: Walk-ins are always welcome, and there will always be someone in the office who can help. But if you want to discuss a specific product – such as bricks or cladding – it is best to book an appointment so that you are guaranteed to speak to the right expert.
How Clerkenwell became London’s design district
Clerkenwell has been a place of skilled making since at least the eighteenth century, when its streets were filled with watch- and clockmakers. By the twentieth century, the horologists had been joined by printers and bookbinders; and by the ‘70s and ’80s, architects were starting to move in, attracted by the then cheap warehouse conversions close to the City.
Piers Gough of CZWG took over a derelict workshop near Smithfield in 1978; Alan Baxter moved into Cowcross Street in 1979; and Zaha Hadid and Wilkinson Eyre followed onto Bowling Green Lane in the 1990s. By 2004, Clerkenwell was often said to have more architects per square mile than anywhere else in the world.
Firms wanting to sell to building designers followed. Vitra opened one of the first major design showrooms on Clerkenwell Road in 1999; others followed through the 2000s, drawn by the density of practices and the handsome Victorian buildings with industrial-scale floorplates that were ripe for repurposing. As practices clustered together, manufacturers, furniture brands and materials suppliers followed, creating the self-reinforcing ecosystem that has made Clerkenwell the UK’s centre for architectural specification.
Clerkenwell Design Week, launched in 2010, formalised the neighbourhood’s status as London’s design district. Today there are more than 200 architecture practices and almost as many design showrooms within a few streets of Farringdon.
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