Within the Westfield Stratford City shopping centre, Nando’s restaurant occupies over 7,500 square feet in a prominent 2nd floor corner position within the mall boulevard. Harrison is a leading design consultancy, specializing in restaurant and bar branding, design and development. Over the course of the past decade, Harrison has worked on over 100 sites for Nando’s the Portuguese chicken restaurant chain, with each venue giving rise to individual design challenges. One of Harrison’s largest designs is Nando’s Westfield Stratford City, which accommodates up to 260 diners in Europe’s largest urban shopping centre.
Everyone involved in producing this restaurant were anxious to see fresh, innovative and dynamic ideas that would complement the sheer scale and grandeur of the Stratford development, while still embodying the Nando’s brief of feeling African and Portuguese, natural, warm, fun and creative.
Every Nando’s is unique, with a common thread of African and Portuguese-inspired decor. Standout features in this restaurant include a hand-woven hickory ceiling supported by carved timber columns, as well as vibrant African artwork and mosaic flooring. Grey glazed wall tiles, used at the front of the kitchen and on the back wall, were made by Solus Ceramics to a size specified by the design team. They were rough glazed to reflect light well and were installed in a vertical brick-bond format consistent with the artwork above them.
The copper bar was designed by Harrison and constructed by fit-out specialists the French Group. This sweeping seven-metre long server has an organic, rolling, golden oak counter top and a snaking frontage clad in glistening polished copper ‘armadillo’ bands.
Most of the artwork in the restaurant was produced by African artists at the Spier Arts Academy in Cape Town, South Africa, working in collaboration with Harrison. This includes the 800 ceramic ‘pages’ tiles, which are installed at the entrance, each of which was individual and handmade. Tile supplier Parkside Tiles made cream tiles in a bespoke size to fit between the pages tiles, and maintain visual consistency, as the full wall had to be covered. The artwork above the kitchen area mostly comprised canvas pieces, using paints and mixed media, along with some mosaics and beaded artwork.
Products & services
Tiles: Parkside Tiles, Solus Ceramics, Spier Art Academy
Bar: French Group
Concrete booths: Mass Concrete
Booth seating upholstery: Phil James
Loose furniture: Classic Furniture, Eclipse Contract Furniture
Lighting: Light Corporation
Hazel ceiling: David Downie, Hurdle Maker
Kitchen equipment: Catering Projects, Chapmans Ventilation
Columns: Artscene (bottle cap decoration)
