Ladbroke Hall

Brilliant experience within this art gallery. Our AIYA Bureau team visited Carpenters Workshop Gallery at Ladbroke Hall — a place that blurs every boundary between gallery, theatre, restaurant, and architectural experiment. It’s one of those rare London spaces where art isn’t displayed: it’s inhabited. Ladbroke Hall began its life as the Sunbeam Talbot car workshop in the early 1900s. The bones of that industrial history are still visible: steel beams, brick, light filtering through clerestory windows. The building was reborn as a cultural venue, and what’s impressive is how sensitively the original structure was kept intact: no glossy over-restoration, just honest materials and proportion. The main exhibition hall is vast and tranquil, almost cathedral-like. Right now, it hosts Rick Owens: Rust Never Sleeps — a new body of work that fuses sculpture and furniture into something primal and monumental. Owens explores decay and permanence through metal, concrete, and animal-like silhouettes. His furniture feels more like relics from another civilization than design pieces. Next to the exhibition is the Sunbeam Theatre, the event hall of Ladbroke Hall. It keeps the rhythm of the building’s industrial past but transforms it into an acoustically perfect space for performances, screenings, and private dinners. The lighting, stage, and proportions are so well balanced that even an informal jazz night feels like a carefully curated performance. Beyond the theatre lies the garden by Luciano Giubbilei, one of the great landscape designers working today. Among the trees and minimal greenery stands a 6×6 Jean Prouvé demountable house from the 1940s: a historical structure that somehow feels perfectly at home in this modern context. It’s a functioning installation that can even host small gatherings or private events. Inside, the Pollini restaurant by Vincenzo De Cotiis completes the experience: a sculptural interior of marble, brass, mirrors, and soft golden light. The enormous chandelier by Nacho Carbonell hangs over the central bar like a glowing sculpture. Pollini has already been named Best Restaurant 2024 by Wallpaper and holds multiple awards for its cuisine. For us as a design bureau, this wasn’t just an inspiring visit: it was a professional connection. We met with the curators of Carpenters Workshop Gallery and discussed patron membership opportunities for AIYA Bureau clients — giving our community access to private viewings, closed events, and art dinners at Ladbroke Hall. Even more importantly, we’ve established a direct relationship with the gallery for art acquisitions. Carpenters represents names like Rick Owens, Vincenzo De Cotiis, Studio Drift, and the Campana Brothers, and we’ll be delighted to advise our clients on collecting pieces or integrating them into residential and hospitality interiors. Spaces like this remind us why design matters: not as decoration, but as a medium for emotion and continuity. You don’t just see art there — you feel it in the air, in the silence between sounds, in how the light falls on stone. And when the day ends, the jazz starts, glasses clink in the bar, and the space transforms again. That’s when you realize what true contemporary culture looks like: fluid, layered, and deeply alive.