Lorenzo Apicella’s robust powers of persuasion ensure that showmanship and drama in design permeate the minds, and budgets, of even the most conservative of clients. David Sands reports.
In 1960 Apicella came to England, at the age of three, from Ravello in Italy in dramatic fashion – kicking and screaming. This attachment to theatrical effects has stayed with him but is now stylishly reflected in the practice’s work.
Prior to starting up his own firm in 1989 he was head of the Architecture and Design Group at Imagination Design & Communications. There he established a strong reputation for his work on grand-scale exhibition programmes.
Bringing an architectural scale and approach to exhibition design, he constructed structures that physically separated as stands before an audience. “They were not just places over which visitors just swarmed, but designed to structure the way you routed through them,” he says.
A commission he carried out for Ford in 1986 employed bridges and promenades to divide visitors into passive viewers, and those who wanted more direct detailed technical information about the exhibits.
The content of a lecture he recently gave in San Diego compared and contrasted the two strands of the practice’s work. One is concerned with ephemeral structures, such as exhibition stands, and the other concentrates on permanent buildings and interiors.
“The reason why I think our work is this way is because there is a degree of cross-fertilisation between the two disciplines. And the need to make an impact in temporary environments has a great effect on the way we design permanent buildings. We want them to be memorable, not in an easy way, but in a unique way.”
That cross-fertilisation has borne fruit with commissions for major companies such as ICL Computers, Credit Suisse First Boston, Trustee Savings Bank, First Direct Bank, Volvo UK, Charter Group, Philips Electronics and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Work for Philips has been especially prolific. The practice designed the fit-out for offices in Bicester, Oxfordshire, including a reception area and display and conference facilities downstairs. “It was a not-very-interesting out-of-town B1 shell, and it needed an injection of animation into the interior. That led to an exhibition and gallery space we did for them in London.”
Apicella continues to sell his particular brand of creativity to normally conservative clients with considerable success. The practice’s design for the restaurant at Credit Suisse First Boston’s new building at Canary Wharf is a highly distinctive space in the context of the rest of the building. Originally, the bank also asked for designs for the executive floors but ultimately rejected the proposals. Apicella suspects that CSFB found his practice’s ideas “a little too contemporary”.
“But the restaurant was a very interesting job for us: a very good client, demanding the highest quality in design and materials. The thinking behind the design was that employees needed a complete break at lunchtime from the rest of the building,” he says.
“It’s more lively and dynamic, with long, slow curves lightening and leavening the atmosphere of the place.
“It is very hard to persuade clients to go for the less predictable,” he explains, “but it is getting easier. More and more are realising they can actually get something special if they find the right kind of designer.”
The best clients will give a practice leeway, he maintains, and allow the designers to at least present more modern ideas. “These are the ones that are ahead of the rest. They are not reckless, indeed, like the banks we have worked for, they are very careful.
“When times were very good you could do anything. But now clients realise they need to do something special to make the scheme rise above the competition; that goes for exteriors as well interiors.
“We could have made life easier for ourselves by not pushing our ideas as hard, but ultimately persuading clients to take on our ideas has paid off. And it’s why I think as a practice we have stayed busy even though we started up as the recession began.”
Apicella Associates began with Lorenzo, his wife, plus one other architect. Since then it has grown to eight people. The workforce has been chosen with extreme care, comments Apicella. “I still do some teaching and it is a great way of finding good people, because you have already had some influence on them – and they know who you are. We all have architectural backgrounds, but we share wider interests beyond the bricks and mortar of a building.”
He concedes that he is not very “proactive” in finding work. “It’s good that we don’t have to go out and find jobs to keep going. But I’d like to get more of the right kind of work and, if it means taking on more, I’ll gladly do it,” he says.
“Developers should be coming to people like us to give them the edge.”
Apicella Associates
Practice principle Lorenzo Apicella studied architecture at Nottingham University, Canterbury College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. He graduated with a first in 1981, top of his year.
His career began in the United States with Skidmore Owings and Merrill, working on the architecture and interiors of the 70-storey Allied Bank Plaza building in Houston.
Prior to establishing the practice, he led the Architecture and Interior Design Group of international design consultancy Imagination. Clients included Harrods, British Telecom, Ford and British Steel.
He serves on the RIBA Awards Panel and has been a chairman of the National Awards Jury on four occasions. In May he served as an international juror in the American Institute of Architects’ Awards in San Diego, California. His teaching experience includes visiting critic appointments at various schools of architecture and design, including those at Canterbury, London and Oxford. He is studio tutor at the Graduate School of Architecture, Oxford.
In 1991 he gave an RIBA Young Lions lecture and he has won prizes for the Events Arena, South Tyneside and is a two-time winner of Design Week Annual Awards.
