Fuse Sector - Leisure by Scott Ryalls

leisure

why fuse? A hands-on approach with Director involvement from the start to the finish of every project The world has changed since the global financial crisis of 2007/8 and Clients are looking for consultants whose principals are genuinely hands-on. They need designers to be able to react quickly and want their design fees to pay for high quality service, not huge overheads. Fuse was established in 2010 to meet those needs; with studios in Manchester and Leeds providing a balanced skill set of interior design and architecture expertise. Led by four directors, with a combined experience of over 60 years in the industry, they previously managed teams within one of the UK’s largest design consultancies. As such, the directors have proven experience delivering projects across most market sectors: from small, beautifully-crafted restaurant projects, to new hotel developments or the designing of large regenerative masterplans. At Fuse, we are committed to providing exemplary Client service: directors Simon Clarke, Mike Harris, David Matthews or Scott Ryalls will be involved on every project, from concept to completion. Working in multiple time zones over many years has taught us that always being available is one of the most valuable services we can provide to our Clients. In construction, delays cost money and when we claim to be “an agile and responsive team,” we mean to be just that. We strongly believe in working collaboratively and positively with our Clients and we know how to successfully manage design teams to deliver within cost and time parameters.

This and cover photograph © Copyright careyjones

who we are A small practice providing huge experience with genuine expertise Fuse is a design studio with the skills and experience to look after any part of your project. Whether it is the refurbishment of an existing venue or the roll-out of an established leisure brand, the team has all the necessary experience to ensure success. We have worked for global players including Hard Rock CafĂŠ, Anschutz Entertainment and SMG Europe and for UK operators including Luminar Leisure and Esporta. We also provide the experience of designing and delivering projects in the UK, Middle East, USA and across Continental Europe.

Green indicates countries where projects have been designed by one of the Fuse directors (except the circle North-East of Greenland. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just a dot).

we’re different

Leisure – hospitality, entertainment and gaming When Fuse was formed, we brought together a group of talented individuals: architects and interior designers with a proven track record in leisure design, from individual restaurants to complex mixed leisure developments extending to millions of square feet. We do not have separate architectural and interiors teams, the two disciplines work together – all of the time. We are therefore able to design the building shell as well as the interior fit-out and there are huge benefits to the clients of having both carried out under the same roof. That said, we work extensively with other architects and interior designers and so can also provide architectural or interior design services on a stand alone basis. Our interior designers have exemplary space planning skills so they are able to make a significant contribution to design quality from the outset of our leisure projects Our Clients can be assured that their venue will not only be visually stunning but also planned to be as operationally efficient as possible - and cost-effective to build. Our team also has huge experience in the design of all manner of leisure and hospitality venues – from bars and nightclubs through casinos to major entertainment and live music venues. We also work with a wonderful group of partner engineers, architects, surveyors and project managers throughout Europe and can arrange project delivery in French, Flemish, Dutch, German, Catalan, Spanish and Italian within our existing professional network. This brochure illustrates some of the projects that the Fuse team has completed in recent years. Because Fuse is a relatively new practice, most of these were undertaken when our team members were with previous practices but we will be updating with new Fuse projects in due course.

what we do We create venues that work at every level â&#x20AC;&#x201C; cost effective, operationally efficient, visually spectacular Leisure Masterplanning

Restaurant Design

Few design companies can boast equal skills in large development masterplanning and leisure design alongside a proven track record of combining both skills on substantial international leisure destinations. Fuse is one such company.

Of course, we design restaurants as part of larger leisure projects but we have also developed an international reputation as restaurant designers. Our team has worked for celebrity chefs on both sides of the Atlantic and Fuse is presently working on restaurant projects in no less than seven European countries.

Entertainment & Live Music Only one design company can boast three of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most respected live music companies among their past and present clients. The Fuse team has worked for Anschutz Entertainment Group (owners of the Staples Arena in Los Angeles and the Nokia Club in New York), SMG Europe (owners of the MEN Arena in Manchester) and Hard Rock International (owners of 136 Hard Rock Cafes across the globe which host thousands of live music events each year). When it comes to live music, we are experts.

Casino Gaming

Nightclubs & Bars

Health & Fitness

From small, intimate venues to multi-scene nightclubs with capacities of over 3,000, the Fuse team has done it all. We have completed dozens of nightclub projects, many of them award-winners.

Having designed dozens of health clubs and spas for industry leaders such as Virgin and Esporta, our designers have a wealth of specialist experience.

Fuse boasts the only UK-based casino interiors team that has successfully completed major casino projects in the United States. In fact, we have worked upon some of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest casino projects. We have a wealth of specialist gaming knowledge including licensing, equipment, surveillance, data systems, fire safety and so on. We are also experienced in supporting operators in competitive license bids and we are currently busy with two such applications in the UK.

masterplanning Members of the Fuse team have masterplanned substantial leisure destinations as far afield as Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Russia as well as in the UK. Our principals have an unrivalled understanding of the synergies between different venue types, leisure demographics, visitor retention and dwell times. This specialist knowledge, combined with our more general masterplanning skills gained from masterplanning large mixed-use, residential, commercial and higher education developments means that Fuse is uniquely well placed to provide strategic guidance for the most complex leisure proposals.

ÂŠ copyright careyjones & M2R Architecture

Indoor Ski Slope, Olympic Ski Jump Training and Indoor Water Park Complex, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia

Fuse principal David Matthews led a careyjones team that developed this competition scheme for an indoor ski slope and water park on the banks of the River Volga, six hours drive East of Moscow, Russia. The scheme was a joint venture with EDSA from Florida (water park specialists) M2R Architecture (ski jump designers) and Acer Snowmec (indoor snow engineers).

Opened in June 2011 on the 40th Anniversary of the opening of the very first Hard Rock CafĂŠ in London, the Fuse-designed Hard Rock CafĂŠ in the Piazza della Repubblica in Florence, has rapidly become one of Italyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s busiest and most popular live music venues with no less than 55,000 Facebook fans. Located within the former Cinema Gambrinus building in the corner of this iconic square, the venue has re-used many of the existing architectural features of the original building but incorporates significantly improved acoustics. Fuse worked closely with the Commune di Firenze Heritage Department to agree the details of this very sensitive restoration project. The continuation of entertainment provision at the site was central to negotiating the building permits for the venue. The opening of the venue was marked with a huge free concert in the Piazza by Simple Minds, attended by 20,000 enthusiastic Florentines.

live music

Fuse Studios was appointed in 2010 by SMG Europe to design a refurbishment of the then vacant Barbican Centre in York. Earlier that year, SMG Europe had won the right to be the operator for the landmark building, owned by York City Council, which had lain empty since it last closed its doors in 2004. York Barbican is now managed by SMG (UK) Ltd. SMG is one of the world’s largest international venue operators and is the latest addition to SMG’s expanding UK theatres division, which also includes Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. York Barbican Box Office opened again on 9 May 2011 and there was a BBC Philharmonic Concert at the venue on Saturday 14 May. The refurbished venue now offers a diverse programme of music and non-music events taking advantage of the venue’s 1500 seated and 1900 standing capacities. The opening season includes comedy, shows and a range of music, family and community events. The UK Snooker Championships also returned to the Barbican in December 2011.

live music

live music © copyright careyjones

Designed by a team led by David Matthews for careyjones interiors, IndigO2 is the state-of-the-art live music venue within The O2 Arena in London. Owned by Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) the venue is operated by AEG’s sister company AEG Live, which also operates the Nokia Club in New York’s Times Square and the Staples Arena in downtown Los Angeles. IndigO2 stages concerts in its own right but is also used for more intimate late night performances by artists who have already played earlier in the much larger O2 Arena. Since its opening in June 2007, it has played host to Prince, Amy Winehouse, Manic Street Preachers and James Blunt and was chosen as the venue for the NME Awards 2008. The purpose-built auditorium features near-perfect acoustics, faultless sightlines and state-of-the-art JBL sound system for its audience capacity of 2,350. The design of IndigO2 provides different styles of entertainment over its three levels. The ground floor offers an open standing area for dancing while the upper level features a full-seated tiered ‘bleacher’ style amphitheatre. Located between these two areas is the exclusive ‘Kings Row’ which provides waiter-serviced fine dining within the auditorium and a spacious adjoining VIP bar area which can be used for private functions.

Kings Row VIP Lounge at IndigO2 at the O2 Arena, Greenwich, London

A unique feature of the design for the IndigO2 Live Music Club is the ‘Kings Row’ level where audience members are able to enjoy a la carte dining whilst watching the concerts. Kings Row is also linked to an exclusive VIP lounge (pictured here) which can be hired for private functions. The stunning venue was used as the location for ‘Boot Camp’ in a recent series of ‘X Factor’.

The Fuse team has decades of experience in the design of clubs and bars. The Fuse team members have designed nightclub venues in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Brighton, Croydon, Sheffield, Enfield, Derby, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Bristol, Birmingham, Blackpool and many others for operators including First Leisure Corporation and Luminar Leisure. Licensed capacities have varied from just a few hundred through to more than three thousand people. Our designers have a thorough knowledge of licensing procedures, audio visual installations, acoustics, fire safety and means of escape for large capacity venues along with all the other factors that combine to make a successful late night entertainment venue. We work with some of the UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best lighting designers, engineers cost consultants and project managers who share our experience and enthusiasm so Fuse is able to help a client out together a first class and specialist team.

All photographs this page ÂŠ copyright careyjones

clubs and bars

Innovative and awardwinning new use for landmark historic building

Liquid and Envy is the result of the £5 million conversion of the Grade 2 listed former Army Drill Hall in the centre of Portsmouth carried out for the UK’s predominant nightclub operator, Luminar Leisure. The twin scene nightclub combines a thoroughly contemporary interior with a sensitive restoration of the historic shell such that the nightclub use is all but invisible within the town outside operating hours. The scheme was awarded the prestigious ‘2007 Best Reuse of a Historic Building’ by the Portsmouth Society and resulted in careyjones interiors being nominated as ‘Interior Designer of the Year’ in the 2007 BEDA Awards.

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A large casino can be as complex as a major hospital. Security and surveillance, CCTV, cash handling, sophisticated HVAC and data systems must all be integrated alongside gaming areas and multiple food and beverage outlets whilst maintaining separation between customer and staff circulation routes. It is a building type that requires extensive design expertise. Fuse is one of the very few European design firms with the necessary experience and knowledge. Left and below: Isle Casino at the Ricoh Arena, Coventry the UK’s largest casino. Bottom right: Isle Casino, Waterloo, Iowa, USA. 2nd bottom right, Live music club – part of a competitive license submission for new 5,000 slot casino license in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Above, top right & right: Pompano Park Casino and Racing, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA

casinos

The Fuse team is the only British interior designer group to have completed major casino projects in the USA. Our designers have worked in half a dozen US states. Probably the most challenging was the Pompano Park Casino in Fort Lauderdale. The $184 million fit-out was designed, built, fitted out, commissioned and opened to the public in under 15 months. This meant completing more than $1m worth of construction work on site - each and every day for six months. Above and top-right: space planning exercises for a new 750 bedroom casino resort on the Gulf of Mexico coast East of New Orleans. Right and far right: space plan and gaming pit design exercises for a substantial extension to the Isle Casino at Biloxi, Mississippi to replace the casino barge that had been destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

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Isle Casino and Racing at Pompano Park, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

The Pompano Park Casino extends to 155,000 square feet over two levels. It provides 4 restaurants, 6 bars, 1,500 slot machines and 30 poker tables as well as trackside grandstand and betting for the harness racing track which it overlooks. David Matthews and Scott Ryalls led the large interior design team that produced nearly 1000 construction drawings required to detail this enormous project in only 5 months. They then spent six months overseeing the work on site, sometimes flying back from Florida for the weekend, only to return to the USA on Monday morning.

The Fuse team has an enormous amount of experience in restaurant design. Our designers have worked for celebrity chefs (Wolfgang Puck, Luke Palladino and Gary Rhodes) and global restaurant operators such as Hard Rock International. We have worked throughout the UK, across Europe and extensively in the United States. We have worked with food service consultants as far afield as Florida and New York and have a deep understanding of food handling and storage, kitchen design, customer flows, lighting, acoustics and all other aspects of this highly specialised area. We are genuine experts in restaurant design. Left: The Bargozzo Restaurant, Fort Lauderdale, Florida for celebrity chef Luke Palladino; Below: Restaurant concept for Gary Rhodes at the O2 Arena, London: Right: The Cocina Restaurant at the Casa Hotel, Chesterfield © copyright careyjones

restaurants

restaurants We have completed all manner of food and beverage projects from self service buffet restaurants to high-end fine dining establishments with budgets from £250,000 to £7.5m. As well as its work in the UK, the Fuse team is presently working on new restaurant and restaurant remodeling projects in Italy, France, Belgium, Holland, Spain and Austria.

Due to the fundamental importance of lighting to the success of all dining areas, Fuse prefers to provide the lighting design as part of its services for all its food and beverage projects - including the specification and programming of the lighting control systems, which allow us to deliver the ambience exactly as conceived in the original design concept. Above: Hard Rock Café, Grande Place, Brussels which opens in June 2012. Right: Hard Rock Café, Florence which opened in June 2011. Left: Schematic layouts for a new UK restaurant concept.

Hard Rock Café, Piazza della Repubblica, Florence, Italy

Situated at the heart of the birthplace of the Renaissance, the Hard Rock Café in Florence was an extremely demanding project. The conversion of the derelict former cinema building was the subject of extensive negotiations with the Commune di Firenze Heritage Department (based in the world famous Palazzo Pitti). A number of original features of the building were rescued and re-used on the new scheme. We were even able to re-open an ancient license to extract ground water from an old well and use this to provide cooling to the kitchen refrigeration and air conditioning systems resulting in huge savings in energy consumption. © Copyright careyjones

Health and fitness clubs have become a permanent fixture in the leisure sector. Fuse has enormous experience in this specialised area. The projects on this page are part of David Matthewsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; extensive portfolio in the sector.

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Below left: Esporta Health and Fitness Clubs at Edinburgh and Chiswick Park, London. David also completed Esporta projects, ranging in size from 25,000sqft to 140,000sqft in Wolverhampton, Sheffield, Leeds, Hamilton, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Top right (both): The Dougalston Tennis and Golf Club at Milngavie, North of Glasgow. Below right: The Virgin Living River Therapies Spa in Oxford Street, London, the flagship spa developed for Virgin Cosmetics. David was also responsible for the spas attached to some Virgin Active Health Clubs, including Leeds and Preston.

health&fitness

Esporta Health & Fitness Club, Chiswick Park, London

The Premier In in Bury was designed by a team led by Simon Clarke as part of the Knowsley Place Development for Ask Developments. Five identical bedroom floors provide 115 keys above a ground floor housing the reception, bar, café and restaurant and supporting back of house areas. The facades feature these dramatic window surrounds which as well as making a strong architectural statement, provide solar shading and so help reduce the running costs of the hotel.

David Matthews Director david.matthews@fuse-studios.com David has specialised in leisure design since his qualification in the 1980’s. He has designed dozens of nightclubs across the UK since his first club project in 1990 and is one of the few designers to have been awarded a BEDA Award for his work in the sector.

He also designed many of the Esporta Health and Fitness Club chain, (recently sold to Virgin Active) including three 100,000+ sqft tennis clubs and he led the team that designed and delivered the famous IndigO2 Live Music Club at the O2 Arena in London.

David has worked on both sides of the Atlantic for the last 9 years, completing several major casino projects in the USA. Most recently, David was responsible for the Hard Rock Cafe in Florence and is currently working on further Hard Rock Cafes in Europe and two major casino schemes in the UK.

Scott has been responsible for an impressive list of leisure and hospitality projects during his career. He has developed a particular expertise in the design of large and complex casino projects having spent many months in the USA working on substantial projects in Florida and Mississippi as well as acting as lead designer on the Isle Casino at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry – the UK’s largest casino.

He has also designed a string of successful bars, clubs and restaurants, most recently, the new Fazenda Restaurant in Leeds and the Cocina Restaurant at the Casa Hotel in Chesterfield.

Scott is currently busy overseeing the new Hard Rock Café in the Grande Place in Brussels and a major refit of the Hard Rock Café in the Placa Catlunya in Barcelona. © Copyright careyjones

Fuse Studios Limited: Calls Wharf, 2 The Calls, Leeds, LS2 7JU and Barton Arcade, Deansgate, Manchester, M3 2BH.