Hospitality & Workspace Interior Design

Restaurants, bars, workspaces and hotels across Europe

Akiva Commercial01

Experiences that work

The best commercial environments do not happen by accident. They are designed around how people move, gather, work and spend.

We apply hospitality principles to commercial spaces, whether or not the space is a restaurant. That means designing for the guest first and the photograph second.

Restaurants and F&B

Covers multiplied by turns is most of your revenue, and both are decided by a drawing months before you open. We settle the seating mix, the service route and the position of the pass first, because those set your labour cost and your peak throughput. Acoustics come next, and they are what most schemes get wrong: the hard surfaces that photograph beautifully are the ones guests complain about in every review once the room is full.

Hospitality

Hotels and aparthotels are a repetition problem. A detail that is slightly wrong in one room is wrong in forty, and a specification that fails after two years fails across the whole floor at once. We design the room type as a product: durable to a commercial standard, quick for housekeeping to reset, and cheap to repair in parts rather than replace whole. The arrival sequence and the corridor matter more than they look, because they are the first and last thing a guest sees.

Co-working

Desk density and acoustic comfort pull directly against each other, and where you land sets your price per desk and your churn. We work out how many desks the floor can carry before it stops feeling like somewhere people want to be, then plan meeting rooms, calls booths and quiet zones against how members actually use them rather than how the brochure says they will. The space also has to photograph well, because that is what people join from.

Our framework02

Three layers, every project

Space

The physical environment

How the space is organised, zoned and designed.

Experience

The human interaction

How people perceive, interact with and move through it.

Flow

The operational performance

How circulation, functionality and service support performance.

Key insight

When these work together, environments become more intuitive, more efficient and more valuable. When they do not, the room looks right and runs badly.

Our process03

Discovery to handover

Take one stage or all seven. Projects are priced on the complexity of the work and the area involved, in square metres or square feet, rather than by the day or as a fixed package. Each stage is scoped separately, so you never commit to the whole project on a first meeting.

  1. Strategic discoveryAligning vision, business objectives, guest and opportunity.
  2. Experience strategyCustomer journeys, behavioural insight and experience design.
  3. Concept designExperience-led concepts that translate strategy into space.
  4. Design developmentArchitectural drawing set: layouts, elevations and the detail trades need.
  5. FF&E and specificationEvery selection of furniture, fixtures, equipment and materials, scheduled.
  6. Procurement OptionalSourcing and coordinating approved items through to delivery.
  7. Implementation support OptionalStaying involved so what gets built is what was drawn.
Common questions04

What operators ask first

How is it priced?

On complexity and area. We look at the square metres or square feet involved and how demanding the work is, then quote the stage in front of you. You approve that before anything starts.

Can you work with our architect and contractor?

Yes, and on most projects that is how it runs. We are used to being one part of a team and to designing around decisions made before we arrived.

Do you work across Europe?

Yes, remotely and on site. Tell us where the premises are and we will confirm what on-site attendance is workable before anything is agreed.

Can you work around us staying open?

Often, and it is worth raising early. Phasing around trading changes sequencing, sometimes specification, and always the programme. It is a design constraint, not a scheduling detail.

Talk to the commercial team