Studio Rhonda

Developed to promote sociability as much as productivity, Omlet’s new HQ in Banbury Oxfordshire provides appealing, versatile workspace for the company’s various teams. The result is sociable, adaptable, and full of character. Studio Rhonda was tasked with sensitively transforming a 19th-century Palladian malthouse into an appealing workspace for a rapidly growing 21st-century brand. Presented with a vast, vaulted space crossed by original wooden trusses, Rhonda faced the challenge of preserving the historical character of the building while sympathetically bringing it in line with the Omlet brand and its workspace needs.

Completed in spring 2023, the new office gives Omlet ample space to comfortably accommodate 45–60 people.

The main office comprises a central core of work spaces set under a mezzanine, operated from a full-height space surrounding it by elegant glazed steel partitions and doors, painted in a soft, coffee colour that complements and emphasises the timber trusses above. The glazed panels create quiet zones within the space while also allowing daylight to cross the cavernous room, keeping it light and airy.

To develop the interior style, Studio Rhonda took design cues from the raw state of the building, opting to work with the earthy tone set by the exposed brick and large timbers. The material palette has therefore been kept as natural as possible, with solid ash used in much of the bespoke furniture and cork – a natural acoustic absorber – selected for the flooring.

Studio Rhonda’s interest in biophilic design principles is evident in the abundance of greenery. As a pet product company, Omlet has always been open to nature, with office cats, chickens and rabbits always on hand as resident product testers, so there was already a precedent for bringing the natural world into the workspace. Substantial planters in terracotta and Corten steel are full of trees and plants, making the most of the lofty ceiling heights and the sunshine from the skylights. These not only visually soften the edges of the workspace, they also help absorb sound, clean the air, and contribute to physical and mental wellbeing.

Improving the acoustics – and emphasising the nod to nature – still further, Studio Rhonda introduced vast carpeted walls using Tretford goats’ wool fitted over acoustic batten cladding. The walls beneath the mezzanine are clad with raw cork, hand-painted with murals in Indian inks. This combination of natural colours and textured materials creates an atmosphere of depth and cosiness, making the new Omlet office an inherently relaxing space.

To balance the grounding qualities of the natural colours and materials, Rhonda has introduced a palette of bolder pop tones, muted by the materials that host them. The goat’s wool carpet on the walls is dyed in a variety of playful colours, softened by flecks found naturally in the wool, and pigment-stained ash in green, yellow, aqua, and blue is used for various pieces of furniture and the kitchens.

A graphic grid of solid ash strips frames the colour-blocked carpet wall patterns and integrates deep window apertures of ash panelling, unifying the varied styles of doors and original window frames. Strips of solid ash have also been used to create a linear cladding for the mezzanine stairs, integrating hidden storage, and also forming a screen that contains the stairs from the foyer. Both staircases have been clad with bespoke ash treads.

For Omlet’s four kitchen areas, Rhonda brought on board the London-based design studio HØLTE as the ideal collaborators to realise her colour-blocked kitchen concept. The two studios worked together to develop bespoke shades in ash so that each kitchen could have its own personality – an intentional, colour-coded part of the wayfinding in the vast new building. The colours – dark and light blue, yellow and green – inform the neighbouring wall treatments, creating distinct colour-coded zones within the space.

To complement the high-level design presented by the kitchens, Studio Rhonda has employed a combination of bespoke furniture and selected pieces from leading designers. The meeting room features a bespoke built-in bench made from Ash alongside a bespoke circular boardroom table, both designed by Studio Rhonda. The canteen’s bespoke benches and tables are complemented by an eclectic selection of chairs and stools. The extraordinary standard of craftsmanship and attention to detail that is apparent in the space is very much a deliberate choice.

As well as making the workspace a more appealing place to be for staff returning to the office, Studio Rhonda hopes that the exemplary design standard will help inspire the Omlet team in the products that they themselves design.

A 4-storey Victorian house has been given a complete refurbishment with a view to aligning the traditional architectural features in the main house with a contemporary loft extension. The house has been designed with and for film director Robert Rafalat — a home he shared until recently with his sister Zu, who sadly passed away in 2020.

The brief was to go crazy, a celebration of life moving forward, so I did! — I’ve used 30 different paint colours teamed with earthy tones of glazed plaster, raw oak floorboards and bespoke, pigmented microcement. The result is a home that offers both stimulation and calm.

The colour-blocked staircase forms the core of the journey up through the house creating dialogue with each vista and adjoining room.

Some of the rooms use key pieces of furniture and art belonging to Rob that hold deep sentimental value as a starting point. The large blue sofa in the living room formed the anchor for a blue ‘cave’ where he can host screenings for clients and friends. The vintage circus poster in the dining room belonged to Zu.

I’ve used colour in an architectural way, ignoring the parameters of walls, ceilings and floors for an immersive journey. As you reach the top floor loft extension, the pallet softens almost ethereally, playfully reacting to the light from the upper skylights.

Many bespoke pieces of furniture have been created including the huge hand-painted cupboard in the rear living room and the tiled dining tables. Other family heirloom pieces of furniture from Rob’s Polish family have been updated with bold paint finishes and upholstery.

Photography: Veerle Evans

Zetteler’s new workspace is designed to be flexible and enriching, with curtains on bookshelves allowing aesthetic and acoustic adjustments to be made easily.
Photography by Taran Wilkhu.

From what was an empty industrial-style unit, Zetteler and Studio Rhonda have created a light, colourful, multi-zone workspace that is warm and inspiring to spend time in. We have created a space that eschews the traditional banks of workstations in favour of a versatile, multifunctional layout. The new office meets the post-pandemic needs of the Zetteler team and the creative community alike, providing space for client meetings, strategy-planning sessions, journalist events and workshops whenever they need it.

Located on the seventh floor of Regents’ Studios, off Broadway Market, the 1,000 sqft workspace is divided into three zones, each with a different atmosphere and each suited to a different way of working. The main work area features a large wooden Max Table designed by Max Lamb for Hem, with Herman Miller Cosm chairs, along with a wall of curtain-concealable library shelving. A corridor leads past a bank of storage cupboards to a more relaxed, café-style space at the rear, with a corner sofa, smaller tables for lunching, and a bespoke kitchen by Zetteler’s client and neighbour HØLTE. Between these two spaces is one of the most distinctive of the office’s features – a purpose-built meeting space encased in walls of deep blue Valchromat and translucent glass bricks, that allow in dappled light while creating a sense of privacy.

Carefully chosen colour-ways help break the space down into its constituent zones. A colour shift from a cool duck-egg blue to a warmer sunny soft peach tone in the walls, floors and ceiling marks a change in ambiance between the main work area at the front and the more relaxed space at the rear, enhancing the sense of functional transition.

“I want the space to offer both our own team and the wider creative community somewhere flexible, beautiful and functional where they can come and get together for whatever they need. Connecting people is a huge part of what we do. For the first time in our history, we’re in a position to properly invest in creating the ideal space – I want as many people to benefit from it as possible.”
– Sabine Zetteler, founder, Zetteler

Company founder Sabine Zetteler has severe conductive hearing loss, and open office spaces with hard floors and high ceilings create echo chambers that can be highly disruptive. Employing materials and partitions to create a deaf-friendly space was complicated by another priority – the need for the space to be vegan. This was a particular obstacle when it came to soft furnishings such as rugs and curtains, as most acoustic materials use animal-derived fabrics such as wool.

Working together, Rhonda and Sabine used the challenge as an opportunity to explore new possibilities in interior design, sourcing vegan alternatives to all materials: the paints for the walls, the fabrics for curtains – many materials which are thought to be vegan, but often involve animal-derived components in their manufacture especially in glues. Although this made the process more complicated than a standard workplace design, it inspired some out-of-the-box thinking about the relationship between values and design, and resulted in a proof of concept for the idea that a modern workplace can be styled to reflect the practical needs and moral outlook of its occupants.

Zetteler is now fully installed, and the team are relishing the benefits of the new hybrid working model that the new space has made possible. They are looking forward to seeing how it evolves over time to meet the changing needs of the community it was created to serve.

A penthouse for two chefs in London's Kings Cross. A full refurbishment of this 2 bed apartment taking visual cues from the Bladerunneresque views of adjacent towerblocks.

A fully bespoke and hand built kitchen and bathroom have been created using 2000+ pigmented concrete tiles.

Bespoke furniture and wall treatments throughout make this a highly individual home.

Photography: Rachael Smith
Reviewed by Sight Unseen as their ‘most read feature’ of 2018
As seen in Elle Decoration

Creative direction of a 3 bed duplex full refurbishment near London Fields in Hackney. A highly functional home has been created with emphasis on texture and colour to delineate the space and reflect the owners respective German and Indian childhoods.

The hand-built kitchen is made from recycled paper and is a collaboration with furniture designers Frank.

Featured in and 8 page story by The World of Interiors, Feb 19.
Photography: Simon Upton
Words: Kate Jacobs

— Photography: Karl Donovan.

A full refurbishment and structural reformatting of this one bedroom apartment in East London belonging to a design and cultural editor.

Internal spaces and walls were reconfigured to create an open plan living space. The flow of the space was reformatted by removing the kitchen wall and replacing the claustrophobic zigzag hall with a new diagonal wall. The unnecessary door to the living room was removed, allowing natural light to flow from the front to back of the property.

Extra deep skirtings (30cm) were installed, painted in the same gloss black lacquer as the floor. This creates a ‘tray’ of black that optically extends the line of the floor.

A fully bespoke and hand-built kitchen was created with hand-painted gloss cabinets and metalwork, for a timeless and tactile modernism. The worktop was hand laid with individual glass mosaic tiles.

The bedroom features a bespoke, hand tufted textile upholstering the headboard. We worked with the incredibly talented women of the Tifawin cooperative in Morocco via The Anou. Custom yarns were dyed and tested until we achieved the perfect palette and then the textile was hand-made over a period of 2 weeks to a precise measurement for the space. It arrived millimetre perfect.
We used the test yarns to knit a bespoke cover for an heirloom chair owned by the client

The bathroom was created as a modular and immersive tactile retreat. Natural pink plaster is contrasted with graphically gridded Morroccan tiles.

— Photography by Veerle Evans.

A communal roof terrace for a shared office building in the heart of Soho.

Bespoke tiled furniture was built on site creating an informal space for residents to relax on lunch breaks and post-work gatherings.

The roof terrace was completely re-surfaced in eco-friendly composite decking and built-in planters, laddered fencing and canopy frame installed for trailing planting to colonise over time.

Store design and branding for the iconic London store Darkroom.

Signature black walls were complimented by a bespoke hand-painted floor, modular plinth system, tiled window plinth and hand-painted window signage. The interior was customised on a yearly basis to showcase seasonal product launches.

Shelves and jewellery cabinets designed by Frank.

A café, bar and grocery, selling the majority of its products without packaging. After giving shape to their first incarnation in 2007, we were commissioned to design their new, larger 160m2 space in Hackney, with a very small budget and an (as far as possible) eco build.

Our visual keys were a utilitarian 1950s pre-supermarket era of local grocers and busy high streets; coupled with Mediterranean café influences, inspired by the Spanish food and wine at the core of the menu. This is manifested in our palette of rich ochre, inky and duck-egg blues, dusky coral with more vibrant tomato red, sunflower yellow and turmeric.

Three primary materials were used: Marmoleum for the ziggurat patterned floor, marble off-cuts for the bar and counter tops, and pegboard for the walls and wheeled room dividers. These create abstracted booths and visual breaks between the 40+ seats and tables, bringing intimacy to the originally quite cavernous space. A motley crew of salvaged and collected chairs and stools were stripped and painted black, creating unison and an informal texture to the landscape of the space.

Created whilst a partner at Multistorey.

Interior, exterior and branding of a retail space in West London. A bespoke tiled exterior mural reflects the owners’ African heritage and a love of pattern. Contrasted with this is a simple and linear interior providing a structured yet blank canvas to house a myriad of products.

Created whilst a partner at Multistorey.

Redecoration of a 50ft houseboat in East London. A four month brand takeover to celebrate a collaborative tile project between Darkroom and Bert & May. 

The interior of the boat was converted into a shop-cum-home utilising the natural paints of Bert & May with a modular display system, wall treatments and bespoke textiles.

Some of our favourite smaller spaces and projects!