Dog House
When we were invited in 2019 to design a Dog House for an exhibition of modern canine designs organised by Kevin McCloud at the GoodWoof Dog Festival, we obviously thought of Rolo, our office dog. Naturally short in stature but always keen to be the centre of attention, Rolo is a huge fan of our tall office swivel chairs. Taking that as our starting point, we based our design on a redundant old chair base and took inspiration from the 1950s/60s origins of the classic style - incorporating the essential drinks cabinet for proper Mad Men meetings.
Covid lockdown intervened but, when the Festival was relaunched in 2022, we were invited to build our dog bed and take it to GoodWoof to be auctioned for The Dogs Trust. Tom got to work, building the bed from plywood with veneer and natural linoleum finishes. Alongside submissions by other leading architects (including Foster & Partners and Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners), cabinet makers (David Linley) and designers (Jony Ive and Marc Newson) the bed was enjoyed by Festival-goers (and their owners) before being judged by a panel that included the design critic Stephen Bayley and Renaissance man Bill Bailey.
