Two identical fit-outs. Same drawings, same specification, same contractor, handed over in the same month. Walk into both four years later and one still looks like the photographs. The other has a scuffed reception desk, three different shades of white on the walls, a chilled water AHU running at 70% because nobody changed the filters, and a client wondering why the interior “didn’t last”. The difference is almost never the

Every retail finish looks good in the sample box. The test is what it looks like after 400,000 people have walked on it, leaned on it, and dragged a stroller across it. Durability is easy to achieve badly — you can build a store out of grey porcelain and stainless steel that will last forever and sell nothing. The harder brief, and the one we get every time, is durability

An airport restaurant has a problem no high-street restaurant has: nobody came for the food. They came because the gate hasn’t opened. They have between eleven minutes and two hours, they don’t know which, and they are carrying more than they can comfortably put down. Every design decision you make either helps them settle or quietly pushes them back out into the concourse to eat a sandwich standing up. We’ve