054 FOCUS
Below Nando’s Loughton paid homage to a car dealership that had been on the site for half a century
Opposite page, clockwise Croydon’s Nando’s home includes a wall of terracotta ridge tiles. The chain’s Peckham restaurant uses bright yellow windowsill tile panels to draw visitors in, while old shutters were used in Glasgow. This idea saw a variation in the corrugated sheeting used in Greenwich
THE PREMISE behind chain restaurants is often relatively straightforward – the universal roll-out of a single brand- led design that makes customers feel instantly at home whether they walk into the branch in London, Luton or Los Angeles.
However, instead of this corporate approach, Nando’s, the restaurant chain which blends African and Portuguese culinary traditions to create its legendary peri-peri chicken, demands much more from its designers. Paul Trush, director of STAC Architecture, is a veteran of 69 Nando’s restaurants – and every single one has been unique.
‘Nando’s has four design houses and we are one of them,’ says Trush. ‘Te company’s brief is that no restaurant is to be the same – every one needs to be unique and a new experience. It’s great from a design point of view, as we have total freedom and can have a lot of fun, although the downside is that after all that hard work you are only able to use the design once!’
Profile
Clever use of materials helps ensure that every Nando’s restaurant is completely different. Kay Hill speaks to a veteran of nearly 70 designs about the challenge of creating something new each time
Tere’s more to it than just coming up with something original every time, however. ‘As well as being unique, it also needs to be a Nando’s – it has to look and feel instinctively like a Nando’s, but not a Nando’s that you have ever seen before,’ Trush explains. At the heart of each of STAC’s designs is the clever and innovative use of materials – from old car parts and wooden shutters to completely bespoke surfaces.
‘Nando’s has a South African heritage, [so] they like things to be authentic and authentically African,’ explains Trush, who was born and brought up in South Africa himself and studied architecture at the University of Cape Town. ‘My approach to materials comes from my upbringing in South Africa. In Africa, nothing is wasted, everything is reused. I grew up seeing that everything can
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