REPORTER 025


PROFILE RAA


With a quarter of a century of experience as the director of Ralph Appelbaum Associates’ London ofice, Phillip Tefft talks about his time at one of the world’s longest- established and largest museum exhibition design firms, and how the practice was built up, project by project, into the success it is today


WORDS BY PAMELA BUXTON


BACK IN 1996, PHILLIP TEFFT was given a year by New York-based exhibition design company Ralph Appelbaum Associates to make a go of a new London ofice by finding a way to get ‘to the heart of British culture’. A quarter of a century on, after the completion of 52 built projects – and 124 commissions in total – it seems fair to say that it is now certainly a case of ‘mission accomplished’. Tefft, however, would be far too modest


to say so, despite having built up a stellar list of museum and visitor destination clients including the Imperial War Museum, St Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower of London Jewel House and many more national institutions over the years. 2022 promises something of a purple patch for the 25-strong studio, as it will work on major exhibitions. This includes the newly opened The World of Stonehenge at the British Museum and The Intelligence Factory exhibition at Bletchley Park, as well as a clutch of plum UK museum and visitor attraction projects including a Chimney Lift experience at Battersea Power Station. It is also working on the redesign of the Harris museum and gallery in Preston, which is due to reopen in 2024. Tefft jumped at the chance to set up the


Left The Lavazza visitor experience hall at the company’s Settimo Torinese factory, where the 1895 brand is produced


Inset Phillip Tefft, director of Ralph Appelbaum Associates


ofice in London, which coincided with a time when RAA was pursuing more commissions on an international basis. ‘We slowly built the practice up, project by


project,’ he recalls, with important early repeat clients including the Royal Academy of Music and the Horniman Museum in London.


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