Why Bryan O’Sullivan Studio is in the Design 100

Bryan O’Sullivan founded his London studio in 2013, after training inside three different practices: David Collins Studio, where he found his pull toward interiors; Selldorf Architects in New York, where his eye for proportion sharpened; and Martin Brudnizki Design Studio, where he learned to run one of his own. The studio’s rooms lean on classical European proportion, drawn from 1940s to 1960s French and Italian architecture, dressed with custom furniture and lighting made fresh for each commission.

Hospitality is where the studio is most visible. The Berkeley Bar & Terrace, built around a 300-year-old walnut tree salvaged from the Fulbeck Estate, sits alongside the Red Room at the Connaught and a run of suites and restaurants at Claridge’s, a relationship that has now stretched across several rooms of one of London’s most scrutinised hotels. Private houses handled with the same rigour as those five-star public rooms, and furniture designed rather than specified, is what earns the studio its place in the Design 100.