sketch
sketch has been a stalwart destination for a glamourous night out in Mayfair for 20 years now. The respected restaurateur Mourad Mazouz, envisioned creating a restaurant which would combine art, music, design and gastronomy in equal measure. He enlisted his friend, the Michelin-starred and globally revered Pierre Gagnaire, to devise an experimental menu to mirror his aspirations for the interior.
The restaurant is in an elegant neoclassical budling designed and built in 1779 by James Wyatt. sketch continues the structural pedigree as 9 Conduit Street, having been the housing the Royal Institute of British Architects from 1885, becoming the early headquarters of the Suffragette movement—Millicent Fawcett gave her first speech from the first-floor window to her followers in 1869. After the Second World War, it was the Atelier for Christian Dior, until the 1980s.
Over the past 20 years, Mazouz invited artists and designers to decorate every nook and cranny in the townhouse, effectively making the restaurant a gallery with a restaurant attached. Patrons have dined with works by India Mahdavi, Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance, Martin Creed, Chris Levine, David Shrigley, among others. Yinka Shonibare’s new work for the space currently dominates the Gallery, with an update to come in January 2024.
The Glade room, 2023
The Lecture theatre with artworks by Yinka Shonibare, 2023
The Lecture Room when it was RIBA’s Headquarters from 1885
Lecture Room as Christian Dior’s British Atelier, 1971