Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s Ladbroke Hall Is London’s Latest Cultural Hub

Ladbroke Hall is imagined as a new cultural space in London. The flagship for Carpenters Workshop Gallery, it opens its doors this week with two exhibitions — one showcasing David Adjaye’s latest design objects, the other a display of work by the late Brazilian designer Jose Zanine Caldas.

Ladbroke Hall, though, has bigger ambitions. Once building work is completed in September 2023 to a cost of around £30m, this vast 43,000 square foot space will become a vibrant creative hub to unite art, design, theater, dance, music, food and wine, and more. Ladbroke Hall is about removing art and design from the static gallery space for something altogether more emotive.

“There is an appetite to look for more experiential spaces,” says Loïc Le Gaillard, who founded Carpenters Workshop Gallery alongside Julien Lombrail in 2006 with their first space for design and objets in Chelsea, London. Through further galleries in Paris, New York and Los Angeles, the duo has been instrumental in elevating collectible design and blurring the line between art and design. Ladbroke Hall hopes to break similar ground by offering a space that helps us explore culture in more exciting and unusual ways.

The renovated building is housed in a Grade II-listed site, built in 1903 as the home to the Sunbeam Talbot Motor Company. The building has two sections: Carpenters Workshop Gallery will showcase collectible designs, while Ladbroke Hall will become home to the hub of activity. David Adjaye — the renowned architect for many notable buildings worldwide, including DC’s National Museum of African American History and Culture — has worked on the main building. His firm is also designing a contemporary extension, a vast space dubbed “design chapel,” which will open in 2025.

On my visit to Ladbroke Hall, weeks before the opening, workers are busy putting the finishing touches to the building. A resident of this area for over over 20 years, I’ve often walked passed the building, yet the exterior barely expresses the sheer scale of Ladbroke Hall. This magnificent space is full of character and charm with its impressive staircase and light streaming through tall windows, and I’m pleased to see much of the bone structure left alone. “I fell in love with the building at first sight,” says Le Gaillard, who shows me around the site.

We wander down some steps to where he tells me another architect, Nicolas Schuybroek, is creating an underground exhibition space. There are other showrooms imagined by designers Ingrid Donat, Vincenzo de Cotiis and Michèle Lamy, each of whom will add their creative flavor. An Italian restaurant is in construction, with Gambero Rosso’s 2020 Chef of the Year winner Emanuele Pollini at its helm, and a garden is under landscape by Chelsea Flower Show winner Luciano Giubbilei. There is still much to be done, with Le Gaillard reassuring me that the building will be up and running come September in time for Frieze London.

For now, Ladbroke Hall will open its Carpenters Workshop Gallery doors with Adjaye’s “Yaawa” created for this exhibition. The eight limited-edition objects continue the architect’s experimentation with Monoform; meanwhile, through different techniques — hand casting, oxidizing, patinating, polishing — they also explore the material bronze.

The collection’s name translates to “bronze” in Twi, one of the indigenous Ghanaian languages. Adjaye, who is British-Ghanian, explains that bronze is historically seen as a noble material on the African continent with traditional applications in craft and weaponry. Each piece “aims to expand this lineage, doing so through the creation of a form and technique that also offers utility in space,” says the architect.

Joining “Yaawa” is an exhibition by the leading Brazilian architect, sculptor and designer Jose Zanine Caldas (1919-2001). Supported by the Instituto Zanine Caldas, the show pays homage to the artist with a selection of 11 works to reflect the evolution of his career.

As we return to the office area, Le Gaillard tells me he sees Ladbroke Hall as an eco-system “because the idea came from us questioning the art market and how we operate,” he explains. “We wanted to have a place where we can welcome the designers we work with on a non-transactional basis. We want to engage with this beautiful community who have been entrusting us for the past 20 years, over a glass of wine, some pasta, a little theater, rather than the usual commercial and transactional setting that can make it extremely boring.”

His ultimate vision is for Ladbroke Hall to become a space showcasing cultural expressions — collective creations or individual designs. “As long as it’s bright, smart, relevant and meaningful, that it moves you, then it belongs to this space.”

Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove have a vibrant artistic and musical heritage that continues today. Le Gaillard is also conscious that, like most pockets of London, this is a mix of old and new, the moneyed and the less privileged, and that there is a deep sense of community and pride. So, as part of Ladbroke Hall’s vision, a community program will be central to its ethos, with collaborations with established local artists and youth initiatives in art, design, music and dining for education and mentoring opportunities. “We want to work with the community to ensure we’re not an isolated privileged hub. It ties up with who we are and what we do.”

I ask if the Carpenters Workshop Gallery plans to take this concept to the Paris, New York or Los Angeles locations. Le Gaillard is adamant that Ladbroke Hall will remain their sole cultural hub and not be franchised in the cookie-cutter mold. “Plus, the core team needs to be here to manage the space with the flavor we want. This is not something we can do miles from home. It’s a delicate ecosystem. So yes, This is our own little utopian fantasy.”