July 1, 2014 /

Designer Moves

‘It will be an every-changing, evolving space: you might come this month and find the boardroom is ivory with landscapes on the walls, but in three months’ time it could be wallpapered’ David Muirhead

Renowned interior designer David Muirhead’s hard-working new showroom in Parkmore houses his design collection and studio, and is also a boutique conference and functional venue.

It has been a lifetime dream to have a store with a collection of lifestyle products. I’ve been thinking about it for many years now. My brother-in-law, Ian Groves and I combined forces and said, ‘Let’s do a partnership’. We’ve called it the David Muirhead Collection. My sister, Mandy Groves, is my business partner on the interior design side, David Muirhead and Associates. We love what we’ve created. It’s an exciting time.

The site of our new HQ in Parkmore used to be a Portuguese restaurant and before that a bar. Ages ago I mentioned to the Landlord, Grant Field of Fed Group that i would really love the space as it’s so underutilized and in such a great position. Nothing remains. We literally gutted it from one side to the other – it was a massive renovation. We also took two more stores – to make it a good 600m2 in total. We added all the northern windows and the garden was designed by Jan Blok of Blok Landscaping.

A lot of Sandton corporates need a nice boardroom (we also have afoul catering kitchen) and we wanted to offer something that is also interior-design orientated. Initially I thought we’d just have the store in the front and our office and studio at the back but then I thought let’s add a boutique boardroom and function venue. I realized that the same clients i do interior for would be our function-venue clients. It will be an ever-changing evolving space: you might come this month and find the boardroom is ivory with landscapes not the walls but in three months’ time it could be wallpapered.

I’ve lived in Parkmore for 12 year – my studio used to be part of my house and our new HQ is on the same street. My sister lives within two minutes’ from here too. I think South Africans are now realizing how important it is to live close to work and business wise there still great prospects in Parkmore, an are I consider to have huge investment potent. Newly renovated homes here are fetching upwards of R4 million.

For me it’s still position, position, position. Parkmore is set between Sandhurst, Riverclub, Morningside and Sandton Central which is the wealthiest area per square kilometer in the whole of Africa. So from a practical and an investment point of view it was a no-brainer.

There’s a huge trend toward village malls… and I’m not really fond of big shopping centers. I think Parkmore has the potential to be the Parkhurst of Sandton.

We’ve got quite a few hotel projects on the go right now. We work closely with Tsogo Sun, so we’ve taken on the Palazzo Hotel. We did the interiors of 54 on Bath and we’re working on the link between the hotel and the mall, which is really exciting. – it is going to form a gallery space for up-and-coming artists.