A life-enhancing charity project, visited by Royalty, has landed a prestigious international award for Interior Design consultants Gilly Craft of Koubou Interiors. An excellent and outstanding project on interior that claimed the award for this prestigious issue.
Crowthorne based Koubou Interiors has won the Best Public Service Interior category of the UK Property Awards after completing a design project aimed to improve the lives of disabled children and their families in Berkshire.
Koubou beat off competition from all over the UK to win the Rolls Royce sponsored award after completing their unique design project for “Our House” a new dedicated day centre for disabled children and their families in Wokingham.
The new centre was opened in May this year by the Earl and Countess of Wessex who commented on how impressed they were with Koubou’s design. “The Countess even felt comfortable enough to kick off her shoes and climb into the Sensory Room with the children,” recalled Gilly Craft, Managing Director of Koubou Interiors who ran the award-winning design project with her team of three along with numerous outside contractors.
Gilly and her team received the UK Property Award earlier this month at a glittering event held at the London Marriott Grosvenor House Hotel, attended by a host of property developers, architects and interior designers.
Koubou has now been put forward to represent the UK in the 2014-2015 International Property Awards, competing against interior designers from all over the world. The “World’s Best” Property Awards will be revealed at a second glamorous awards ceremony in Dubai on December 4th.
“When we were commissioned to design and project manages the interior of a centre that improves the lives of disabled children and their families, we felt like winners already. To get the Royal seal of approval during the opening was also terrific. So when we heard we had won this very high profile award, we all felt on Cloud Nine.” Remarked Gilly.
“I don’t think we’ve come back down to earth yet and it’s proved a fantastic way to celebrate our 10th year in business,” she added. Koubou’s detailed submission for the award described how the project had to completed within a very tight timescale of just four months and to a very strict budget as the charity was reliant on public donations.
Undeterred by either of these challenges, Gilly and her team set about creating a bespoke design for “Our House” to create a versatile and stimulating space for all users to enjoy. The design focused on a central pod with a series of separate activity pods flowing through the space to incorporate a sensory room, therapy room, soft play area, TV and chill out areas for teenagers, computer areas and an office. The separate pods were made identifiable through clever use of colour so that children could identify each zone with a different colour.
“Use of colour was an important consideration for the design,” explained Gilly.The overall design with its curved shape was created to provide a free-flowing environment which would be welcoming and calming for children and their families.
