Mansion House

The Mansion House was designed by George Dance the Elder (1695-1768), the Surveyor of the City of London from 1735. The building, listed Grade 1, is the official residence of Lord Mayor of London and is used for official City ceremonial functions, including the Easter banquet, when the main speaker is the Foreign Secretary, and another in early June, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer is invited to report about the UK economy.

The Mansion House is one of the grandest of Palladian buildings in London, with three main storeys over a rusticated basement. The entrance facade has a portico with six Corinthian supporting a pediment, with a tympanum sculpture by Sir Robert Taylor, in the centre of which is a symbolic figure of the City of London trampling on her enemies.

The main reception room, the columned ‘Egyptian Hall’ (not because of any Egyptian motifs but because of the arrangement of columns, attributed to Egyptians by the Roman architect, engineer and theorist, Vitruvius). It has twenty niches for sculpture.

Vitruvius (c80-15BC) is best known for his book ‘De Architectura, libri decem’ or ‘The Ten Books on Architecture’, the only treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity, and regarded since the Renaissance as the first book on architectural theory. In fact, he probably collated many of the received theories from the Greeks.

The challenge for Luke Hughes Designs was to come up with a chair design that is sympathetic to this robust 18th century architectural setting and the dignity of the ceremonial banqueting function (for up to 400 people). Equally important was to make life easy for catering staff whose job it is to stack and clear away the chairs, using limited passenger and goods lifts, and store them in the cramped cellars below.