Aesthetics with Intent
There’s a technicality to the way I work, a focus on detail that I suppose dates back to my childhood. My father worked as a Brutalist architect in the UK throughout the 1960s and ‘70s — including designing a London Underground line. He was constantly drawing; I’d sit beside him, trying to mirror his sketches in layers of graphite. My other great childhood influence was my aunt. She was a cinematographer for major films including the 1986 cult classic, Labyrinth. Her house was plastered with sketches and drawings she’d made from all the projects she’d worked on. I’d spend hours tracing the lines of her work in my head, watching a world take shape on paper.
For James Michael Lees, co-founder of Pirajean Lees, design is a language written in emotion, light, sound and experience. Here, he explains why detail forms the backbone of successful design.
Atmosphere is the most powerful element in any interior. It’s a tangible aura that dictates how we behave, how we interact, even how long we stay in a place. My goal is to engineer feeling; to choreograph atmosphere through materiality, lighting, and spatial rhythm.
It made me realise spaces aren’t just seen; they’re felt, even before they’re built.
I’m still obsessed with working on paper today. I find computers constraining. I prefer to keep things loose, play with ideas. I want emotional connection and freedom of expression. Perhaps that’s why I joined a three-year course in set design at the UK’s National Film and Television School after graduating from Kingston University. I worked on everything from James Bond and Star Wars, to British Film Institute shorts. I learned to root myself in different worlds and narratives. But I always come back to the details. Whenever we watch a film at home, my wife and co-founder of Pirajean Lees, Clémence, gets frustrated because I’m picking apart every shot.
But beneath my analysis — whether I’m dissecting French cinema or finding little-heard music on iTunes — it’s also important to me that I remain untethered from heavily specific influences. I want to stay flexible, and avoid becoming obsessive about a single style or vision. I’m lucky that London is home; its diversity of food, people and culture is endlessly stimulating. Travel is a good way to maintain fluidity too. At Pirajean Lees, our projects span the globe, and with that comes exposure to different cultures and design frameworks. Recently, I spent three weeks in Vietnam and found the buildings and interiors different to anything I’ve seen before: more sculptural and coordinated in their specifics. I came back brimming with fresh inspiration. Morocco is another favourite: vibrant and craft-oriented, from the Musée Yves Saint Laurent building by Studio KO, to the intricate markings you find on mosques. Individual artisans learn their own pattern, carving designs so familiar they could practically do it blindfolded.
Our approach is rooted in a deep interrogation of purpose: what is this space meant to do, how should it perform, and how can it add value? At House of KOKO, a private members’ club in London, with a century-long history as a theatre and concert venue, the brief was simple: to create a space that felt like stepping into a film set. It’s my idea of a dream project, working in a space where Prince performed. If only the walls could speak! Honouring that heritage was vital to our design, and we wanted to maintain a sense of individual connection within the broader commercial space.
When we take on any project, we create its story with microscopic attention. It becomes the foundation of the details that follow, with input from every member of our 14-strong team. During this stage, there’s a lot of tracing paper, layouts, working in situ, archive visits and so on. By the time the narrative is complete, we already know exactly how the maitre d’ will greet guests at the door, and the tone of voice they’ll use.
I also enjoy working in Dubai, where we first took on a project around 12 years ago. Back then, the Pirajean Lees method of design — creating from scratch — was alien in a replication-heavy environment. People thought we were mad when we turned up with a narrative script. One of my favourite projects was Ninive, a restaurant bringing Arabic food back to a scene saturated by European influence. We wanted the space to mimic the intimacy of traditional Arab courtyards. Watching that project take flight comes back to the idea of atmosphere again: how mood dictates the unfolding of a space. The focus isn’t on novelty, but relevance and originality — to the function, client and context.
House of KOKO is a beast of a building; 16 rooms spread across six floors. We created a concept based on theatre management, where you have a lot going on behind the main stage; screen-printing, ironworks, a workers’ canteen, a performance room, a green room, a dressing room, and so on. We broke down the wider narrative into smaller stories within each room. Take the Dome Cocktail Bar on the top floor, for instance. In such a huge building, you’re likely to get lost, or separated from the group with which you arrived. The Dome Cocktail Bar is where we envision friends being reunited.
It’s the first space I visited with our client. We hauled ourselves up a dusty old ladder and into this extraordinary dome at the pinnacle of the building. I was struck immediately by the acoustics. Sound design is vital, because you might create the most beautiful space, but if the acoustics are wrong, the atmosphere will always feel off. In the Dome Cocktail Bar, all the reverberation is generated to the central point of the room, guided by an auditorium system. The bar becomes a kind of cocoon. I call the result “losing your voice”, because when you speak, the sound concentrates within a single area of the room, along with all the other ambient noise.
We worked with Funktion-One to create the speakers; the same company behind big setups in Ibiza or Glastonbury Festival.
I can get really carried away with design details, especially custom pieces of furniture. Sofas, chairs, beds, kitchen counters, banquette seating — we cover everything. I love collaborating with artisanal makers across Europe and Morocco who bring ideas to life. My creative process usually begins in the middle of the night, that peaceful “witching hour” when no one else is around. That’s when I get my best ideas. I like to arrive at the office with a direction already in mind. Then I head straight for the main sketch table and start drawing — layouts, circulation, rules. It changes every day. Recently, I was working on Dragon Eye in Hong Kong; a redesign of one of the most famous clubs in the city, inspired by mid-century Chinese film. I was sketching concepts for large festival-style toilets with marble tops and designing a bar inspired by old Hong Kong trams. We're also working on a 3D-printed building in Bahrain, based around an old radio station from the 1960s. It’s quite Brutalist in style, and the speed of the build means 3D printing is the only viable method.
With commercial projects, it helps that Clémence and I both come from operational backgrounds. We know exactly how big a hotel, restaurant, or members’ club kitchen needs to be (30 percent of your overall area space) and how to increase efficiency over several floors and rooms. We shape different moods with different materials. If you want a buzzing café or brasserie feel, there needs to be clutter and sound. We know which materials will draw that out. If you want a space where people linger for drinks and dancing, we’ll work with acoustic wrapping. Indulging my “techie” side is one of the bonuses of working with a large-scale international or commercial project. We get to really immerse ourselves in the science of atmosphere.
A lot of the way I work comes down to fairly mathematical calculation. Aspects such as proportion and positioning are vital to the way a space unfurls. Everything has to coordinate and balance. I see it as a massive three-dimensional puzzle. Light, furniture, fabrics, texture, colour — they all have to sing together. I tend to work with the precision and logic; Clémence brings out the personality and character. We balance each other well, both tethered by the storytelling. Once that’s in place, Pirajean Lees isn’t really the designer anymore. The characters we’ve imagined take over to create timeless spaces; institutions that grow richer over time with layers of living and people having a good time. Patina is part of beauty: you want smashed wine glasses and gossip shared over tables. That’s a narrative extension. It’s ironic that in avoiding existing trends, we end up defining new ones. House of KOKO is getting a lot of attention as one of the hottest places to be in London right now.
I probably lean more towards commercial projects because they allow us to experiment. You're designing for a wide range of people, and you’ve got a lot resting on success so you have to address every element from food design to live music, servers’ outfits, tactility of menus, and tone of voice. The challenge is greater, so the ideas are too. This year I’m particularly excited about a few: we’ve got a top secret project in Dublin; a reimagining of a Portuguese restaurant we designed in Dubai — now coming to London’s Delano Hotel; and Ronnie Scott’s members’ club. Working with the legendary London jazz club is a career highlight: Clémence’s grandfather played there, so there’s an element of family history entwined too.
Clients today are incredibly design literate. They want longevity, authenticity, and spaces that create experiences. At Pirajean Lees, that’s music to our ears, because we’ve always believed in the mutual reinforcement of artistry and utility. Beauty means more when it tells a story — a thoughtful choreography that’s lived, felt, and remembered long after the lights go down.
