Lumsden Design bags EuroShop award for retail concept at Harry Potter Studio Tour

Lumsden Design, a London-based retail design firm specialising in attractions and cultural destinations, has won a EuroShop Retail Design Award.

Lumsden was one of three winners - selected from a pool of 30 candidates from 22 countries by a jury - honoured at an awards ceremony at the EuroShop 2020 trade show, which took place on 16 - 20 February at Messe Düsseldorf, in Germany.

The company was recognised for its work on the retail and dining areas at the Warner Bros. Harry Potter Studio Tour in Leavesden, UK.

Lumsden has been working with the Harry Potter Studio Tour since it first opened in 2011, and created three new cafés - Hub Café, the Frog Café and the Food Hall - and a completed a total refit of the retail areas in the tour’s latest expansion, all brought to life with the use of authentic props used in the Harry Potter film series.

The new dining and retail options are accessible through the Hub, the new lobby and entrance to the studios that features a lifesize model of the Gringotts Ukrainian Ironbelly dragon hanging overhead. The Hub Café is decorated with hundreds of authentic prop potion jars, used in the films and offers a Starbucks concession, while the Frog Café serves hot drinks and bespoke desserts and was inspired by the pentagonal Chocolate Frog boxes. Adorning the Frog Café walls are 70ft long murals of the Marauder’s Map.

The Food Hall is a 500-cover café that was inspired by Hogwart’s iconic Great Hall, Lumsden worked with the film’s original set builders to recreate the vaulted ceiling, ’bewitched’ to look like the night sky, and floating candles. Tables in the Food Hall are fitted with trackers so food is brought directly to diners as if by magic.

Inspired by the Diagon Alley set design, the retail experience underwent a total redesign, becoming a series of shops within shops, which, according to a release, allows for ’intelligent regrouping of products for visual storytelling and intuitive wayfinding.’

“For a project like this, it’s important to understand that storytelling doesn’t start or stop with the tour. It starts the moment the visitor arrives and permeates all spaces from café to retail and beyond,” said Lumsden’s design director James Dwyer.

“We’ve elevated the existing areas and added a whole new level to the visitor experience,” Dwyer added.