Studio Gascoigne handles commercial interior design in Auckland for retail stores, hospitality venues and workplaces, taking a project from first concept through to a completed, consented build. It’s one practice covering the whole job: space planning, brand expression, architecture and the technical documentation needed to get a fit-out through council and onto the floor.
Retail, hospitality and workplace, handled differently
Each commercial category has its own logic, and the studio designs to it rather than applying one look across the board. Retail interiors have to move stock and hold a brand’s identity across multiple stores, which is the thinking behind the Glassons flagship, the Hallensteins store fit-out and The Cosmetic Store. Airport retail adds another layer again — tenancies for Icebreaker, Kiwi Discovery and Comvita at Auckland Airport have to perform inside a high-traffic, high-security environment with its own approval process, on top of the usual brand and merchandising demands. That end of the work sits under the studio’s dedicated retail design service.
Hospitality is a different discipline again — kitchens, service flow, seating density and back-of-house all shape the design before a single finish gets chosen. Popo Dumplings and Hayama are both examples of that: venues where the room has to seat and serve people efficiently while still carrying the atmosphere the operator wants. That work is covered in more depth on the hospitality design service page. Workplace and office interiors bring their own brief again, built around how a team actually works day to day rather than how a showroom looks empty.
Why this isn’t decorating
A decorator starts with finishes — paint, furniture, fabric — and works within whatever layout already exists. Studio Gascoigne starts earlier than that. The brief begins with how the space needs to function: how customers or staff move through it, where the brand shows up, what the building itself will and won’t allow. Because the studio has registered architects, interior and retail designers, and technicians working under one roof, a project doesn’t have to leave the building to go from a floor plan to construction drawings that meet the New Zealand Building Code and get through council consent. That’s the practical difference — the same team that designs the space is the team that documents it well enough to get built, so nothing gets lost in translation between a design concept and a builder on site.
170+ awards and a studio built to see it through
Studio Gascoigne is led by principal Mark Gascoigne, and the studio’s work has picked up more than 170 design awards over the years — recognition that sits alongside the simpler test the studio applies to every project: design sells. A store, restaurant or office is a business tool first, and the interior has to earn its keep by doing something for the people who use it, not just look good in photos.
The client list reflects the range of commercial work the studio takes on, from national fashion retail through to independent hospitality and airport tenancies, and the full breadth of that work — retail, hospitality, workplace and beyond — is on the portfolio page. For a business weighing up a decorator against a studio that can carry a project through design, documentation and consent without handing it off elsewhere, that portfolio is the clearest evidence of what the difference looks like in practice.