Anthony Joshua’s BXR London Gym. Design Heavyweight Champion.
POUND-FOR-POUND
Anthony Joshua is a peerless talent. Athlete, fighter, cultural icon, business disruptor, glass ceiling smasher, Joshua is innovating his way towards being boxing’s first billionaire.
BXR London is Anthony Joshua’s mould breaking new gym that’s generating low-frequency rumble in the design jungle.The lighting [designed by Peter Fordham of DHA Designs] is bang-on, understated and has helped BXR establish itself as the most most photographed gym space in London.
It’s got serious momentum, not flash-in-the-pan, and is a klaxon for wider design trends in the health and wellness arena. Last weekend I had the wonderfully trippy experience of being told about the gym by a design friend who was blissfully unaware it was a Factorylux project. Ace. For a heartbeat, I felt myself a hundred feet tall.
KNOCK-OUT
Factorylux 99, Factorylux Xicato Pendant and Factorylux Track-Pipe® are in abundance.
‘When choosing the lighting manufacturer for BXR London, there was only one company who could deliver industrial chic to complement the interiors and combine it with the quality and reliability of Xicato LED technology. That choice, of course, was Factorylux’… Peter Fordham, DHA Designs
‘Back in 1998, one of my first big gigs was lighting boxing events for Frank Warren / Sky Sports at York Hall, Bethnal Green. It was rough, ready and very tense. How things change. Peter Fordham has delivered the counterpunch: how health and wellness lighting might look and feel in the future’… Stanley Wilson, Factorylux
[Gratitude Andy Pollard, who helped me swerve a few punches at the York Hall all those years ago and now affords me one degree of separation from Dave Grohl 👊🏽]
TOE-TO-TOE
BXR is massively significant to us. We’re a relatively tiny bunch of genre-benders, toiling away in our converted trouser factory. We literally sell the fruits of our labour from the back of a van in a car park in East London [real deal: no jiggery-fakery here]. The BXR scheme hinges on a triumvirate of our baddest innovations: Factorylux 99, Track-Pipe® and Factorylux Xicato pendant.
‘The whole is more than the sum of its parts’ Aristotle
Used in combination, as a system, great things become possible. Historically speaking, designers specify real [architectural] lights alongside fake [decorative] ones to create an ‘overall’ effect. This looks and feels a bit clunky now designers no longer have to; Factorylux products mash-up the best of both worlds.
Lighting designer Peter Fordham — the first to specify all three of our flagship products in a single gig — nailed it. Of course we would say / think that but in terms of the technology adoption life cycle, Peter is definitely the innovator. Gratitude. And gratitude everyone else involved [even the contractors were amazing] including the photographer Gilles, with who we shared a brilliantly robust dialogue.
GO THE DISTANCE
For the last several years, we’ve taken advice from Cavendish, the business consultant people (yes, the end game is an exit, but interested investors please join the queue, we definitely aint done yet). On the surface, they’re about as different to us as it’s possible to be (our founder is a lefty / art / creative bloke, their founder is a Tory peer), but digging deeper unearths a shared mutual respect and a profound belief in well run business as a force for good.
‘We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike’ Maya Angelou
Last year they instructed us to call the bank, borrow big and blow it on great things inspired by the technology adoption life cycle. Their hypothesis was that Factorylux is in the disruption business, not just manufacturing or ecom. Cautiousness runs deep here (until recently we were totes self financed w/zero external investment or loans) and spending big on things with an uncertain future and zero revenue, felt counter-intuitive at best and self-harmish at worst. Cavendish are a compelling group of experts with so many business success notches on their bed post we cannot resist them (get dog / bark yourself?). We’d already met and fallen for Xicato so the Cavendish instruction was an easy one to run with: architectural lighting all the way, innovated as fast as the new funds allowed. FTR we’re blown away by the innovation opportunities in architectural lighting.
Congratulations Anthony on becoming world heavyweight champ. Glad you like your gym. Imagine if we’d messed up and you’d had to punch one of us.
