Phillips Berkeley Square

Phillips opened its European headquarters at 30 Berkeley Square in October 2014, taking a 1990s Mayfair building and reworking it into a flagship of pale oak floors, white-walled galleries and bronze-framed glazing. The architects at Aukett Swanke removed the first floor across the Davies Street and Berkeley Square frontages to carve out a double-height ground-floor gallery, where full-height windows pull daylight deep into the room and frame the plane trees of the square outside. New bronze powder-coated facades sit against the existing stone, keeping the building within the grain of the Mayfair conservation area.

The spaces run vertically. The ground floor is the showcase: a soaring, light-flooded gallery that reads as a single grand room. A sculptural oak staircase drops to the lower-ground saleroom, the room built for live auctions and viewings, with the auctioneer's rostrum at one end and private sky boxes set above. Further galleries occupy the first floor, reached by the same timber stair, while reconfigured upper floors hold offices with terraces over the tree canopy. It is a serious, museum-grade interior rather than a decorated event venue, which is precisely its appeal for a pared-back evening.

For private use, Phillips runs the building primarily for its own exhibitions, sales and partner events; a standing public hire programme is not advertised, so access for an external DJ event would need to be arranged directly with the house. The galleries lend themselves to a refined, art-led reception: blank-canvas white rooms, generous floor space, and a Berkeley Square address that needs no introduction.