Banook Bagels

Banook Bagels began as a lockdown micro-bakery and grew into one of south London's best-loved bagel makers. Stefan Shaw Studio worked with founders Ashley Mah and David Dalrymple to design their first permanent shop at 40 East Dulwich Road, giving "the original south London bagel" a home on the high street.

Stefan Shaw Studio transformed a long-vacant unit into a place that is warm, direct and unmistakably Banook, where the making of the bagel is the main event and the street is invited in.

The bagel is always front and centre. One continuous veneered counter with an aluminium top runs the length of the shop, backed by primrose-yellow tiles that pick up the Banook yellow. All the finished add a warm, slightly nostalgic character, as if the shop had always been there. From behind the counter you can see the movement pass between the shop and the kitchen, so customers catch glimpses of the baking while shelves behind the counter display the bagels themselves.

Behind the scenes, the design is about hard work. The ground floor prep kitchen, with its extraction, oven and racks, is finished in robust, easily cleaned surfaces, and a lightweight polycarbonate enclosure shelters the external stairs to the basement, where dough is made and food is prepared and stored.

The result is a bakery with the capacity to grow and a shop that feels like part of the neighbourhood.