Explore RH’s Epic London Flagship Designed by Foster + Partners

Gary Friedman has spent decades pursuing great architecture. “We either find it or build it,” explains the longtime RH chairman and CEO, whose maverick furnishings brand has recently transformed some of Europe’s most remarkable buildings into immersive cultural destinations. In the past year alone, RH opened inside a seven-story site on Paris’s fashionable Champs-Élysées before unveiling a painstaking restoration of a neo-Renaissance palazzo that became one of Milan Design Week’s buzziest debuts. Now the lifestyle empire has turned its attention to London, reimagining an 18th-century Palladian mansion in the heart of Mayfair.

The building possesses over three centuries of history. Built as Queensberry House in 1723 by Italian architect Giacomo Leoni, it later became home to the Bank of England. For its current iteration—known as RH London, The Gallery—in Mayfair, Foster + Partners preserved the structure’s cinematic grandeur while weaving showrooms, lounges, and restaurants into its history-steeped rooms. Visitors enter through a library lined with rare tomes by Italian and British masters before ascending Leoni’s original limestone stair beneath a soaring domed skylight. A tea salon and a wine bar serve classic specialty teas, Champagne, and wines that guests can carry throughout five floors of galleries showcasing curated vignettes of furnishings and art.

Within this dignified setting, RH is spotlighting its inaugural RH Estates collection, which Friedman conceived to offer unprecedented access to furniture by the industry’s most revered talents. Among the highlights are long-awaited reissues of pieces by Michael Taylor, the influential decorator whose relaxed Californian interiors attracted a tony clientele, including Nan Kempner and Jennifer Jones. The latter’s name graces an enveloping lounge chair and sofa; they join the eye-catching Diamond table, defined by boldly faceted pedestal bases cast from Taylor’s original molds. “They represent a level of design and authenticity that’s difficult to replicate,” Friedman muses. “Our goal is to deliver that same design and quality at scale.”

Additional collections revive the meticulously detailed furniture of Formations, the storied Los Angeles maker known for translating 17th-century Spanish carvings into historically inspired furnishings, and the tailored upholstery of Dmitriy & Co. Combined, they exemplify Friedman’s ambition to elevate ateliers once known primarily within the trade to global prominence. Guests can experience the collection, then feast on caviar and a seafood tower in the London gallery’s debonair restaurant, The Dining Room, set within the restored banking hall—or among sparkling water channels on the rooftop aerie designed by Anouska Hempel. All proving there’s no better place to contemplate furniture born of exquisite craftsmanship than within architecture of equal merit.

A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2026 Late Fall Issue under the headline “Grand Tour.” Subscribe to the magazine.