Brown’s of Leith in Dezeen

Brown’s of Leith is featured in Dezeen this week, in an article by Clara Finnigan on the first phase of work at the former George Brown & Sons Engineering Works on The Shore.

The piece sets out the building’s history of metalwork and engineering, and the decision to keep that lineage legible rather than overwrite it. Gunnar Groves-Raines describes the approach in conversation with Dezeen: “We have taken a deliberately light-touch approach, doing just enough to ensure the building can be warm, comfortable and intimate, while celebrating the scale and industrial nature of the spaces.”

The article documents what has been retained on the ground floor: exposed steel beams and columns, the original gantry and the worn concrete floor, kept as found. New work is held to two materials. Steel furniture, fabricated by Scottish industrial and architectural metalworkers The Ritual Works, was developed as a series of curved tables, a bar and a row of cabinetry, with eased corners and a soft, low-sheen finish.

At the bar, sandstone bricks from Hutton Stone’s Darney quarry in Northumberland, pieces usually discarded for breakage and imperfection, here were laid with the broken faces turned outward into the room. Lime mortars were used so the bar can be dismantled and the bricks reused if the layout changes. Adjustable FLOS 265 lamps are fixed to the steel columns above the coffee and wine counters and earth-toned linen curtains can be drawn to partition the room.

Brown’s of Leith opened in November 2025 as the first phase of the building’s refurbishment, with future phases set to accommodate artists, architects and creative practitioners as part of the wider Custom Lane ecosystem.

Read the full article on Dezeen.

Photography by Richard Gaston, with the external shot by Paula Szturc.