Fenix, Manchester and Mayfair

The Brief

Fenix is Permanently Unique Group’s Greek-inspired restaurant brand. By the time we were appointed, both sites were already open, already established and already busy.

In Manchester, Fenix had been trading for well over a year with no external signage presence at all beyond the stone monolith at the entrance. A destination restaurant, doing well, with nothing on the building to say who it was.

In Mayfair, the brand had outgrown the signage that was there. The client wanted something that did more for Fenix and sat better with the building, on a street where the architecture does a lot of the talking.

We were instructed directly by the client on both. Neither restaurant could close for us, so both were installed around live service.

Manchester, and Four Months of Planning

Manchester is a large modern corner unit with a glazed canopy wrapping the frontage. Our first proposal placed the main letters on top of the canopy, reading against the glazing above. The council would not accept that position.

A second position was worked up with the letters suspended below the canopy, sitting within the depth of the structure rather than breaking its line. Getting from the first position to the second took several rounds of amended drawings, elevations and visualisations, with Bidwells acting as planning consultant between ourselves, the client and the local authority.

From first submission to a solution everyone could sign off took four months.

That is the part of a signage project nobody photographs. It is also the part that decides whether a sign ever goes up at all.

The Specifics, Manchester

The main wordmark is a run of individual face-lit built-up letters, fixed centrally within the depth of the existing canopy:

• Fabricated aluminium letters with formed returns, powder coated RAL 9005 60% gloss
• Opal acrylic faces, internally illuminated
• Countersunk fixings with heads painted to match, so nothing reads as a fastener
• Aluminium backplate, offset from the letters and welded to an aluminium carrier frame
• Cable feeds taken through rubber grommets in the rear of each letter
• Manufactured under EN 1090 and installed to structurally calculated drawings

The offset backplate is what makes it work. It gives the letters a shadow line so they read as a crafted object rather than a panel, and it hides every fixing and every cable run.

One detail matters more than it looks. The fixings pass through oversized holes in the underside of the existing box sections. The canopy is a large glazed steel structure that moves with temperature, and rigid fixings into a moving structure is how signs crack their faces and how host structures end up with fatigue around the bolt holes. Oversized holes let the two move independently.

The letters were originally specified with cool white LED. The site’s own lighting scheme developed after our drawings were approved, and cool white would have sat cold and blue against it. We changed the illumination to warm white so the sign reads as part of the building’s lighting rather than as a brighter, separate thing bolted to it.

Two double-sided projecting signs mark the approaches at either end of the frontage. Folded aluminium trays powder coated RAL 9016, push-through opal acrylic on a clear acrylic back panel, and a matt black vinyl face, so the wordmark reads as a crisp silhouette by day and a clean halo by night.

Mayfair, and No Power

Mayfair is a period stone facade in a conservation setting, where nothing could be seen to be bolted on and nothing could be chased into the building.

The two door-side entrance signs needed to be illuminated. The building could not give us an electrical feed out to them. Running a new supply through the facade was not going to be consented, and would not have been acceptable to the building owner even if it had been.

The easy answer is to drop the illumination and hope nobody minds. We did not do that.

Instead we built the entrance signs around rechargeable tracer batteries housed in easy-access compartments, so the client’s own team can swap and recharge them without a contractor, a ladder or a call-out. Each charge runs the signs for three to five days.

That is a maintenance decision as much as a technical one. A clever solution that only works when we are on site is not a solution.

The Specifics, Mayfair

• Formed aluminium front panel over a formed aluminium back tray
• Corners welded and blended, so there is no visible seam anywhere on the tray
• Front panel fret cut with the Fenix wordmark, backed and finished with push-through opal acrylic
• Front panel powder coated Anodic Bronze Y2214F, back tray white satin internally to lift the light output
• 3000k warm white LED
• Manufactured under EN 1090

Anodic bronze against Portland stone is a quiet combination. In daylight the signs sit into the facade rather than on it. At night the push-through wordmark is the only thing you see.

A three-sided illuminated projecting sign completes the scheme, warm illumination throughout and matched to the entrance signs so the two read as one from the pavement.

The Result

Both projects ran to approximately three and a half weeks from artwork approval, through manufacture, to completed installation.

Manchester finally has its name on the building. Mayfair has signage that matches the standard of everything behind the door.

We are now working with the group on our biggest joint project to date, a new site for another of their brands in Canary Wharf, due for completion in late 2026.

Manchester was not a simple sign to get approved, and SPI stayed with it through every round of amendments until we had a solution that worked for everyone. The finished result was worth the wait. Service and product are always top notch, and we are already looking forward to the next one

Dan Purnell, Managing Director, Permanently Unique Group