Ukrainian architecture and interior design studio Balbek Bureau keeps on gaining international recognition.
The studio won a prestigious Hospitality Design Award for the interior design of Kyiv’s Say No Mo nail bar. Slava Balbek, the founder of the bureau, announced their victory in an Instagram post on Sept. 22 after attending the award ceremony in New York, saying it was an “ important evening” for him.
Balbek Bureau picked up the prize in the Wellness & Wellbeing category, beating design firms from New York, Chicago and London.
“We are honored to be recognized and proud to represent Ukraine at the international level,” Balbek Bureau wrote on Facebook later that day.
The annual Hospitality Design Award, founded by the renowned U.S. commercial interior design magazine of the same name, celebrates the best and most innovative achievements in design from around the globe. The 17th award edition showcased “the breadth of the industry” with more than 1,000 projects submitted for competition in 40 categories, its website reads.
The interior design of Say No Mo won a prestigious design award against three other beauty and spa centers located in Greece, the U.S. and Russia.
Say No Mo was opened in October 2019 by Canadian Elvira Farias, whose aim was to create a salon where both men and women would feel welcome. The salon’s interior design makes it a perfect gender-neutral place: Here, the “industrial” elements such as chipped concrete archway and exposed brick are combined with elegant furniture in neutral tones and sophisticated gold decor.
Beyond bending gender stereotypes, the salon aims to set new trends in the eco-conscious beauty industry offering cruelty-free, vegan nail polishes.
Read more: Meet Canadian-owned nail salon that is gender-neutral, eco-conscious
The Hospitality Design Award is not the first prize Balbek Bureau received for Say No Mo. The design studio picked up another prestigious award from U.S. Interior Design Magazine in the Beauty category in 2020.
Balbek Bureau has long been praised in Ukraine and beyond for its architectural and design decisions. In Ukraine, they designed offices for Banda Agency and Grammarly, avant-garde Bursa Hotel, as well as food markets in Kyiv and Odesa.
The company also works in the U.S., China, Britain and Russia, designing restaurants, hotels, stores, bars, offices, apartments and more. Balbek Bureau’s designs have also won or been shortlisted for more than 13 international awards.
Read more: Balbek Bureau wins global fame for offbeat design
This year, Balbek Bureau was not the only Ukrainian company in a race to get Hospitality Design Award.
Two other Ukrainian nominees were among the award’s finalists, including the studio of commercial design YOD that was listed in the Upscale Restaurant category for their work on middle eastern cuisine restaurant Samna in Kyiv, as well as Sasha Fedorenko Commercial Interior Design, one of the finalists in the Casual Restaurant category for the interior design of Italian restaurant Pastateca in Kryvyi Rih, a city of over 640,000 people some 420 kilometers east from Kyiv.
