Mayfair Townhouse Restoration Shortlisted at the Mix Awards 2026

Some news is worth pausing for.

The Mayfair townhouse restoration I worked on has been shortlisted for Project of the Year; Workplace Interiors (5,000 to 10,000 sqft) at the Mix Awards 2026. In a year with a record number of submissions from across the UK and beyond, judged on sustainability, innovation, design and functionality, making that shortlist is an honour not to be taken lightly by the team behind this project.

The Project

The building is a 7,300 sqft, Grade II listed townhouse in the heart of Mayfair, restored as a working home for a global private equity firm. Bonavia Ltd provided the Quantity Surveying role, managing costs and the commercial side of a project where every decision carried real consequence. If you’ve read my earlier posts, you’ll know why this one had me hooked from day one. I’m a design-first person. I started Bonavia Ltd because I believe great design deserves commercial delivery that protects it, not dilutes it and this project is that belief made physical.

The design challenge was a beautiful contradiction: heritage restoration on one hand, modern workplace performance on the other. Original timber floors, shutters and vaulted ceilings were retained and brought back to life. Around them, contemporary interventions introduced advanced services and integrated technology, threaded discreetly through the historic fabric so the building’s character always comes first. Anyone can bolt modern services into an old building, doing it so you barely notice is another discipline entirely.

Why Listed Buildings Deserve a Different Mindset

Being the QS on a Grade II listed building in Mayfair concentrates everything I care about in this job. Surprises are guaranteed when you open up two hundred year old fabric, so cost has to be managed with absolute rigour but the numbers can never be allowed to completely dictate the design. 

Credit where it’s due, a project like this is a team sport. It was a privilege to provide the cost side alongside a first-class design and delivery team, including BW Design + Build. The best outcomes happen when everyone around the table respects both the heritage and the brief and this table had that in abundance.

What the Shortlisting Means

Awards aren’t why we do this, but this shortlisting proves a point I’ve been making for five years: ambitious design and budget discipline are not opposing forces. Design of this calibre only reaches an awards shortlist if it actually gets built fully, faithfully, without the compromises that quietly erode a scheme when the numbers start to slip. That’s where sharp commercial input earns its place at the table.

On this project, that meant rigorous cost control from day one: interrogating every package, testing the market hard and finding the savings in the places the eye would never miss so the budget was spent where it mattered, on the craftsmanship and detail the judges ultimately recognised. The client got the design they fell in love with, delivered within budget. No watering down, no “value engineering” that strips the soul out of a scheme. That to me, is what quantity surveying should be, not the department of ‘no’ but the discipline that makes great design affordable.