Fuse Director and Founder
BA(Hons) BArch(Hons) Assoc AIA RIBA
david.matthews@fuse-studios.com
EDUCATION: BA(Hons) Architectural Studies, Newcastle University 1979; BArch(Hons), Newcastle University 1982
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS: Royal Institute of British Architects; Architects Registration Board; American Institute of Architects
FUSE PROFILE
David has specialised in Interior Architecture since his qualification as an architect in the early 1980’s. He has designed for global leisure and hospitality brands Venice-Simplon-Orient Express, Anschutz Entertainment Group, Luminar, Hard Rock Cafe, Isle of Capri Casinos Inc and Moet & Chandon and for retailers Virgin and The Body Shop.
He has also worked on many high-end commercial and workplace projects including the National British Council of Offices (BCO) award-winning headquarters for Northern Foods.
During most of his near thirty year career however, David has concentrated on the leisure and hospitality sectors, delivering successful health spas, hotels, fitness clubs, restaurants, nightclubs and large casino resort developments on both sides of the Atlantic. Alongside a string of awards, this has brought David recognition as an acknowledged expert in the leisure field. He has spoken at the British Urban Regeneration Association Conference on casino-led regeneration projects and at the 100% Design Conference.
One of his greatest challenges was the $185million fit-out of the Pompano Park Casino at Fort Lauderdale in Florida. Containing four restaurants, five bars, a thirty two table poker pit and 1,500 slot machines, the entire venue was designed, built, fitted out and opened to the public in just fifteen months. This remains the only major US casino to be designed by a British design team. More recently, he was resonsible for the first major overseas project handover for Fuse – the much-acclaimed and ground-breaking Hard Rock Cafe in the Piazza della Repubblica in Florence, Italy. He is currently working on hospitality projects in Belgium, Spain and Austria.
Prior to the formation of Fuse, David was the Managing Director of Carey Jones Interiors Limited and a member of the Board of Directors of Carey Jones Architects Limited, where he worked for over seven years, based in the Leeds studio. In that time David was instrumental in growing an in-house interiors department from just three people into, at its peak, a multi-award-winning and internationally sought-after team of thirty-plus interior design specialists. He also established and managed the careyjones office in New York and, as a result of his extensive experience of working in the United States, is an associate member of the American Institute of Architects.
