BUBEN&ZORWEG are no strangers to the unsual requests of today’s super rich, wherever they are located round the world. Their interior design projects include customizing a safe to fit alongside a Lamborghini in the living room of a city penthouse and soldering bespoke metal skulls to a safe door. The company which celebrates two decades in the global luxury business this year, has noticed a rise in demand for what it calls ‘billionaire-style interior design’.
A top client recently commissioned BUBEN&ZORWEG to install three of its 580kg, 2 metre high X-007 safes deep under the floor of his palatial European home, insisting they are completely concealed from view. The safes and the floor openings themselves, almost like a trap door on the stage of a theatre, only come into view when the owner remotely activates them. Thanks to a double lift system, the entire safe then dramatically elevates, revealing a 360 degree bullet-proof glass showcase, which itself then elevates to allow access to the contents of the safe.
It is secretive residential projects like these that have brought BUBEN&ZORWEG well and truly into the role of interior, and sometimes exterior, designer.
One client has recently kept BUBEN&ZORWEG busy with demands for a high security fence outside his villa plus two high-security, double-lock doors leading up to the room where his three safes are located.
Another client, with a residence in London’s One Hyde Park apartment block, a building popular with international billionaires, wanted reassurance that the entire team installing his safe would never have any way of finding out the floor or number of his apartment.
A top secret installation saw every last inch of the lift at One Hyde Park covered up with cardboard throughout the installation process.
“We love creating extravagant, timeless objects of beauty, embodying the decadent lifestyles of the world’s richest men. At BUBEN&ZORWEG, both luxury and security are in the details,” says director Christian Zörweg.