David Collins, who has died aged 58 from skin cancer, was a highly acclaimed London-based Irish interior architect who was responsible for the design of many of the city's best known restaurants, hostelries and hotels, along with many glamorous international projects.
He was behind the redesign of the bars of the Berkeley, the Connaught and Claridges, created interiors for the Alexander McQueen stores worldwide and was working on a new flagship store for a heritage sportswear brand in Savile Row due to open in October.
High-profile clients from the worlds of music and fashion included Madonna, Tom Ford and Miucca Prada.
A love of blue defined both his personal and professional style – he attributed it to his childhood memory of a pale blue bedroom – and the Blue Bar in the Berkeley Hotel was one of his most celebrated achievements.
Modern architecture
A modernist, fascinated by the 1920s, the Bauhaus and the pioneers of modern architecture, he was fond of quoting Mies van der Rohe's maxim that "God is in the details".
Informed by local geography, his interiors were linear and refined, enriched by saturated colour, texture, comfortable seating and careful lighting. His book New Hotels was published in 2001 by Conran Octopus.
Born in Dublin, David was the youngest of four children of architect Jackie Collins and his wife Helen and grew up by the sea in an old rectory in Glenageary.
Shy as a child, a strong visual sense and photographic memory were evident from an early age.
He attended school at St Conleth’s and later studied architecture in Bolton Street.
After a period travelling in Paris and Rome, he settled in London where he got his first big break refurbishing the restaurant La Tante Claire in Chelsea followed by a commission to design every branch of Café Rouge in 1989.
As his business grew it encompassed hotels, restaurants and retail in equal measure. Though he worked with Paddy McKillen on the bar in the Connaught Hotel – the interior inspired by the Connemara landscape – his only Irish projects were for FX Kelly, a menswear shop in Grafton Street and Lanigans pub in Kilkenny.
He once said of his career that “a turning point was when I stopped listening to what people wanted and they started listening to what I wanted”.
A demanding and exacting employer, he was a perfectionist who liked to push boundaries and prided himself on always completing projects on time.
According to his brother Fr Michael Collins, “he got to where he was by setting high standards for himself and everyone else who worked for him”.
Permanently attached to a sketchbook and always dressed in blue, he enjoyed travelling, preferring cities to the countryside.
A voracious reader and generous to a fault, he was a well-known raconteur and storyteller, qualities inherited from his mother Helen to whom he was devoted.
Hit singles
A mean hand at cards, he loved movies and rock music and even had a writing credit on one of Madonna's hit singles. A book on his own work was due to be published by Rizzoli next year.
He is survived by his mother Helen, brother Michael and sisters Geraldine McAlinden and Paula Hickey.