Butterwood is a design and strategy studio creating hospitality, workplace, and brand environments where people feel like they belong.
Talk to us about your space
You've been in those spaces. The office that looks impressive in the renders but feels hollow on a Tuesday afternoon. The café that photographs well but doesn't make you want to stay. The showroom that says everything about the product and nothing about the people buying it.
The gap isn't in the design quality. It's in the design thinking.
Commercial environments are typically designed from the outside in, brand guidelines applied to walls, furniture selected from catalogues, lighting specified to code. The result is competent. Correct. Forgettable.
The spaces people remember, the ones they return to, recommend, feel loyal toward, are designed from the inside out. They start with how humans actually behave, move, gather, retreat, and feel. They start the way a good home starts: with the people who will live there.
Butterwood brings together architectural design and brand strategy as a single, integrated practice. Not strategy then design. Not design then branding. Both disciplines working simultaneously - because how a space looks, how it functions, and what it means are the same question answered three ways.
We're an architect and a strategist who believe commercial spaces deserve the same depth of thought, material consideration, and human understanding that goes into designing someone's home.
That's not a metaphor. It's our methodology.
Emma brings over 15 years of architectural practice to Butterwood, designing spaces that start with a story and end with something you can feel. Her residential work through Emma Butterworth Architects has earned a reputation for homes that feel like they've always been there. At Butterwood, she applies that same instinct, for materiality, light, proportion, and human comfort, to commercial environments.
Her question is always the same: How will people actually live in this space?
Warwick has spent his career at the intersection of brand, behaviour, and built experience - from strategy roles at Set Creative in New York to Leo Burnett in Sydney, working with Google, Nike, and American Express on spaces people queue around the block for. At Butterwood, he brings that strategic discipline to a different kind of challenge: helping businesses understand what their space should say before anyone picks up a pencil.
His question is always the same: What should someone feel when they walk through the door?
Google Hardware
Set Creative
The strategy and concept for Google's first ever physical store applied experiential knowledge and brand equity strategy to uncover a competitive advantage in technology hardware
Google Hardware
Set Creative
Expressing Google's brand identity in a way that consumers identify created a valuable position within this new product collection
The Sprite Corner
Set Creative
The Sprite Corner reconnected the product's brand identity to the hip hop community
LeBron 15 for Nike
Set Creative
Nike created a pop-up shop in Cleveland to celebrated LeBron’s NBA career and the launch of his latest edition signature model.
Watermark Flood Relief Event
Leo Burnett Australia
The Bundy Rum Road to Recovery program won global awards for its application of experiential knowledge and packaging
House on the Atlantic
Burr Salvatore Architects
A shingle style home showcasing the Atlantic Ocean coastline
Whether you're in the early stages of a project, rethinking an existing space, or just curious about what's possible, we'd love to hear what you're working on.
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