This project started with a blank page. Restaurant or cafe design often begins with a menu concept and/or an identity and maybe some images from the owner, chef or operator and then we start discussing and generating concept ideas. This cafe had none of those so we started from scratch.

Questioning the brief is the only way to make sure you are seeing the full potential. This project started out as a study to see if a hotel could fit in a specific building and it ended up as a concept for many buildings that could employ 1,000s of people.

Not all projects are deep and thought provoking. This central London hotel just needed a soft refurbishment to their guestrooms and after discussing potential approaches we chose British fashion design and suggested some alternative ways guests could engage with the featured designers.

It’s important to know your guest. When asked to create a hotel for a niche group of guests who are curious, experimental and irrevocably collaborative we spent time discussing their individual values, likes and dislikes and we identified our first crucial challenge - They wouldn’t stay in a hotel.

Our targeted hotel guests have strong ethics about protecting the environment, connecting with new people and collaborative ways of living. Inevitably we specified ethic products for the project but also we adapted the way we designed by becoming extreemly collaborative and inclusive. It was good to test ourselves.

We are all inspired by what we see and hear or what we have experienced. Designers learn how to generate ideas on demand, explore lines of thought and rationalise them. Still, sometime the ideas seem to come from nowhere and it’s those ideas that can feel more ‘inspired’.

Large spaces can be awe inspiring but they can also lack a human touch and the feeling of warmth, comfort and connection that people desire. Different strategies and design techniques can make people feel at home in these spaces, like in this adapted Kenzo Tange building in Saudi Arabia