Being more collaborative as designers
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.
Being more collaborative
We were inspired by our target audience - These individuals are highly experimental collaborators, they fully immerse themselves in local city life and feel responsible for the world around them. They are often self reflective and hold themselves to account so we decided to hold ourselves accountable to their standards too. We had been asked to create a hotel concept for this group so not only did we use their values to drive the ideas, the materials and the space, but we also allowed them to influence how we designed. Our future guests value collaboration and shared experiences so we decided to be even more collaborative than usual while designing their hotel to create a really authentic space.
Our hotel guests love to share ideas, recommendations, resources and experiences and to really connect with people and come together to protect the environment and support local subcultures. They value individualism, creativity and mobility and they are highly social, experimental expeditionists. This project brief was to build a small exhibit showing what a hotel for these people could look like so during the design we took chances, opened ourselves up, risked failure and changed the way we typically develop designs.
Walking the talk. (The briefing)
Three of our team attended the initial briefing with the experts but once we knew who our target guests were we immediately sent out invites for a big open briefing session to kickstart the collaboration. The guests were highly collaborative so we decided we would be too. Everyone who showed an interest was welcome and there was no prerequisite to have a design background or a knowledge of hospitality. We had about 45 people turn up; landscape architects, an accountant, masterplanners, graduates, a writer, an entrepreneur, a receptionist, a comedian, furniture makers, marketing consultants and, of course, designers and architects. Their occupation didn’t matter, their interest and intrigue did. Everyone was briefed on the ‘tribe’ of people we were designing for, they were asked to picture them, and to shout out examples and questions. This started some strong debate about exactly who these individuals were. I’d already become quite protective of this ‘tribe’ and would jump in when anyone called them hipsters, millennials or digital nomads. We explained how important it is to focus on what these people value rather than socio-demographics and to avoid thinking in stereotypes. Stereotypes and demographics can be useful for some general guidance but at a time when social identity and personal identity have taken centre stage it’s even more important to think of people as individuals or as communities.
The typical path
For interiors and architecture projects previously we’d always taken a more structured approach to collaboration. We would have briefing sessions at the start of a project with stakeholders, operators, architects, designers, strategists and sometimes locals or specialists depending on the project type. Most of these people have been involved in similar projects so they have overlapping knowledge, they have a common language and an understanding of the project’s limitations and the competition. This is when we discuss big ideas and opportunities and ask difficult questions. The overlapping experience of these professionals means we get efficient and enlightening brainstorming. Then, in order to keep projects running on time and on budget design, sign-offs are often introduced at crucial stages and the focus shifts from being about ideas and opportunities to discussions about details, problem solving and construction. It often takes 2-4 years to create a new hotel so we discuss industry predictions and new technology to make sure we think ahead, it’s a collaborative but structured process where we can develop a better hotel by working together and still stick to a timeline. For this project, it was much less regimented.
Allowing ourselves to get lost and explore freely.
For a highly collaborative approach we kept everything fluid, not only in the discussions but we allowed ourselves to make changes right up until the last minute. We started with an extremely wide brief, then we narrowed everything down to our core objectives to measure any ideas against before opening back up and allowing people creative freedom again.
By discussing specific topics like “What would these guests want to do first in a city?” “Who would they be travelling with?” “Why wouldn’t they stay in a hotel?” the debate was more lively. We didn’t have that shared language so everyone had to work harder to express their ideas. They couldn’t use industry phrases or ideologies and interestingly, this encouraged more openness and engagement. For example, instead of saying this hotel needs a ‘sense of place’ people were saying “what personality would it have?” “it needs it’s own character so people can identify with it and feel they belong”, “it needs an honest past, present, and future to feel imbedded”, “How do we make it feel like part of the local area? local people need to feel it’s their space too so that it feels genuine and real”. By not using the industry phrases people needed to engage and question themselves and this got them more excited than usual and by eliminating the idea of ‘experts’ the discussions went deeper because no-one was concerned they would say the wrong thing. Even the most experienced and confident people worry about that too. Sometimes it was complicated to talk out each point and it definitely took longer, but we also went deeper to try to get to the root of what kind of hotel would suit these future guests.
At the end of the session we asked everyone to get into groups to generate ideas and propose a synopsis for a hotel concept. They needed to share images to explain their understanding of the guest culture and make an abstract model to explain the hotel concept. They would have 10 mins each to explain key aspects about how the accommodation would operate, what it would offer and how it would appeal to this group of individuals.
Anna had been inspired by the film, Coraline. Here she is drawing everyone into her world in a pitch one evening.
There were some fantastic ideas. Different groups had focussed on different aspects of the brief. One group focussed on the sense of discovery, looking at spaces from different perspectives like squeezing through small doorways and seeing reflections. Another group focussed on the adaptability of space and how guests can transform their surroundings and one group proposed a venue that doesn’t have guestrooms at all, but instead it’s a social space open 24 hours a day that holds the keys to rooms or flats in the area. But all of them had a few things in common; they focussed on being immersed in the city, on having freedom to make things happen for themselves and socialising with people they are yet to meet.
We decided to create ‘A social sharing space that connects to the city with spaces to grab some sleep and freshen up.’
There was no fixed style or narrative, no fixed colour scheme, no preconception of what it would look like, but a strong concept of what it should achieve.
The only way we assessed any design ideas was against our core objectives about the future guests, we even graded the ideas against these:
Does it show that our guests are highly social and interactive?
Does it convey our guests’ creative and experimental nature?
Does it demonstrate how much our guests are inspired by the cities they visit?
Does it represent their drive to interact with the local creative community and how they give back to the community too?
At the same time we ran through the smaller criteria to help develop any chosen ideas. Could someone understand all these points (above) within the first 10 seconds? How does this room convey the digital socialising that is a big part of our guests’ life? What makes it sustainable and ethical? How will this make the exhibition visitors identify with our guests? Would they objectively observe them, feel like one of them or act like one of them? Our final question to ourselves was was more subjective - ‘Would this inspire you?’
It’s complicated to herd many opinions without even a vague aesthetic for the creative to buy into. Also, it’s hard as a designer to relinquish control of all of those guides simultaneously, especially when the place will be judged on how it looks before it’s judged on how it will make people feel or act. Completely letting go was the right thing to do in this instance to achieve something authentically organic, if you actively design something to be ‘undesigned’ the soul is missing so while it might convince you in a photo it isn’t convincing in real life. Many people return to a place because of how a place made them feel.
Later we reduced the team down to a smaller group who were willing to dedicate the time and energy to make this a reality. The collaboration continued within this group and local manufacturers and crafters were invited to join the group and share their opinions and propose products they thought would appeal to the guests values.
As mentioned, our guests feel responsible for the world around them so when we were looking for manufacturers to collaborate with they needed to share these values. 4 products are featured here that focus on somke key values - sustainability, supporting local artists and makers, reviving traditional skills with new ways of thinking.
Lithoverde from Salvatori (below) is the first product. This recycled stone surface has a beautiful texture with every block resulting in a unique pattern. It is 99% composed of offcuts, with the remaining 1% being a natural resin binder. Innovation can come from unlikely places, including, in this case from landfill. Salvatori created this product because an architect needed a sustainable stone for a project This shows that consumers can directly drive product development.
Buzzifelt, by Buzzispace made from 100% upcycled plastic bottle waste, recycling approx 7 million plastic bottles per year to create acoustic felt Panels. The Sliced Buzzifelt (above) are felt trimmings from these panels processed into striped patterns to create more acoustic panels and at the end of it’s life it can be upcycled a third time into new raw material, like flock for cushion fillings. This gave us fantastic acoustics in the bedroom area to create a calm and comforting environment.
We first saw Stephen’s London artwork mapping the city’s shifts, stories and secrets in pictures - part oral history, part folklore, part personal homage. It is, also, an act of reclamation, reminding us that the built space is ours to live within and reaffirming the thing that really binds the city: the stories all of its citizens share in their heads.
His work is crowded with today’s (sub)cultural symbols and obsessive tendencies; but it also celebrates traditional techniques, craftsmanship and Romantic notions of place. Walter combines history, trivia, personal experience, local knowledge and imaginative additions to creatively explore an area in all its contradictory complexity
In the end we decided against the maps and selected Cyclesea (above) because bikes are the prefered way for most of our guests to explore the city so the idea of a sea of bikes seemed ideal. Newmor applied the illustration to a wallcovering suitable for this busy space.
Tortie Hoare makes high quality handmade furniture crafted with natural elegance and sustainability at the forefront of design (barstool, above). Many items in the current award-winning range use a technique called ‘cuir bouilli’ to mould the leather, removing the need for resins and plastics. ‘Cuir bouilli’ was commonly used to make medieval armour before steel. Combining old techniques with contemporary design creates a unique new range of furniture. Like many of the leather pieces of furniture the Ridge Seat is hand stitched and hand crafted. It is also very lightweight, versatile, and comfortable.
We mentioned to Modus that we were creating this design and they were keen to be involved so they gave us a ‘Casper’ and we agreed to auction him after the event to raise money for refugee charities.
When Michael Sodeau designed a stool made from recycled cork, he added to its simple silhouette two holes that would make the stool easier to move around. These two little holes became eyes and suddenly Casper was born. The anthropomorphic touch that lent Casper an embryonic personality led to a collaboration with Movement on the Ground, a foundation that supports refugees by identifying gaps in available aid and providing practical support. 10% of the profits from the sale of every Casper stool go directly towards providing safety, shelter, food, water and medical aid to refugees and 16 stools were given unique designs before being sold at auction.
The fit-out company joined us too, to work through the drawings, co-ordinate the trades, create mock-ups, resolve assembly and disassembly (because we planned to take the space on tour after the exhibition) shifted to the building of the space. And a few more collaborators came on board later on. We knew a local DJ who created a mix for us, a local rep for an art curator took to the streets to photograph the local area of our fictional hotel and people baked cakes and picked lavender to make sure the space felt even more welcoming.
Little known fact - the contractor who installed the wallpaper in the title image was also a natural creative who left his mark, the donated wallpaper sample ran out of pattern he penned in a slightly larger fish at the top and it looked fantastic. When you are used to drawing all the design details ahead of time in a studio environment you can forget how resourceful, creative and multi-talented everyone on-site can be.
What better way to extend the focus on collaboration and shared experiences than to invite makers to the final designed space to work there, to talk about their products and show visitors the details about how they are made and let them have a go for themselves.
More details about the final concept and how the design developed into an exhibition piece can be seen in this article.
Continue reading below to see more products featured in the design and a list of collaborators.
More products…
All the materials used were generously donated by the manufacturers or loaned to us by the makers.
Collaborators were Joanna Varettas, Anna Kirkham, Nicola Law, Dunia Tigris, Florent Duperrin, Ieva Buthietka, Khue Thuy Tran, Gemma Seitzer, Harry Owen, Tortie Hoare, Helen Osgerby, Oli Morgan, Simon Nowroz, Claudine O’Sullivan, Jessica Nebel, Alex Despature, Paul Meates, Trevor To, Muir Baxter, Camille Lee, Jennifer Gray, Nick Mcloughlin, Zeyn from S&T, Otto Dent, Rachel Barnes, Kate Forrest, Alison Clark, Ashraf Ali, Chloe Muir, Leanne de Barros, Karen Ihlau, Craig O’Halloran, Laura Warholic, Matt Brien, Kama Koska, Maria Charalambous, Stephen Walters.