The values and behaviour of curious and collaborative city explorers
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.
People: Curious, collaborative explorers
A hotel inspired by specific guest values.
This sketch shows a reinvention of what hotel typology could be. Illustration by Sacha Bennett-Ford
Place: A city Hotel
In our current age of blurred boundaries, designing for individuals becomes even more important. Greater flexibility in working and private lives, changes to classic family structures and digitalisation of day to day living have led to societies becoming more complex and more subcultures evolving and overlapping. In order to really reach people, it’s not good enough to picture people in terms of age, occupation and income. We must know and understand their values, goals in life, lifestyles and attitudes. We must make the effort to know them as individuals, then we can design for them. The users set the ethics of the hotel rather than the owner or the operator.
We were asked to create a hotel concept for a particular group of like-minded people. This group are highly social, experimental expeditionists who feel responsible for the world around them and they like to embed themselves in communities. To understand more about what motivates them and influences their decisions we met social scientists at Sinus Institut before considering ideas about what type of hotel would suit them. Their values and ideals may have been niche in 2016 when this was developed but 5 years later many of their preferences have a wider appeal and can be seen in more mainstream markets now.
(12 min read)
Sinus Institut are a market and social research institute whose expertise in psychology, social science and market research allow them to provide holistic and accurate descriptions of social and target group typology. So they can document basic values, lifestyles and goals as well as everyday attitudes, aspirations, anxieties and expectations for the future to understand what moves like-minded groups of people to choose one item or experience over another. They provide an authentic picture of society instead of a statistical construct and their documents are constantly being updated as society changes. Over recent decades we have seen an accelerated rate of increase in the consumer culture, individualism and globalisation which has resulted in some traditionalist values declining and some rapid growth in the modern values like collaboration and responsibility for the planet.
By understanding how members of a group perceive themselves and their environment - what they do and don’t like, how they live, how they think, how they feel and how they make judgements helps us to build environments that appeal to their rational and ethical values as well as engage with the groups aesthetic, sensuous and emotional preferences.
What motivates our target guest?
The group of like-minded individuals we focus on for this project are a niche group, approx 8% of the population. They value individualism, creativity and mobility. They perceive themselves as mobile of mind and of body and they are motivated to travel for long periods of time, to explore and to connect with people. Their lifestyle is highly social and they love to share ideas, recommendations, resources and experiences. When they travel, they like to immerse themselves in the cities they visit, hang out with locals and feel what it’s like to live in the city day to day. These individuals care about the depletion of natural resources, they adapt their behaviour to reduce the impact on the environment and encourage others to do the same. They don’t fill their homes with possessions or trophies and they only lightly impact the space they inhabit. They are likely to have second hand furniture or pieces that are adaptable and original artwork, often just leaning against the wall. A great internet connection is essential because they are digitally enabled and use this as a way to connect with likeminded people across the world. They were named ‘digital avantguardes’ but we thought that conjured up the wrong image so we dropped the title.
To make sure we kept thinking of our future hotel guests as individuals and didn’t fall into stereotypes, we personified them. We gave them names, a back story and personal likes and dislikes.
Ebba and Lucas were our imaginary guests. Here’s a link to get to know them a bit better if you’d like.
It soon became clear that crucially, these individuals don’t stay in Hotels because it would limit their opportunity to immerse themselves in city life. So, as well as understanding the culture of these people we also needed to objectively look at the existing culture of hotels.
What values and behaviour do we associate with hotels?
Hotels and brands vary greatly in terms of values, service and experience. For example, if you enjoy being social and like to work flexibly you might stay at a Citizen M or an Ace Hotel and relax in their lounges and graze on snacks. If you like fine dining and traditional service you might stay at the Langham or The Edition where the doorman will greet you and the Maitre D’ will organise your table. As much as hotels can vary dramatically, we identified key aspects that nearly all hotels have in common:
Hotels typically provide an escape from daily life, they are a place to retreat to for a couple of hours and be taken care of. The staff cook and clean for you and they bring you drinks. Many can arrange theatre tickets for you and some might even carry your bags and park your car. The intention is usually to make the guests stay as easy, relaxing and special as possible and very little initiative is required from the guest.
Hotels have a routine to the day and general rules of conduct. Check-in and check-out times are standard, there are allocated times for breakfast, lunch and dinner and even a time for your room to be cleaned. It is made clear which members of staff make your drink, or organise a taxi or clean your room and these roles rarely overlap. There is also a routine or typical order to the spaces. When you arrive you expect to see reception first, adjacent to a lounge or bar, from here you are often close to lifts that can take you straight to your guestroom. These all create behavioural structure and order. There are usually fixed protocols too. The beds are made in a specific fashion, guests are greeted with a particular phrase, the lighting settings are pre-set and the mini-bar is stocked in the same order in every room. There is consistency and familiarity.
Social interaction with other hotel guests is often minimal. Typically, if people eat at the hotel they dine with their family, friends or colleagues or they order food to their room. The lounge and dining spaces are designed for small clusters of people who either know each other and there’s limited flexibility. Recently public spaces in Hotels have become much more social and vibrant but there is limited interaction with strangers in most hotels. Often the service has become much less formal but staff rarely strike up big conversations with guests, they offer service and professionalism rather than deep engagement and interactions are often fleeting.
Most of these institutional normalities are the antithesis of what our target guest enjoys. So if we wanted to attract them we needed to redefine what it could mean to be a hotel.
We addressed 4 key behavioural aspects in the development of this new hotel model for our guests.
Summary by Simon Nowroz
We created a fictional hotel to focus and develop our concept. Then we would build a physical space to explain and demonstrate the ideas to others.
A hotel for people who wouldn’t stay in a hotel
We based our hotel concept in SE London and discussed ways to fully immerse it in the local area, to become an anchor for the local creative community. The sketch at the top of this article illustrates the proposal.
Firstly, the host role is very fluid. Instead of a formal receptionist or manager your host would be available to chat with you, organise a key for your room, but they are not standing still waiting for you to need them. It’s important that the host is creative themselves. In this case our host, Carl, might be sketching or reading or talking to one of the guests about the new restaurant he just tried. He will always be available when needed, but instead of waiting and anticipating guests he is relaxed and in the moment. These more fluid staff-guest relationships would impact some of the hotel layout and the typical divide between public space, private space and back-of-house space is blurred allowing for more initiative and choice.
You can see above that locals would be encouraged inside every day to work, teach, socialise or eat, therefore, creating a place to build long friendships with people or just have a great conversation. Inspired by a sharing economy; materials and equipment could be shared or hired and teachings could be traded. It’s easy for large groups of people to eat together and cook together at this hotel and the guests feel empowered to take control of the environment.
The culture is always evolving - the people who stay here leave their mark, either through recommendations, through art they made while they were there or through recipes or books they left behind. On any given day, the hotel is only that specific environment because of the people. The connection you feel to the hotel depends on the people who were there before you and at the same time as you. Guest ‘A’ might’ve found an amazing guitar repair shop to recommend and Guest ‘B’ might’ve pinned up a sketch of Carl the host or their photographs of some interesting protestors last week. Guest ‘C’ might have an infectious laugh. In a more static environment you are only interacting with the space and the staff, here it’s the other guests that make the space unique.
Demonstrating the concept
The last part of the challenge was to build a physical environment to demonstrate the hotel concept. We had a 4m x 7m exhibition space to do this. Our hotel concept needed to be as committed and passionate as its guests, it must convey the key issues.
Firstly, this is an inclusive space. People often hesitate when they see a threshold or a defined entrance, deciding whether to cross it or not. Our hotel should feel inviting and accessible to all people so we broke up the boundary line of the space. By not having a threshold we could entice people in without hesitation.
We used individual pods to represent the guestroom, a private shower room, the social spaces and the public bathroom to provide a snapshot of the entire hotel in one small space.
We put a communal table at the heart of the space and invited makers and creatives to work there, talk to each other and talk to the guests as you can see below.
This communal table used induction cooking tech so in the evening we could warm drinks on it or cook on it and eat together, showing how this table has many uses and the guests determine how it is used.
Most of the ideas encouraged socialising but not all spaces are social. We considered the public bathroom to be semi-private because at times people have great talks in public bathrooms (below, centre image) We decided the shower room was the most private space so the shower area was raised off the floor to demonstrate this. (below, left)
We consider the guestrooms in this hotel to be more sociable and open than usual so we created a clear view from the bedroom to the public spaces to act like a window and allow the energy of the public space to flow into the guestrooms. We also proposed guestrooms that could flex to have more or less guests on any given night as they have friends join them. To show this flexibility the double bed in our space converted into a single bed and even into a sofa, similar to the image below.
The design of the space was really well received. It became animated really quickly and people understood the approach before we explained it.
The most thrilling time for us was about 30 minutes after the 3 day exhibition had opened. The ideas were coming to life. People were making themselves at home in the space.
This just kept increasing with time, people started adding their recommendations, talking to the makers we had in the space, learning new skills, reading about and talking about all the collaborators. People would come and work in the space too. When designing any interiors you create behavioural prompts through spatial volumes and materials, furniture arrangement, lighting and accessories but it’s only once people use the space that you see if people behave as you expected. It was great when our concept was awarded first prize in the competition but the real joy was seeing people use the space in the way we’d hoped.
We took a highly collaborative approach to the design, this was complicated to direct and manage but resulted in a very stimulating environment. (More information about the design approach can be seen here.) One aspect that made the collaborations simpler was that we had chosen to be experimental and by embracing this it became OK for this to not be ‘perfect’. There can be no innovation without tolerance of failure. Besides, if it was ‘perfect’ on day one then people wouldn’t feel comfortable to develop and adapt it and we would’ve missed the entire objective.
It can be a little nerve wracking to aim a design at a precise group and it can feel safer to appeal to the masses but when you target a niche group design appeals not only to those individuals but also people who aspire to be like them or who want to try it on for size and what better place to try out an alternative lifestyle than in a hotel.
It was fantastic to work with Sinus Institute, they have been collecting data since the late 1980s and their research is always evolving. Recently they have been comparing transnational similarities against local values which is fascinating to understand as globalisation increases. As part of this they explain how regional culture, traditions and customs are slow to change and I’m hopeful that embracing this will lead to more depth in more localised and authentic design. You can find out more on their website.
Influencers and collaborators were Joanna Varettas, Anna Kirkham, Nicola Law, Dunia Tigris, Florent Duperrin, Ieva Buthietka, Dan Craner, Jose Sirera, Khue Thuy Tran, Matthias Arnold, Peter Martin Thomas, Joel Butler, Leanne de Barros, Gemma Seitzer, Harry Owen, Tortie Hoare, Simon Nowroz, Claudine O’Sullivan.
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.