Winding down

Ken Laidler has been a constant, committed, often controversial member of Dubai’s design community.

Here, he talks candidly to Selina Denman about his plans to take a significant step back.

After four years as the face of APID, and over three decades at the helm of his own design firm, Kenneth Laidler has decided to take a step back from both roles. Having begun his career on a building site at the age of 14, Laidler is ready to focus on other pursuits, he explained recently in an exclusive interview with Commercial Interior Design.

APID’s hosting of the IFI General Assembly and Design Congress last month seems like a fitting send off for Laidler, who is handing over presidency of the association to Farida Abdulla Kamber. The event was an apt manifestation of Laidler’s typically ambitious, sometimes seemingly over-reaching, attitude. While he will readily admit that he might not be everyone’s ‘cup of tea’, Laidler has remained committed to changing perceptions of the interior design profession and, as president of APID and a driving force in its initial foundation, has dedicated a significant amount of time and energy into furthering the cause of interior designers in this region. For this, the industry can only be thankful.

CID caught up with Laidler to find out more about his plans for the future.

You’ve decided to take a step back from the mainstay of the business. Why now?

Many people have said that 60 is too young to retire, but not many people started working when they were 14. I was working on a building site by the time I was 15 and didn’t even go to university until I was 21.

Basically, I haven’t had any time off since the age of 14. And I feel like there’s so many things that I would like to have done – and now I’m making the time to do them. It scares me when I hear of people dying in their 60s, before they’ve achieved anything. I think: ‘No, there’s so much more that I want to do’.

Like what?

It changes. I remember somebody once saying that you should know what you want to do by the time you are 25. Here I am at 60 and I still don’t know!

For example, if you had asked me a year ago if I would consider buying a yacht, it hadn’t even occurred to me, until I walked onto one and thought, ‘This could be a wonderful way to spend your time; I could write and I could sketch and draw, and I could see places’.

But I can’t actually ever see myself retiring completely. I’d be bored out of my mind after the first ten minutes. It’s not a simple case of retirement – its just a change of direction in my career.

There are so many interesting things to do in life. I’m not saying that I don’t love design. I really do. The problem is that everybody is a design critic or a design expert now. Before you can even finish what you are trying to achieve, someone is already commenting on it. If they’d only let you finish what you are designing, then they’d appreciate the whole picture.

I guess it’s because not many people, apart from designers, can see the whole picture. They cannot visualise it. That’s why designers are designers, whether they are interior designers or architects or fashion designers – they can visualise the whole thing in their head, for clients that can’t.

You’ve been doing this a long time. Has the average client changed? Become more demanding, for example?

It’s changed, probably because clients travel a lot now and see more of what is happening worldwide.

It means their perceptions are already formed. But if they want you to copy what they have already seen in Chicago or Singapore, what’s the point of hiring a designer?

The other thing is that everybody, from hotel operators to chefs and everybody in between, seems to be an expert in interior design. When you’ve got the CEO of a telephone company telling you that a certain office layout won’t work, even thought he may be brilliantly experienced in mobile telephones, what actually does he know about interior design layout?

If he says, ‘I don’t want my office there because it has no view’, I can understand it, but when they make sweeping comments like ‘it won’t work’, what gives them that in-depth knowledge?

And if they have that knowledge of everything, then interior designers, architects, surgeons, lawyers and accountants might as well stop working and let the CEOs take over!

Frankly, I wouldn’t presume to tell the head of a telecommunications company how to market his latest mobile phone, so what gives him the right to tell an interior designer with 30 years experience that what they are doing is wrong?

This is what frustrates me, because everybody now seems to think they are an expert in interior design, when actually all they have is a lot more exposure to interior decoration, and that’s not the same thing. Until we can get people to recognise the difference, we will continue to suffer these frustrations.

We’ve gotten further towards it, but we have so many people to convince. I make no bones about it, we have problems convincing property developers and their project managers who, don’t get me wrong, are brilliant at getting the concrete poured and making sure that one floor is going up every week, but don’t understand the subtlety and value of interior design.

How have you seen the standard of design in Dubai evolve since you arrived here – and is it where it should be, in your opinion?

It has improved tremendously. It really has. It has improved because there has been a need, and a realisation on behalf of developers that they had to do something fundamentally different.

Yes, there’s still a huge amount of improvement required. However, when you talk about interior design, it is subjective. So it’s not for anyone to say this is brilliant or this is bad or this is awful.

If you are talking about commercial interiors, if they work well, it matters little if your peers like it or don’t like it. What matters is that they are functioning properly and earning the client money. I’ve heard designers say, ‘I would never design a themed interior because it’s not modern or chic’. I don’t think that’s necessarily the right attitude to take.

I think that you have to design what is correct for the client and what is correct for the individual project. And if you look around Dubai, some of the themed concepts are still here 10 and 20 years later. If I were to mention places like the Red Lion at the Metropolitan, it’s irrelevant whether I like it or not, that pub – which was not designed by me, by the way – is still there and hasn’t changed at all, which means that it has not cost the client any more money.

There’s a lot of one-upmanship about whether you are designing for a three-star hotel or a five-star hotel, or whether you are using steel and glass as opposed to wood and terracotta, but designers have to know all things and all materials, and they have to look at all projects individually. If it works and it makes the client money, you should never be ashamed of it.

You are stepping down as the president of APID. What involvement, if any, will you have moving forward?

I’m still on the board of directors of APID. My involvement is still going to be quite active. Not on a day to day basis – the new president and vice president will be taking over that – but, for example, I have instigated a series of examinations and I will be putting those together.

What would you say were your most significant achievements as the president of APID?

Getting it formed in the first place! But also getting designers to trust each other. One of the biggest problems with designers is that they are like kids in a school examination, hiding their work so no one can see it and copy it.

Everybody is trying to not say anything about how they are doing. I think quite a significant step has been taken where designers are now willing to sit down with each other and be honest, and talk to each other with a view to
assisting and helping each other.

I received a letter from a founding member recently who had been asked by a client to produce design work for free. He’d written back to say: ‘We do not produce free design work; it’s not in the interests of your project and it is not in the interests of professional design’.

When we read this out at an APID board meeting, it was 100% supported. Now, if that particular client approaches any of the other APID members, we would expect them to stand together. That can do nothing but support the professionalism of designers.

How has the last year affected the design industry in this region in the long term, do you think?

At our gala dinner in December last year, I warned that unless we stood together as designers, we would put our position here back by ten years. I think we’ve certainly gone back – whether it is by ten years is open to debate.

It is evident in the fact that people are asking to get design work done for free; it’s evident in the ridiculous contracts we are being asked to sign by property developers, which are not related to design but to contracting, by way of performance bonds, bid bonds, retentions, crazy insurance clauses, none of which are legal, acceptable or any way practical. It has affected us. A lot of designers, whether they are prepared to admit it or not, are suffering. We are not in a position of strength.

What would you say were the high points of your career?

I’ve not reached them yet! When we got past 30 years of being in business and I looked back at it, there’s been some huge ups and downs; situations where I’ve taken two steps forward and then five back. But to actually sit back and say, ‘I’ve got 30 years of being my own employer and of employing staff’, that is something. If you talk about projects, I think what’s important is when a client says, ‘You’ve helped me earn a lot of money’. That’s my job. That’s what professional designers should do.

Is there a pinnacle? I don’t think there should be. I think every designer should feel that they have to look beyond the hill they have just climbed to another, and then the one beyond that.

2010: MY PROJECTIONS

I think there’s going to be a recovery in the economy but the repercussions of what has happened are not going to instantly go away, as far as architects and designers are concerned. It took many years to get to a level where we were being fully appreciated, it took literally nine months for it to slump back, and it’s not going to come back again overnight. It’s going to take time.