Inspired materials

Randa Tukan.
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As hospitality and retail designers, we stay ahead of current design trends by focusing on the drivers behind the trend, rather than the trend itself.

Design, like any other art form, is evolutionary, and is influenced by the prevailing socio-economic environment. Looking back at the last decade, culminating with the recent economic downturn, there has been a major shift in outlook on the world and on our approach to design.

We have realised that our economic and environmental resources are not infinite. At the same time, we are not ready to become non-consumers. Rather, we want to consume differently.

How does that translate into design? We are creating leaner but more inspired material palettes that better connect to the user’s psyche and tell a meaningful story.

Here, high touch meets high-tech. In many cases, we source textiles that resemble the character and personality of hand-made fabrics, with a cultural connection or ethnic twist.

For example, Alpha by Pollack offers a collection of patterns and colourways from the Alpha Workshops, a pioneering collective of decorative artists living with HIV/AIDS.

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The Common Threads collection is another great example, where DesignTex partners with Arzu, a fair trade, nonprofit organisation employing 700 women weavers in nine villages in Afghanistan. They create contemporary DesignTex-designed rugs using traditional – and folkloric – Persian knot techniques.

Why the search for meaning? These days we are so technologically connected that we’re left with a yearning for the human touch. The popularity of social networking on Twitter and Facebook is evidence of our overwhelming desire to connect with our community. We can buy merchandise online, but we like the social activity, the chatting with our friends, and the opportunity to touch and feel what we are going to buy.

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This trend relates to another, the one-of-a-kind. I don’t want my – you can fill in the blank here – to be the same as everyone else’s. Mass production of sameness is in a down cycle. Technology now lets us customise at
a reasonable cost.

These and other trends have influenced our design for the Tibetan-inspired Chi Spa at the Shangri-La Hotel in Doha, Qatar, slated for completion in 2011. For instance, I was asked if the throw cushions in the spa lounge were made of Thai silk. While the product is machine-made, it has an embroidered look that emulates the personality of a more traditional fabric, which guests will find satisfying.

With the intent of integrating context with the spa’s brand, our design team seized the spa’s rendition of a mashrabiya screen as a vehicle to bring local vernacular to the space.

Traditionally, these screens are panels of lattice woodwork carved with geometric patterns, and are used to embellish the exterior of Arab houses. For the spa, we adapted a more figurative, Asian-inspired pattern and laser-cut bronze sheet metal for a contemporary approach to an ancient tradition.

The screen demonstrates another design trend: playful use of scale. By enlarging the pattern, the guests can experience it in a new way.

Elsewhere in the Doha hotel’s hospitality areas, our team created a ‘supergraphic’ in a restaurant themed after a Xian warrior, who peers out ominously from the end of the entrance corridor.

Get too close and the image pixelates because it was created with glass tiles. The face disintegrates into a series of squares. This ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ effect links to one final trend: movement. Movement adds playfulness, energy and life to environments.

It would be easy to assume that the realities of finite resources would result in a more sedate or plain design. Instead, we are inspired by the challenge: creating meaningful, culturally relevant and playful spaces with less.

Designs from this decade will tell the story of creativity in the face of adversity and, as with all evolution, today’s design will be the springboard from which new trends will emerge.

Randa Tukan is vice president of hospitality and retail interiors at HOK in Toronto.