Wellbeing

    Greg Keffer speaks to Sophie Harper about integrating wellness into design

    Episode 43: Integrating Wellbeing into Design

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    In the first episode of our latest DESIGN POD series, sponsored by Schlüter-Systems Ltd, Hotel Designs Editor Sophie Harper gets to talk to Rockwell Group Partner and Studio Leader, Greg Keffer, about injecting elements of wellbeing into different hospitality settings, and the impact wellness inclusion has for hotel projects.

    Greg Keffer, AIA, LEED AP, is a Partner and Studio Leader at Rockwell Group where he leads multiple design studios and manages the firm’s Madrid office. He works on a wide range of projects including hospitality, retail, residential, and workplace, while adding new typologies to the firm’s portfolio. Greg’s combined strengths in architecture and interiors have allowed him to develop innovative and holistic design solutions for an international roster of clients including Marriott, Nobu Hospitality, Accor, Related Companies, Union Square Hospitality Group, and sbe.

    Since joining Rockwell Group in 2012, Greg has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the firm through design and management excellence. In 2017, David Rockwell appointed Greg to Partner—the second partner in the firm’s history. As Partner, Greg has taken the lead in developing a firmwide structure and culture that better supports the firm’s designers in doing their best and most creative work.

    As the critical link between New York and Madrid, Greg has helped accelerate the growth of the Madrid office. He established a structure for the Madrid office that enables more frequent and consistent collaboration with Rockwell Group’s New York designers and more seamlessly provides the Madrid staff with firmwide support and resources.  Under his leadership, the Madrid and New York offices have completed Nobu Hotel Barcelona, and the Madrid team is currently working on Spain’s first JW Marriott in Madrid, W Naples, the Seda Club Hotel in Granada, the Miraval Monte de Málaga, and a new SLS project in Barcelona.

    With wellness tourism being the en vogue topic, I asked Greg how much of a consideration guest wellbeing is within hotel design, and he explained that it’s been a key aspect of hotel design for far longer than it being a trend.

    Adding to this, we discussed the different ways in which a hotel without spa facilities can still offer wellness touchpoints, where even the subtlest additions can make all the difference, and whether sustainability counts as a measure of wellbeing.

    Listen now to hear the full conversation.

    DESIGN POD is brought to you by Hotel Designs. Series 6 is sponsored by Schlüter-Systems Ltd, produced by Kevin Lines and hosted by Sophie Harper.

     

    Main image credit: Stephen K. Mack

    Wren Loucks DESIGN POD

    Episode 29: Stimulating Wellness (Wren Loucks)

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    Episode 29: Stimulating Wellness (Wren Loucks)

    Wren Loucks, CEO and Creative Director of Be-kin, joins DESIGN POD, the design and architecture podcast for all creative enthusiasts. In episode 28, the interior designer and Editor Hamish Kilburn discuss sensory design, holistic hospitality and how, through stimulating wellness, hotel design can find new meaning…

    Wren Loucks DESIGN POD

    In episode 29 of DESIGN POD, a design and architecture podcast dedicated to cutting through the noise to unveil real, gamechanging conversations, Editor Hamish Kilburn welcomes interior designer Wren Loucks as a special guest to explore the concept of stimulating wellness. The discussion, which is the third episode to drop is series 4, sponsored by Geberit, covers everything from how Loucks first used design to make sense of the world around her to uncovering new researching around sensory design and holistic hospitality.

    Loucks, who was named last year as one of the top 25 influential interior designers, joined the podcast following her involvement in Geberit’s Hotel Guest Experience Report, in which the designer examines ritual, sensory-rich experiences and social sustainability in hotel design. The award-winning designer looks at how the differences in sensorial, cognitive, and physical abilities can be catered to by designing facilities to suit a range of needs, such as wheelchair accessibility, neurodiversity and an ageing population.

    In addition to being an integral voice Geberit’s recent report, Loucks has also been a contributor on Hotel Designs, authoring a number of articles, covering sensory design in sound, touch and seasons. She also, backed by science, published a whitepaper on conceptual design, WISH, which was awarded highly commendable for the Celia Thomas Prize for disabled guests at the International Blue Badge Access Awards in April 2022.

    Since launching Be-kin in November 2020, Loucks has completed six projects, ranging from Grade II listed buildings to a private gym in Fitzrovia. In addition to design, Loucks aims to educate her clients on how they are affected by spaces across their senses and create spaces that stimulate their wellbeing. For the studio’s commercial clients, the designer creates spaces that support social sustainability – designing for a range of cognitive, physical, and sensorial differences. She is, put simply, challenging conventional approaches to interior design, architecture and hospitality with a human-centric approach that is giving the entire arena a deeper purpose.

    Main image credit: DESIGN POD

    DESIGN POD Karen Stonely

    Episode 25: capturing a deeper sense of wellness (Karen Stonely)

     1024 640 Hamish Kilburn
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    Episode 25: capturing a deeper sense of wellness (Karen Stonely)

    In episode 25 of DESIGN POD, sponsored by Minotti London, Editor Hamish Kilburn, host of the podcast for design and architecture enthusiasts, meets Karen Stonely, Co-Founder of SPAN Architecture, to understand how she and her team capture wellness and wellbeing in design and architecture…

    DESIGN POD Karen Stonely

    Meet Karen Stonely, an artist, designer, architect and the Co-Founder of SPAN Architecture, a New York-based studio that aims to create wellness and wellbeing experiences in all landscapes.

    This episode of DESIGN POD, sponsored by Minotti London, explores wellness in design through unconventional materiality, evoking unconventional sense of place and calling out ‘wellwashing’ in hotel and hospitality design. To do this, Kilburn understand’s Stonely’s unique approach to designing projects. “We’re looking at getting the most out of a place and an experience,” Stonely explains. “We want our design work to be a gift of the place that heightens your experience.”

    One project, in particular, that cleverly captures a new and perhaps surprising meaning of wellness in its location, Times Square in Manhattan, is Hyatt Centric Times Square; a project that is best described as ‘nature revealed in neon’. One of the biggest challenges for the team at SPAN Architecture was to take natural forms – elements from the parks of New York City (lungs of the city) back to their fractured essence – and rethink how they could become geometricised in an urban format. Working in a holistic and layered manner, soon strategies emerged that contributed to the one-off spatial experiences; an adaptation of nature lying between the natural and artificial.

    The other case study explored in the episode is August Moon, a completely different hospitality experience, in contrast, that is expressed as a ‘secret escape from the city’; a private waterfront retreat that overlooks Maine’s Western Bay. Named by her after the Chinese mid-autumn harvest festival, the two original structures – a separate glass teahouse and a small cottage with pool – were designed by the architect, Robert Patterson in the 1960s.

    For the restoration and new builds, the studio sought to find original materials used by Patterson, discovering original design documents at the Mount Desert Island Historical Society, which further informed the concepts.

    The new residence is situated to the north where two ridges come together. It takes its cues from the existing rocks, waterfront, trees and topography of the site, paying homage to the existing Patterson cottage. The building sits in a saddle in the landscape beyond the garden ridge that separates the Pool Pavilion and Guest House from the Main House. Stonely explains on the podcast how the project’s architectural structure ‘deceives the eyes’, and walks Kilburn through the materials and forms she explored to create this jewel.

    Other episodes in the archive that touch on wellness in design include Kilburn’s interviews with Ivaylo Lefterov, Holly Hallam, Jo Littlefair, Marie Soliman and Rachel Hoolahan.

    Main image credit: DESIGN POD