Hotel Designs LIVE: Surface design trends

Trends… not the most popular word used by interior designers in the hotel design arena, but ignore them at your peril as we enter uncharted waters following the largest global cultural and behavioural shift the industry has perhaps ever experienced. Challenging conventional trend forecasts, for the third session during Hotel Designs LIVE, which was broadcasted from the Minotti London showroom on August 10, editor Hamish Kilburn invited a handful of interior designers from all corners of the design arena to discuss meaningful surface trends.

Other sessions of the day included:

• A design assault on the senses – watch now on-demand.
• Designing the perfect nights’ sleep – watch now on-demand.
• Social spaces in 2021 & beyond – this session will be available to watch shortly

The third session of the day, which followed the panel discussion on sleep performance, went beyond colour schemes to identify real trends and talking points in surface design. More than ever, as a direct result of the Covid-19 crisis, surfaces have come under question in the debate around hygiene. But, in the exclusive panel discussion with leading designers and hospitality experts, we went beyond the clinical to explore interesting and vibrant surfaces – from paint and tiles to textiles and worktops – that give all areas of the hotel more personality and meaning.

On the panel:

• Beverly & Dereck Joubert, Founders, Great Plains
• George Couyas, Founder, The Interior Design Geek
• Fameed Khalique, Founder, Fameed Khalique Studio
• Shalini Misra, Founder, The Design Buzz

The conversation started by addressing the elephant in the room. Kilburn wanted to know if there were products and materials on the market at the moment that answered both to the demands around sustainability as well as hygiene. “It’s actually quite difficult to achieve both,” explained George Couyas. “Let’s use paint as an example. Usually, when products are man-made to be durable, wipeable and hygienic, there is usually a process that results in the eco credentials somewhat diminishing.” Through his research, and day-to-day managing residential clients whose demands for eco have somewhat evolved over the last few years, a few brands have recently made it onto Couyas’ radar for being both sustainable and robust.

Next, Kilburn introduced Beverly and Dereck Joubert, the founders of Great Plains. What sets this dynamic duo aside from other hoteliers is their pure involvement in all of their projects; they design and source everything – and having fulfilled a career filming wildlife for National Geographic, the pair have a unique stance when it comes to sustainable development and design. “Through 40 years of travel and understanding different cultures, we have been able to tell some really interesting stories through design,” explained Beverly Joubert. “What we also like to do is design using up-cycled materials. So, for example, near one of our camps we heard that wooden railway sleepers were replaced by concrete. It was a great opportunity for us and those sleepers have become the flooring in that camp.”

Continuing the conversation around sustainability, but moving into the urban luxury arena, Shalini Misra agreed that re-using materials and items adds value to the overall design as well as the eco credentials of the project. “Every material can be sustainable if it’s a reclaimed version of it,” she said. “When it comes to hygiene, some materials are better than others. Bamboo, for example, is one of my favourites at the moment as it is highly renewable, very quick to grow and extremely versatile.”

When it comes to extraordinary surfaces, Fameed Khalique who was described by the Financial Times as “the go-to supplier of exotic and experimental surfaces for walls, floors, ceilings and furniture,” has a library full of creative surface design solutions. “We have this reputation, and we do the odd exotic thing, but realistic the majority of the work we do is driven by the client and a problem we need to solve,” he said. “We are working with a designer in the middle east who wanted to use straw marquetry on a mass scale, which isn’t sustainable, nor realistic. So, we worked with the designer and found a solution that used sustainable wood to create a wood-veneer finishing that looked like straw marquetry but can be used on a large scale. Interestingly, that actually led to us launching a new collection utilising those materials and that design.”

Here’s the full video of the panel discussion (on demand), which was produced by CUBE and includes Product Watch Pitches by Hamilton Litestat, Schlüter Systems, Mosaico and Milliken: