Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I’m here with Craig Stanghetta from Ste. Marie. Thanks so much for being here today. How are you?

Craig Stanghetta: I’m super, how are you doing? Thanks for having me. Much appreciated. Excited to be chatting with you.

SSR: Me too. All right, so let’s dive in. Where did you grow up?

CS: Well, I grew up in a small town in Northern Ontario, Canada called Sault Ste. Marie. It’s a sort of twin city between Ontario, Canada and Michigan, which is called Sault Michigan. And it was a sort of industrial steel town with a large Italian immigrant population. That’s where my dad’s side comes from, Italy. So my great-grandfather moved there. A large wave of Italian immigrants moved there to work at the steel plant, I think probably in the 1930s maybe, something like that.

So it’s an interesting little spot, very Canadian, very sort of rural but with this kind of gritty steel town vibe in a way. But it also like a lot of Northern Ontario has a deep roots with the First Nations community and French Canadians. So that’s kind of the whole mix of cultural influences for me.

And the studio is very loosely named on the town. So our studio is called Ste. Marie, which I always thought was like, for me, kind of the irony of naming the studio Ste. Marie, which to me always sounded like this cool sort of fashion label like an Yves Saint Laurent or something like that but happened to be referring to this kind of northern steel town was kind of a cheeky nod in a way.

Meo cocktail bar in Vancouver; photo by Conrad brown

SSR: Yeah. Well, you answered my next question, that name come from. What were you like as a kid? Was there any hint or looking back indication that you might get into design or hospitality?

CS: Well, I mean a couple of things. So on the hospitality side, my family owned the oldest hotel in the city. It was called the Algonquin Hotel. And my grandfather ran it, my dad and his brother and his sister and their younger brother. My dad and his brother were twins, and they grew up in this hotel. So, running around, working there, sweeping the floors, dishwashing, bartending. And at holidays, we would go for all of our…

So my uncle, my dad’s twin, inherited the hotel to run it. My dad wasn’t particularly interested, but we would celebrate all of our Christmases there. And so we would have dinner up in the one restaurant and then the kids would go downstairs into the bar and play pool and drink pop out of the pop gun. I think the first time I had any beer was just pouring beer into a half glass of Coke or Pepsi or something like that, and drinking at our family get-together.

So we sort of grew up in that environment and my brothers and I sort of had little odd jobs that we would do there. So we were in the hospitality world, and my family on my dad’s side in our hometown, which is in Le Marche, Italy, had a pizzeria. And we had some relatives in Michigan that had a restaurant. So we sort of were in that world growing up. And so a lot of my memories around food and gathering were sort of in the hospitality space.

And then the other side of it is I sort of grew up, like most kids, I was really into sports. I was very kind of competitive as a kid and into gymnastics. And I did that and played a bit of hockey. And then I sort of found my way into playing soccer. And I did that pretty seriously until I was about 18. But along the way, I started to find my way into the theater, which just seemed like a cool thing to do.

And that ended up being the path that I followed for a while. But when I was a kid, I was really into, I don’t know, furniture and aesthetics and stuff like that. For some reason, I was always moving. My mom would be… My parents were divorced, had a single mom, and she’d be away at work and then she’d come home and I’d moved all the furniture around and sort of redone the layout of the house and stuff like that. And I was always mucking around with how my room was set up.

So I guess I kind of had that interest, but didn’t really know that you could follow that profession where I grew up. The idea of a guy going into design just seemed so completely untenable. Maybe architecture, I had a good friend that followed that path but I didn’t want to make buildings. I didn’t respond to the idea of structure and form in that way. I liked this idea of mood and how people hung out and that kind of thing.

And I think that’s partially why I ended up studying in the theater because I liked that notion of being kind of transported and this kind of escape and atmospheric component of that. So that was my childhood in a way, sports and this other side that I didn’t really know what to do with. I was kind of just, yeah.

SSR: I love it. So theater, is that what you ended up ultimately following? Did you go to school for it? Tell us. Well, first too before you do that, is there any cool fun stories from the hotel besides making your own bar with the Coca Cola? But anything you remember from that running around there?

CS: Well, what I just remember is just, this is not a fancy hotel. We’re in this small town and it was… Because it’s an old hotel, the rooms were small. It had a bar that people would hang out at, and they’re kind of rough and tumble sort of places. But if you think of the ’80s, which is when I grew up, it was honestly the place was like a sitcom. It was like those casts of characters that were around there would just be, either they’re working the desk or they would be hanging out at the restaurant in the bar.

And I kind of just remembered that. I just remember this kind of really, I don’t know, almost like a kind of Diane Arbus cast of folks that were also very nice and warm, but where they were certainly not the affluent of society. So even though it was a hotel atmosphere, it wasn’t this kind of glam version of it.

And I think actually I’ve, over the years, because I have such warm memories of that and spent so much time hanging out there. And the city in itself, it’s quite beautiful from a nature standpoint and spending a lot of time like that. But the kind of people, again, we’re working class people. And so I’ve always kind of maybe romanticize that in a way. So a lot of our work sort of oscillates in a way between celebrating those kind of places in some respects and finding this beauty in that kind of things.

We obviously work in the world of true luxury these days as well, which is not that at all. It’s much more about really embracing this sort of dream of what something can be. But certainly a ton of our work has been finding the beauty in the kind of, it’s almost like the less glamorous side of people in places. And we do a ton of work in a Chinatown of a city or this little sort of dive bar or coffee shop off the beaten path.

And so actually just thinking about that, talking to you now, it’s never something that’s really crystallized for me. But I think I’ve definitely found a way to romanticize that side of things because of that cast of characters that was in that property.

SSR: Love that. Okay. Well, always get to look back, right? Think back. All right. So you had a love for theater. Is that what you ended up pursuing? Did you go to school for that? Or tell us the next steps.

CS: Yeah, I did. So certainly even in high school, I was sort of like you’d have woodshop or stuff like that. And I remember starting to, I would try to make and refinish furniture and build this table and do all that. So I was doing that stuff. But in terms of a true outlet, we ended up interestingly having this really kind of strong little theater scene, and again, in this town. And you listen to some of these actors that are on a show like this, and they sort of find their way into a bit of a community that way. And that’s where they sort of ignites this passion for whatever, maybe it’s their actors or directors or filmmakers or in the theater.

And that’s sort of what happened to me. I just sort of found this passionate group of people that were quite capable of doing that stuff. And so yeah, maybe it was like 15 or so started to do these plays and we did a lot of Shakespeare, which was really… I wasn’t much into school, but always read a lot. I was a really avid reader. And so finding that way to bridge, getting lost in the story but then bringing that stuff to life.

And then the idea of the Shakespeare stuff was, it’s obviously quite challenging to really understand that work at first. It really is almost like a different language but being, I guess, welcomed as a young man to sort of figure that out and participate and learn your way through and fumble, and then knowing that ultimately you’ve got to perform this. And so that notion of this kind of deadline or this, the show is happening whether you like it or not.

And that was really good for me because I was kind of highly distracted. I was not focused on school. But that notion that you were like, you got to show up, you got to perform, you got to be prepared and kind of put yourself into a scenario that you can’t really get yourself out of that really galvanized something for me.

And so yeah, it was pretty serious about the theater stuff and learning the theories around storytelling and acting. And this really neat thing happened where the guy that was our sort of, he was an artistic director of this little theater, and he would put on these shows. And he found this old kind of barn that had been converted into this music camp out in the country.

So you know how kids go to summer camp where you canoe and learn how to, I don’t know, tie knots and shoot arrows and stuff like that. Well, what we ended up doing was going to this camp that was for making theater. And we would put on this show every year, and they would fly in these really interesting kind of other teachers, whether it’d be movement or voice or this kind of clown and stuff like that. Really just these specialties in that world and that you would get to explore.

So we would do that in this old barn, and then we would learn a play whether it’s Romeo & Juliet. It was always Shakespeare actually in this thing. And that ended up being my summer job where I was the counselor there. And then I would have a pretty big part in these plays and I would help teach the kids and me and my really good friend, we would build all the sets and the lights and do all that kind of stuff.

So I was really immersed in this. And also just, again, being a young guy that I knew, sports was maybe an outlet for me but this really was a great way to focus my, I guess creative energy and just have this way of expressing yourself. Well, you’re actually working and had a sense of discipline and accountability and all that.

So I think that’s really what I was sort of took to, and there was all this theory around how you make theater and how you commit to a role and how people kind of commune in space together. That magic that kind of happens when you’re gathering in a space, sharing some sort of experience in the storytelling elements, so obviously super strong.

But what I thought what I always loved and what we kind of try to emulate in the studio environment is this notion of play and experimentation and how like when you’re rehearsing for something, you’re making a lot of mistakes. You’re sort of fucking around and it’s really dynamic, and there’s an interplay between this person’s work and that person’s work.

And somebody might be on and figuring something out and somebody might be like, I’m not quite there, but you have to continually work together. And that kind of idea of that collective creativity has really… Well, I really, really always loved that.

So yeah, I went and studied theater. I did a Bachelor of Fine Arts at a school called York University in Toronto that was a conservatory acting program. It’s like 15 people in the class. And so that was my university. And you get up early and go and roll around on the floor and pretend you’re an animal for a few hours and do study fencing and singing and do all that stuff.

So I did that in a highly concentrated way for about four years and did a bunch of plays. And I was certainly convinced that that was what I was going to sort of dedicate my life to.

SSR: How did you get into hospitality then? How did you go from being a play actor into this?

CS: Well, when I was studying in school, in my summers I’d have my part-time job. And so I would be back working in restaurants. So all throughout high school, I should mention I was cooking as my job. That was my job. So I was always in restaurants, so I’d start as a dishwasher and then I was a short order cook. I cook fish and chips and did all that stuff.

SSR: Were you good at cooking?

CS: I mean, I was very good as a line cook because I was superfast, and I liked how dynamic it was. And so I like to just think on my feet that way. Again, I think I was probably undiagnosed ADD. So stuff that was a thousand things happening at once was very comfortable for me.

SSR: I like it. It was undiagnosed then.

CS: Yeah. Thinking back, I’m like, yeah, definitely. But yeah, so we did that. But when I went to university, I would start working front of house. I work as a waiter and I was a terrible waiter though. Terrible waiter. I remember, here’s an interesting story. I remember I had my first waitering job, and it was at a place called the Pickle Barrel. It was a sort of Jewish restaurant in Midtown Toronto. And first day on the job, I was carrying a bowl of soup over to a table, and I had the soup my left hand, and I had a drink in my right hand and I had to pass the drink across the table to the mom.

And I remember I was trying to reach over the table to pass this drink to her. Meanwhile, she was just yelling at me and I was so confused. I was like, I don’t understand why she’s yelling at me. The drink’s fine. But when I finally clocked into what was happening, I could finally understand, she was yelling at me, “You’re spilling soup all over his head.” And while I was passing the drink, I was literally just dumping this hot soup on her son’s head.

SSR: Oh my God.

CS: And that kind of sums up my capabilities as a waiter in one story. But anyway, whatever, I did that for a bunch of years despite my failings. So I was in restaurants, so I still loved being in restaurants. I just thought the action and the kind of camaraderie, and obviously it’s a fun job to have. You kind of party afterwards.

And again, it’s a bunch of young people trying to make a lot of fast money. You’ve got a bunch of cash in your pocket after the fact. And yeah, restaurants, you could always tell that there was just something quite magical about how families would get together. Despite the waiter pouring hot soup on their child’s head, they still somehow find a way to have a good time. And I just always thought it was a cool place to be.

And so I was studying theater in university while that was happening, and it never really dawned on me that those two things could really have anything in common until after the fact. But I left school and started to work as an actor, mostly in theater in Toronto.

And then eventually I moved to, I didn’t move to Vancouver. I went out there as a kind of lark to visit a friend. I had broken up with a girl I was dating at the time, and I was kind of having a summer of maybe a little too much fun in a way. So I was like, I got to go for a minute.

I was still working in the theater, doing all my auditions and all that stuff, having an agent and that kind of thing, and get a little part in a little tiny film here or do a play here, do that and just sort of just like, it was bopping around in the city. All your friends are either in bands or they’re artists or they’re actors. So we were having a great time.

I was just completely immersed in the world of art. It was wonderful. But that particular summer, I was probably a little too free and I was like, I should probably just duck out and have a change of scenery. I had a close friend who was in Vancouver, and I just sort of went out there to visit him.

I ended up getting an agent out there. And out there it was kind of, they did a lot of American-based TV series, usually for the CW or sci-fi network and stuff like that. And I don’t know, maybe it was just sort of something was clicking a bit, but I started getting these parts and these TV shows. And I got, it was still struggling and it was still living as a really scrappy mid-20-year-old artist.

But I ended up getting this part in this show called Flash Gordon. It was a pretty big part. It was like this leader of the rebel army kind of thing. And I remember just being, for me, it was a big role. And so I was elated, called my mom, tell her I got this big part, so excited. And then I got the script and I sat down. And I went to this little French bistro because I was like, oh, I’m going to make some money so I could celebrate. I could buy a nice glass of wine. I’m going to have a steak or something like that.

I remember sitting there and doing that and reading the script. And then coming from the background in the theater where I was pretty snobby about the writing and the art and the work. I read this sci-fi show and I was like, “Oh fuck. Is this what I’m going going to do?” And like no, not to discount that stuff, it’s highly entertaining. And it was a great show and there was really accomplished people that do that. But it wasn’t what I wanted to do. It wasn’t what I felt like passionate about.

That was a real turning point for me. I had always, throughout school, I was always like continued in the design sort of as this kind of pretty serious hobby. And I was always, again, making stuff and helping friends that had a little design projects. Maybe they’re, “Hey, we got a little retail store, we’re fixing up a gallery,” or something like that. I was always doing, “Maybe I’ll build some fixtures for you. I’ll help you understand the design.”

I was always doing stuff kind of like that. In fact, when I moved to Vancouver, I had this little studio space. So I was trying to find how I could apply that outlet. So I would go into the studio and I would work on just sort of pieces of furniture, make odd things, and was still bopping around helping people design things. They just kind of knew me a bit in that way, but I was still pursuing this acting thing.

But when I got that part, which I thought was this idea of, oh, you’re going to make real money and you could maybe sort of leverage this into being like do something in television, the opposite happened to me. I felt like this existential dread that I had maybe made a terrible mistake committing my life to this kind of thing. And I didn’t change anything immediately. Went and did the show. And it was kind of cool and interesting in a way. But it was certainly, I knew in this sort of my bones that I was not in my right spot.

So then I really committed to pursuing the design side of things and just doing stuff that… Again, I had no road map. I didn’t know what I would do or how I would do it, but I knew that I just wanted to do that. And I was like, what’s the difference? Just go all in. And I had this kind of weird little moment where maybe I was pretty much, I just did it. I don’t know why. I didn’t have a logical reason, but I just felt really compelled to make that commitment. And that happened right at that time, and I started to just do it more seriously.

And the first thing that I did in any kind of real way was I had, my partner and I, she’s my wife, we’re still together, and she was very trusting but we had this loft. And I was like, “Listen, I’m just going to redo this whole place.” And God bless her, she was like, okay. She was just completely supportive and was like, “Yeah, of course you should.”

And so I redid the loft, soup to nuts. And there was not a lot of like, the internet was not focused in that way. There’d be a couple of blogs that you could go on. But you would go and get books still and magazines. And so I was just deeply immersed in the world of design. And I always had been as a serious hobbyist, but at that point, I just was going all in on this.

And so I built lights for the spot, I did all the flooring, I poured the countertops, built all the millwork. And I was just learning all that stuff because I had no choice. I just was like, “Well, no one’s going to straight up hire me to just do this. And if I want to make something, I have to just make it.”

And again, I think I sort of lucked into a lot of things in that way because I had this kind of hospitality background. I studied the theater, and then by virtue of just circumstance, I learned how to value making things, how to actualize stuff in the built environment and how things took time and how quality didn’t come for free. And that there was a bunch of specificity and effort and course correction and challenges that come in making stuff.

And so I made that whole loft. It was our home. Our daughter was born there. It was pretty magical place. And we would host friends. We’re young. We were like 28 at the time or something like that. And we would have parties there. And so everyone was, they’d be like, “Oh, where did you get this chandelier?” And I was like, “Well, I built it.”

Meo cocktail bar in Vancouver; photo by Conrad Brown

SSR: Made it.

CS: Yeah, and everything like that. And so it became a bit of a thing. And so all of our pals at the time were mid to late twenties, all in arts or hospitality and cool restaurants.

And the sort of break for me came when our good friend was over and she kind of thought the place was cool. And she’s like, “Listen, I’m kind of fucked because I took over this lease in Chinatown.” She’s second or third generation Chinese. She was like all her dream was to make this new version of a Chinese restaurant, didn’t have the fluorescent lamps overhead but really valued the tradition of the food.

And again, similar, had a background in her family, everything revolved around the table in a way. And she had spent a bunch of time in London. It was like this great bartender and just a really interesting capable person but it never had her own spot. But similarly, just said, “If I’m going to rip off the band-aid, I’m going to go all in on doing my own place.”

But she was a little ahead of herself and she was like, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve got a contractor and he is starting to build this place, but I’m not feeling confident and I’m not sure how I’m going to get to the end of this project.” And I was like, “Well, let me just come by and then we’ll go from there.”

So I remember the issue she had was that they were starting to build the form for the banquettes, and they were a little tall and they’re a little too high. And when you get into the mechanics of doing this where you’re like-

SSR: Nothing works.

CS: Yeah. You’re like, “Well, that’s not great.” That’s a little bit of a steakhouse kind of vibe. And it’s not super social and supposed to be this, almost like this kind of brasserie bistro kind of meats, Chinese cuisine sort of thing.

So it had this, that was her vision anyway. And she had this like, this was before you had put everything on a board of some sort or have a lookbook or something. She had all these scraps. It was like, “I have this really cool matchbook that I got at this bar in Paris that I just think is cool and interesting, and I have all these old pictures of my family and I have this menu, and I have this… And I love this scrap of fabric.” And it was like she had real stuff.

And I was like, “Well, I totally get what you’re trying to do. I understand the narrative of what you’re trying to pull out and make.” And I was like, “Okay, why don’t we do this? I know you can’t afford to just hire me straight up to design the place, but I want to do it and I get it and I think I could help you. But in order to pay me, I’ll come and work with your contractor.”

So I got paid whatever it was at the time, I don’t know, 15 bucks an hour or something like that. And I just went in there and I worked with the contractor and we’d make all the tables. And then evenings and weekends and in a kind of blitz before we were too deeply into the construction process, her and I were putting together design ideas and starting to cobble it all together and sketch things out. And I was like, “Look, I’ll go shopping in these places and I’ll buy a bunch of stuff and bring it back.”

And anyway, that ended up being my first project and it was a place called Bao Bei. It’s still around today. It’s kind of neat because our office is next door now. And we have since done two other projects with her, a place called Kissa Tanto and another place called Meo, both of which have been pretty cool and remarkable. And we’ve kept this kind of shorthand of how we work together.

But that was kind of this transition for me where I just helped do it. The place was wildly successful luckily. And it’s maybe not our style now, I think, but we are still proud to go in there today. And it feels right, still feels warm. It still feels like a reflection of her and her family and how it’s not… I still got a bit of a cool vibe to it and all that stuff. But I think it sort of taught me that that idea of how you have a degree of listening and empathy and how you find your way into the world and how these little bits and pieces can almost act as like this sort of talisman that give you access to a world beyond. And your job is almost like Archeology in a way to put things together.

So I just felt very lucky because all these kind of little circumstances fumbled into place to set me up to actually pursue this kind of stuff. And so that’s my little origin story of how I got to at least start designing.

SSR: So I guess my question is did you love it as much? That first project, did that submit you’re like, okay, this is where I need to be versus acting here?

CS: Oh, yeah. Right away I was like, “This is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.” I called, I had an agent, she was wonderful, nice, great person. And I called her and I was like, “I’m doing this other thing.” And she was obviously like, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. It seems insane.” But I was just fully all in on that and started to build a studio.

But the good thing and bad thing about starting in a market like Vancouver, which is quite small, the good side of it is things go quick. Everyone sort of knows each other. The reputation of a place travels. A nice thing about working in the world of restaurants and hospitality is obviously there’s media attention there, and so there’s exposure and that kind of thing.

So that obviously worked well because you start to, people are like, “Well, maybe you could do this project for us, maybe you could do that one.” And that’s what I did. I was sort of drinking from the fire hose right away. And then I had to learn the whole other side of how you turn this into a real [business].

SSR: So when did you decide to launch? When did it become real or less as little jobs, but more like the name and this is going to be a business and this is my future?

CS: The name took a while, but pretty much right away I was committed to doing it as a business and started to, I have probably got two or three things right away. And so the idea of working on multiple things at once is a real learning curve as anyone who starts their own practice will attest to as you start, or anyone who’s working in a studio that’s set at more senior design level. You have to learn how to change the gears in your brain between projects. And we’re always sort of style agnostics, so to speak, that we’re always trying to mine the kind of personal narrative or this kind of world building idea.

So it came quick. And so I had to start hiring folks right away. I had no technical ability. I knew what it took for a place to be, which I still think is the most important thing for what it means to a guest, for what it means for people to meet and gather and how to match beauty with functionality and have this embedded story and all that stuff but I didn’t. Technically, I had no idea what I was really doing, so I had to start hiring people right away. And then inevitably you’re like, okay, well I got to learn some mechanics and business metrics or else how do I pay people? You got to get office space, start dealing with hardware and software and just everything. So it just all happens at once.

And then thankfully, I didn’t, in a way, I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but we didn’t think about this idea of building a studio or a brand or a point of view for our thing. It was really like we were just going into the project trying to just be completely immersed in the world of our clients.

And clients is not even a good word for it. They were just our friends. So you just felt completely beholden to making it work for them. And I also knew enough about restaurants to know that you got to do this amount of volume, we got to talk about seat counts and guest check averages. And I always had that knowledge because I worked in the business, came from that background.

So I think that was also why we started to get a lot of projects in the restaurants because people would just be comfortable, just talking to me straight up about like, “Yeah, I got to figure this out like how do we program the space. We should think about managing the menu and the drinks program and the pricing strategy. And then you start.”

And the other thing that was a really happy accident was when we were doing Bao Bei, I met a good friends of mine that were sort of starting out as a brand agency as well. And she was from Australia, super talented graphic designer. But this ended up being kind of their first project in Vancouver. And we ended up doing that together. So we were kind of starting out at the same time. So we ended up getting office space together as well at the same time.

And so that idea of how brand, brand storytelling, naming collateral, little guest touch points, all that stuff, which I have language for now but didn’t at the time, we quite organically grew those things in lockstep. So it would be that idea of working with clients in a sort of understanding their business and empathetically listening to them and knowing what they want to do, what their sort of dreams and aspirations are, where they come from and all that stuff, who they’ve got on their team, what their capabilities are, all those things that we now completely formally will figure out with people and have process and systems and checklists and kind of formal ways to deal with. They were just doing it all based on instinct and need in that.

And then working very early with the notion of brand, and brand strategy and concept and all that stuff, and having this really cool interplay between design and brand storytelling where design didn’t just live with us and then brand didn’t just live with them. We were in the same office together and growing our practices at the same time, and so we’re just spending time talking about our projects collectively and being like, “Well, you can do sort of maybe this kind of water-cut detail.”

And I wouldn’t be able to sort of do, I wouldn’t be able to do the file for that or the drawing. It wouldn’t even have a sort of facility to understand how to create the pattern. But my partners on the brand side would and we’d say, “Well, maybe that should happen in this piece of stone,” or we do this idea of a metal screen that’s done like that. So it started to just be a very fluid trade between disciplines.

And I think again, very lucky that that happened because I learned how to work that way. And as you know, I watched your interview with AvroKO at HD in Las Vegas, and I think so many people that thrive in the world of hospitality design understand the interplay between guest experience, brand storytelling, brand strategy, the built environment.

And so I just kind of got lucky that that was the way that I sort of fell into things, and I didn’t know any other way. So then when I’m building the studio, I’m every new person that comes in the door where they’re learning that way and it becomes foundational to who we were. And then afterwards, we started to be like, oh, now we got to really take the business seriously. And that’s mainly because you’re just responsible for a bunch of people. I mean, I had my daughter at that time, and so everything becomes quite real.

SSR: You got to grow up some day, right? Is there something that you know now that you wish you knew then? Or I’m always curious was what I always say, ignorance, bliss or just that organic growth easier than sitting down and creating a business plan of sorts?

CS: Well, I would say on the design, finding our way into how we run our studio, our methodology and process and all that, I wouldn’t change a thing. I actually think how we lucked into some circumstances was I couldn’t have sculpted it better if I had a kind of structured teaching. I think that was right time, right place, the right amount of pressure and everything to just go through the crucible and get there.

But what I really wish that I had some idea about was sort of two things, how to lead, how to be a boss and how to build culture and process and systems and how to just deal with pressure, and hire people and understand their strengths and how to qualify them coming in and be clear about what our goals are and who we are and what we do so that you can quantify fit as early as possible.

I wish I knew all that stuff because it’s so painful to learn it and everyone pays the price. It’s hard on your business, it’s hard on the people that come in and maybe they’re not a fit. They could be great people and they could have all of the ability in the world, but if you don’t fit together and you’re not sharing a common trajectory or goal, then nothing can improve that. And there’s a lot of hard lessons there where I just wish I was a better leader in that regard.

And it’s something I take very seriously now, and I think it’s almost the entirety of my job is learning that and helping teach my design directors and the leaders in our team how to coach and how to learn what people’s skills and challenges are and how to help people play to their skills, all that stuff. So I wish I knew that.

And then in a weird way, how to have predictable tools to run your business, how to have a dashboard of how to manage your business. Because again, you’re not as in those early days, you’re always in a reactive kind of way, which again makes decision making harder. It means you’re trying to put out fires and stuff like that, which is not the way that you, again, just not the way that you lead, not the way you run a practice, not the way that you commit to a positioning of who you are and get like-minded people coming back to you.

So all that stuff, I could have used that a little earlier. We found it, thank God along the way, but would’ve loved to have had that.

SSR: I think that’s really interesting you said that because we talk a lot about the business of design and how that’s not taught in school. So how are you supposed to figure out who you are as a leader and how to structure things and even processing. But I guess my question for you is how have you, so first restaurant on your own was 2008, right?

So it’s been 17-ish years. How have you changed as a leader? Is there still one part of the process that you love the most or that you still really get involved in because there are sacrifices as you grow, right?

CS: Yeah, of course. I think, again, one of the lucky things about how I came to this in a weird way was my lack of formal training because I had to hire for people that were better than me from early days, or better than me at obviously CAD and SketchUp and any kind of program that you use to propagate work.

But then I also, I just had to hire people in the realm of HR and additional leadership roles. And I’ve always benefited from just people who are whip smart and capable and come with loads of experience and just kind of getting out of their way and becoming very collaborative on doing that stuff.

And one of the things that happened part way through our evolution, we brought on a kind of financial, I guess would be a sort of external CFO who has since become a great, great friend of mine. And we’ve participated coming in an equity position in other businesses and co-created other things together.

And what he did was help us just create a full kind of system of metrics with which we predictively gauge our sales and create pipeline of business and quantify a bunch of soft markers in terms of how we’re positioning strategies, working how we monitor our resourcing and all that stuff so that the dashboard ends up being the sort of guideposts or the telltales. And being very definitive about what those are helps you, everybody who’s leading be like, well, these are the components with which we’re just guiding the health of the business.

And so that I think was great. And then so all of our leadership people were very clear about those markers and how we keep iteratively improving them. And then as you grow the business and have the luxury of being able to hire even more of high-level people, you start to be able to attract people that maybe would’ve come from a more corporate background or larger practices where they’ve just have the experience. They’ve either been there or they’ve benefited from learning from people that have steered the ship, so to speak, through some of these challenges.

Monos Ossington luggage store in Toronto; photo by Doublespace

And I’ve got a number of people like that that come from… Our managing director comes from a background at Burberry, for instance, and a bunch of larger practices. And so that person comes in as a partner in the business, and he just feels tremendously lucky to be able to say, “Okay, well, I’m going to go focus on this and let you run the show over here in a way.” And that’s sort of how that ladders down is I think really important.

And then, so what I do now is I’m still… My job technically in the business is as the creative director, and I sort of wear that hat in that role. And then I sort of take that hat off and wear the sort of founder and owner hat in some capacity where if I go and do a talk or a panel or something like that, I’m sort of playing that role in the ownership capacity and obviously that kind of thing.

But what I do in the business as my job is continue to help develop the conceptual work. We have an envisioning and concept and programming team that works on every project early days, and I’m very stitched into that part of the work, trying to create a north star for things.

And we run everything. Again, this whole theater side of things is kind of completely embedded in our process. And we’ve sort of reverse engineered all the stuff that was working to be now more formal and have pulled a number of extremely talented, capable people that are on in a strategy capacity and in a just very multidisciplinary where we sort of have a lot of inputs early days.

So I’m really stitched in with that group on every project so that we create the kind of narrative, this idea of what world are we going to manifest and create really strong tools that brief our whole team and in fact end up being sort of briefing tools for larger consultant teams or in-house management and stuff like that to say, “Okay, here’s where we’re going conceptually, this is the narrative, these are the values, these are some of the core principles of how we’re going to execute this,” and then we obviously distill that right down into a perspective on how materiality, character of material, obviously furniture, lighting, like everything.

And then as we move into the more formal schematic side of our design work, I’m deeply in there but really trying to give over as much control to the design team as possible. And the mandate is just take the work that we’ve kind of created that’s giving us a direction and fight for ways to turn it up more.

So the kind of principle for us is, and my job, the way that I really think of it is to come around and coach people on how to continue to find more juice for the squeeze in each section. I sort of burn off obviously a little bit more as it becomes more into technical documentation. We’ve got all the people that have checks and balances or technical directing team and all that handles that, but of course all that stuff sort of comes back to us. We’re still a boutique firm. There’s about 45 folks.

But I really think of my job as trying to find ways to make things more singular, more special, how do you work outside of the safety net of precedence and things like that. And then obviously convince our clients to come along for the ride and be enthusiastic participants.

SSR: Yeah, no, a hundred percent. And how big is your firm now? How have you grown?

CS: I think we’re about 45 folks all told. We have an office, this head office is still in Vancouver. We’ve put another office in Toronto, which is about 10 or 11 folks there. And we are pretty active in, I would say we’re pretty active in those two cities, obviously in western Canada, and then quite a bit of stuff in California, Chicago where I am right now. And we get a lot of opportunities kind of everywhere these days.

But we’re in maybe this awkward teen phase to be completely honest because we have enough credibility. We’re sort of get to contend for a number of awards. A bunch of our stuff performs well. We talked to a whole host of great hotel flags and brands and asset managers and we’re driving all that stuff.

But being at that stage, we do have this next little phase to grow through and mature as a business, which is actually very exciting, but also comes with its challenges. Just like every designer who’s listening to me, everyone knows that everything is much more painful than you get to elucidate in this kind of quick form. There’s everything. Every inflection point is tough and tricky, and it comes with a whole new level of learning and growth and people and client management and financial management.

And we’re obviously living in financial circumstances that are anything but predictable these days. So we’re doing all that stuff to navigate. But yeah, I would say a boutique firm that really wants to stay highly boutique and focused, but does want to ensure that we’re able to work on projects at scale because we believe that everything, like real placemaking for instance comes from caring about each individual user.

And we’re just really stubborn about trying to find that nuance and emotional engagement in everything, regardless of if it’s a master plan and you’re working on a hotel or a branded residence here, maybe there’s some rental ground floor retail, there’s a health and wellness component. All those things are just really stubborn about saying they’ve got to be emotionally resonant and you can’t shortchange the details, and it’s about emotionally capturing people.

And I think more and more these days we’re just fixated on that because if it doesn’t speak to people and if it doesn’t have this kind of human tactile nature, then it’s just adding to the overly kind of automated technical cold world that we are stubbornly vehemently against.

Monos Ossington luggage store in Toronto; photo by Doublespace

SSR: I think the challenge is always like, which are those details to fight for and which are the ones that will have the greatest impact when you’re dealing with budgets and clients and creating these spaces.

You start in restaurants, you’ve grown obviously. You do residential, commercial, you’ve done hotels, you’ve done coworking spaces. Is there another project that is on your bucket list that you’d like to as you continue to evolve and grow?

CS: For us, it starts to maybe small to medium-sized resort style stuff and a different, just a kind of perspective on what those can be. I think there’s just, and in a way it starts to be just this version of many of these components that we work on that’s starting to bring those more together in some of those kind of settings that keep things kind of intrepid and not overly manicured, that there’s some sense of adventure.

Personally, I’m really interested, I spent some time in Portugal last year, and I just think there’s some little places like that that are kind of on the cusp of being new little centers for travel. And this idea that there’s this kind of lived in more fluid luxury that I’m really quite into that is again, we just finished all of the common area and F&B spaces in the Rosewood Hotel Georgia, which is obviously quite a luxury property.

And so we like to swing over there, but we also like to kind of apropos of what we were talking about earlier. I like these things that are highly localized and a little bit idiosyncratic and maybe can only exist in this one place and maybe find, like this micro hotel idea I think is quite compelling in a way because it can be really specific to a locale and a specific user experience.

And those are things that I have my own sort of hospitality business with partners. We own a bunch of restaurants, but for us, we’re also interested in how we do some of these things as self-directed projects that we are in a sort of ownership capacity in as well. So that’s a big part of our business is keeping that entrepreneurial spirit connected to everything that we do.

And I think that’s part of the reason that some of the clients appreciate working with us because even though we’re kind dogmatic about this world building and idea that it’s got to be remarkable and transportive, we also know that it’s got to sort of pencil out at the end. And they trust that I’m living that with my own business over there.

So we’re kind of liking those things where there’s that entrepreneurial spirit, that idea of co-creation and coming in and making something come to life in that way. And I like this melding of what’s going on in the wellness space and the F&B and true hotel kind of side of things. I like these places that are starting to blur the lines with that and trying to find new ways.

I don’t like it when they get to be like cookie cutter where it’s like, you know what I mean? There’s your new spa circuit and all of a sudden it’s this new standard and just starts popping up everywhere. I think that’s kind of counterpoint to these things, but when people are starting to think through, oh, there could be a whole inventive side of what your wellness experience is like, and even though there’s standards there, it’s just like a restaurant in a way. You might be like, “Oh, well there’s this cooking type that we’re going to focus on here because that’s what we can own,” and our customer’s really seeking that and we can be the most special version of that.

And I think there’s a lot of potential in the wellness space like that and then these fully immersive environments, and there’s the sports and leisure side of it as well. I’m really into the world of tennis these days, and I’m just enamored with the idea of how far you could stretch some of that kind of thinking. So tennis would be a great one. A tennis based small resort would be probably my dream project where you get to bring all this stuff together, maybe put it, yeah.

SSR: Well, I play a lot of tennis.

CS: Oh, you do?

SSR: Do you play tennis?

CS: I do. I’ve been really into it the last three years, and it’s a kind of weird obsession I got to, yeah. It’s so fun. And it’s one of those things where it’s really a lot of data on the longevity side of that for tennis.

SSR: Yeah, no, I’ve probably played too much. We always end the podcast with the title, or the question that is the title of the podcast. So what has been your greatest lesson or lessons learned along the way?

CS: I think the kind of full circle thing that’s come to me is we started doing design by hearing other people’s stories and helping them kind of bring those to life. Like this idea of manifesting something and that places have something to say and that you could help, that your job is to be a conduit and sort of conjure those things.

And I think that’s been my biggest, if I was going to adhere to any principle, is you can’t muscle it. You’ve got to sort of tease it to life, and you could build all sorts of tools and stuff like that. And we as people, as sentient sensitive beings, I think have a real power to do that.

And I think that’s our, as design people, that’s our real remarkable ability. And if people hold true to that, that really is a great go-forward way of thinking about your role as a designer. And it’s not going to be replicable by an algorithm or a machine or AI in that way. It’s like the human side. And to embrace that there’s this kind of embedded life in space that wants to be sort of conjured to the surface might sound crazy and esoteric, but I’ve learned that it’s not.

SSR: Yeah. Well, I love your spaces and it was so great to hear your story today. So thank you so much for sharing it.

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From an early age, New Jersey-born artist and designer Rebecca Moses felt the magnetic pull of creative expression. “Since I was a young girl, I was drawn to things that stimulated the eye,” she recalls.

Classic Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s sparked her imagination, igniting a lifelong passion for fashion, storytelling, and the emotive power of visual design. By 14, she knew she wanted to be a fashion designer and enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York two years later, setting in motion a career defined by ambition and artistry.

At 21, Moses launched her own label, joining a wave of young talent that included contemporaries like Michael Kors. In 1991, a shift came when she met luxury yarn supplier Giacomo Festa Bianchet, who would later become her husband. She moved to Italy and, though far from familiar territory, remained deeply committed to her craft. “The creative process is ongoing—even if you don’t have the project,” she says. Her sketchbooks overflowed with ideas.

That momentum led to a breakthrough. After a visit from longtime friend Joyce Ma, founder of Hong Kong’s Joyce boutiques, Moses was introduced to Italian fashion house Genny. She was soon named creative director, succeeding Gianni Versace. During that time, she also launched a colorful cashmere line under her own name in 1997.

She was then tapped to reinvent Pineider, the luxury heritage Italian brand known for its stationary and leather goods, where she helped develop more than 500 products. “Anna Wintour walked into the first shop I opened for them, and she put it in [Vogue]. From there, I was advising companies on color,” she says.

Following the loss of her husband, Moses returned to New York with her two sons. With encouragement from Vogue Italia’s Franca Sozzani, she embraced a new chapter, focusing on illustration and narrative through visual art. It led to collaborations with brands like Vogue Italia, MAC Cosmetics, and Vera Wang, among others.

The Queens Montage wallcovering pattern, available in five colorways

Her latest venture is a debut collection with Momentum Textiles & Wallcovering, born from a serendipitous meeting with chief marketing and creative officer Jennifer Nye. “The idea of developing wallcoverings was fascinating to me,” Moses says. “I wanted to create an experience through art and material that had to do more than just look good—it had to tell a story.”

Working closely with Momentum’s team, she reimagined her signature portraits as richly layered pieces, each wallcovering a hidden world unto itself. Patterns like Portrait Gallery and Take a Seat—a playful array of brightly colored chairs—for instance, place her illustrations front and center. Flexibility was central to her 10-print collection as well, with multiple scales and colorways built to adapt to mood, tone, and context. “I’m not dictating,” she says. “I’m giving designers and architects tools for a narrative.”

For Moses, creativity is a lifelong calling. “The worst thing you can do is what you did yesterday,” she says. “It’s a new day with new challenges and new growth. You have to keep growing. What I do is not a job—it’s a way of life. I am a creative. I will work until I die, and that’s a privilege.”

This article originally appeared in HD’s May/June 2025 issue.

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With its floating staircase and stately dome, the Printemps flagship is as much a historic Parisian monument as it is a beloved department store. The luxe retailer’s arrival in New York’s Financial District is also momentous. Situated within the Art Deco skyscraper One Wall Street, the 55,000-square-foot, bilevel space was imagined by Paris architect and designer Laura Gonzalez as an inviting apartment, with interconnected rooms fusing fashion, beauty, and food and drink.

The Red Room Bar layers marble with a striking chandelier

The latter realm is the domain of culinary director Gregory Gourdet, the James Beard Award-winning chef, author, and TV personality. To prepare for the launch, Gourdet took multiple research trips to France, where he “dined at older, smaller restaurants to get the feel for quintessential Paris,” he recalls. He people-watched at cafés, savored Michelin-starred tasting menus, and visited dining rooms on idyllic farms just outside the city.

At Printemps New York, Gourdet oversees five distinctive venues, including the casual all-day Café Jalu; Salon Vert, the second-floor raw bar done up in handpainted tiles and soft spring-like hues of green and pink; the Champagne Bar dominated by a whimsical bar counter from Brooklyn ceramic artist William Coggin that recalls sea coral; and the Red Room Bar, a glamorous chandelier-laden hideaway that opens onto the landmarked Red Room. Illuminating original 1920s Hildreth Meière red ombré and gold mosaic, Gonzalez transformed it into a fantastical shoe forest awash in ecological resin.

“Each outlet showcases flavors and cooking techniques of French Africa, French Asia, and the French Caribbean,” Gourdet says. Maison Passerelle celebrates this ethos most prominently. Inside the fine dining restaurant, a stained-glass panel from Pierre Marie Studio melds with a fresco by Atelier Roma based on photographs of former French colonies selected by Gourdet that converge into one powerful image “meant to evoke watching the sunset on the shores of the countries that inspire [the restaurant],” he says.

For Gourdet, design should accentuate the room’s best features to forge an environment “comfortable enough to spend hours in,” he says. “Laura’s take on blending New York Art Deco with Parisian Art Nouveau works just as well for the concept driving Maison Passerelle as the restaurant represents a bridge between the old and the new.”

Handpainted floral tiles back the Salon Vert raw bar

The Red Room’s original 1920s red ombré and gold mosaic adds to the fantastical vibe

A stained-glass panel from Pierre Marie Studio graces a wall inside Maison Passerelle at Printemps New York

This article originally appeared in HD’s April 2025 issue.

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Chef Raheem Sealey believes that Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood speaks to him as a person. The district, a haven for artists and bursting with tempting eateries, is where Sealey’s career took off since opening KYU in 2016 with owners Michael Lewis and Steven Haigh.

Shiso’s graffiti-infused design is a response to its location in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood

The neighborhood boasts blocks of colorful graffiti, and when stepping inside Sealey’s newest project, Shiso, Wynwood’s impact is apparent. Splashed across the restaurant—from thick columns by the bar to the restrooms—are distinct murals reminiscent of walking along the streets of Wynwood. The graffiti, according to Sealey, is the cornerstone of Shiso’s design, which was crafted by Cleveland-based House of L Designs.

“We wanted to take some of the art that’s outside and bring it inside, but we wanted to make it look like it’s meant to be there—not like we’re forcing it,” he says. “The graffiti was step one, and then we worked around that based on the things we needed to make [it] stand out.”

Before he opened Shiso and led the kitchen at KYU, Sealey studied at Le Cordon Bleu and cut his teeth at Pao and Zuma. But his culinary identity originated on St. Croix, where his grandparents shared their love for cooking with Sealey when he was young. The budding chef took on the heavy lifting in the kitchen to help his grandmother, like mashing dense potatoes and mixing big pots of macaroni and cheese for the family to eat.

Some of these early dishes have been translated into Shiso’s menu. “Everything I grew up eating, I’m bringing into what we’re doing now,” he says. “My family is my inspiration to keep pushing the way that I push and keep going as far as I do.”

The newly opened Shiso combines wood-fired barbecue with Japanese and Caribbean influences to create bold flavor pairings fit for the eclectic neighborhood.

With shared dishes filling the menu, Sealey equates Shiso’s dining experience to that of a Thanksgiving meal: a big spread of various foods for everyone to take a little bit of everything. “Dining is about being able to go somewhere where you can have different dishes that speak to everyone,” he says, “and that’s what my menu is based on.”

Oversized chandeliers hang above the bar area at Shiso

With views of the city skyline, Shiso’s rooftop is an elevated escape

This article originally appeared in HD’s April 2025 issue.

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Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I am here with Sarah Klymson and Simon Marxer. Thanks so much for joining me today. How are you?

Simon Marxer: Great. Thanks for having us.

Sarah Klymson: It’s lovely to be with you.

SSR: Okay, so we’re going to start with your backgrounds and then dive into this topic of wellness that we want to explore today. So let’s start with you, Sarah. Where did you grow up?

SK: I grew up in Florida, actually. I grew up in central Florida. I did all my education in Florida. I did my bachelor’s degree at Florida State and then to your design and my master’s at University of South Florida in architecture. I moved to Chicago 20 years ago, and for a Florida girl, that was hard.

SSR: Yeah, I’m sure the weather.

SK: But yeah, for an architect, it was an amazing city to be in, right? Right out of grad school, and I started in high-end residential design, loved that. And was there for several years before I moved on to Gensler and spent several years at Gensler working between studios, between architecture and the interior studio, really bringing projects together and loved that experience. And then I actually decided that I wanted to go in-house and really look at how design could impact people on a larger scale from a brand perspective. And I took a role with McDonald’s, which was an amazing role. It was about future direction of the brand, how you can use architecture and design to change your relationship with your consumer. And I learned so much and even the short time that I was there. And then I moved to Hyatt and I’ve been there for the last almost 10 years, which seems crazy, but I love hospitality and it’s been a really great way to take my design skills and bring it to life through an industry that’s just so fun and creative and inspiring to so many different people.

SSR: Yeah. And I guess, was hospitality always on your radar or did you kind of fall into it?

SK: Even I remember in school thinking about hospitality, what a fun job that would be to be able to travel and see all these different places and again, be in places that inspire people. So I think it was always in the back of my mind and actually the buildup of my residential design initially then to more… Even McDonald’s was more about operations and how do you bring it together? How do you make a food and beverage experience really efficient? It all led to hospitality, so I think it’s been a good build of different areas that have brought me to where I am today.

A rendering of the Miraval Red Sea; courtesy of Hyatt

SSR: Yeah, I love it. And was it Hyatt that came to you or did you reach out to them, or how did you end up at Hyatt?

SK: I had a recruiter that reached out to me and had this role that they were looking to fill. And it was actually on the America’s design services team, and I had the opportunity to interview with some really great people at Hyatt, that people that just really inspired me. I worked with Mari Balestrazzi and she was just wonderful, a great mentor, a great person to help introduce me to hospitality really in a meaningful way. So really they reached out to me and then it was a good transition.

SSR: So how’s your role changed over the last 10 years at Hyatt?

SK: Yeah, it’s changed a lot, honestly. Well, I mean, the industry has changed. So much of what we do has changed and what we focus on from everything from guests to even our owners, right? I mean, the industry has changed. But when I first started at Hyatt, I was in the America’s design services team really working on projects just in the America’s region, working with the studio on developing new builds and renovation projects, helping guide the designers. And after about two years in that role, I moved to the global team. And so my role in the global team is much more about conceptual. How do you think about your brands? How do you differentiate them? How do you create experiences by brand? And how do you really think about design being the support system for these experiences that we’re trying to create by brand? My group, the global team really looks at those experiences and then works with the regional teams on implementing it.

So it’s changed and it’s a bit of a shift from working on actual projects to more conceptual design, but that’s what I love. I love the idea of setting strategy, thinking about big picture and global concepts for how these brands come to life, and honestly, leveraging my design skills, right? And that doesn’t mean designing the actual specific hotel. It means taking all that I learned from school about being strategic and planning and conceptualizing, bringing people together. A lot of what Simon and I do right now in the organization is bringing people together, right? Connecting all those dots, making sure that people are moving in the right direction. So it’s changed a lot.

SSR: For sure. All right, Simon, you’re up. Where did you grow up?

SM: Gosh, I grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts, just adjacent to Boston and found my way to the spa and wellbeing world just quite by accident. I took what I thought was going to be a summer job at Canyon Ranch as what was called a spa rover. My job was just to pick up towels. I remember I talked to-

SSR: It is such a great title though. I mean, what else can you do as a rover?

SM: Yeah, you just roves. I said to her, I remember… “So I’ll be greeting the guests and orienting them?” She says, “No, no, that’s a locker room attendant. You just get the towels.” So towels were my life. And I had to say I really enjoyed the environment. And then I had the opportunity to work in program coordinating, which is a meeting with the guests and then eventually found myself as the director of spa there and really liked the environment a lot. I have to say, I think I was drawn to an environment that really supports the health and wellbeing of its guests. And I would go to friends’ offices and stuff, and I would see the stern faces and I realized that I was surrounded with pleasure and joy all day, so I took to it. And then I worked briefly for the Golden Door Organization and then finally came to Miraval in 2007 and left briefly, but came to Miraval right after we had been on Oprah where we were at 100% occupancy all the time. And it was a remarkable environment and a great place to be, a great time.

SSR: Your brief stint was at Red Flower, right?

SM: I worked for Red Flower for a little bit.

SSR: What did you learn from there? I mean, they do a lot more of the actual product, right?

SM: Exactly. It’s the lotions and potions end of things. What I learned from Red Flower was a lot about actually about design. I think that design has an enormous influence on the experience of the product, and I think that was something that Red Flower did beautifully well, still does. And then deciding to come back to Miraval was lured by a good friend, had just rejoined and he asked me to come back and I agreed on a temporary basis. And then I found out that Hyatt was purchasing Miraval and it was a very different environment and it was a lot of what I had originally joined Miraval for, and I’ve been there since.

SSR: Awesome. All right, so let’s start with the big picture and then drill down a little bit. But wellness means so many things in today’s world. It’s such a growing market, there’s so many different facets of it, but how do you define wellness in the context of hospitality? And then we can get into how are you guys thinking about translating that into the design, the service, the overall experience?

SM: Wow, that’s a great question. First off, your question is astute because many folks think about wellbeing and wellness in a hospitality environment as an additive thing, which is something that we want to add. We should be doing that. With Miraval really what my role has been is experience design. And I think through experience design, we have been able to deliver wellbeing to our guests and not again, in an additive way, but instead in the fabric of the experience. So how our colleagues engage our guests. Sarah will talk a little bit about what our spaces feel like. And I think that’s… When we think about experience design, I think that the integration of the principles of well-being from reflection, when I think about… One of the first things I learned at Miraval was that it was critical that people did not pack their day with activities and that we wanted to build in time for reflection.

And I think it was John Dewey who said, “We don’t learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience.” And I think that’s one of the things that I think Miraval does really well, is integrate the principles of well-being in the entire experience, not only in those things that one might initially think, well, this is a fitness class or a yoga class. These things all support well-being. Instead, the fabric of the experience and how you engage the colleagues and the connections you built. Quite honestly, the value when we think of the environment and what delivers well-being is really a connection to the colleagues. It’s a connection to the other guests and a connection to yourself. And at the end of the day, those are the things that when we accomplish an integration through those connections, we’ve been successful.

SK: Yeah. And I would just add to that, like Simon mentioned in the beginning was that I think in hospitality, a lot of times when people think of wellness, they think of the spa and the gym, right? And the way that we’re really thinking about it as much more holistically, especially at Miraval. It’s much more intentional designed spaces that can support the experiences that we’re trying to create to allow those connections to be facilitated, right? And so I think that’s really how we’re thinking about it is how do you design spaces that can create these experiences that allow guests to connect with self, to connect with others? All of those things are really important. And obviously the physical design has such an impact on people. So I think the way that we’re thinking about it and bringing well-being to our guests is through all the different spaces of the hotel, whether that means in the food and beverage, if it’s in your guest room, and again, not thinking about it being additive, but thinking about it being integral to the space.

SSR:  But that’s like a fine line, right? How do you marry all these and how do you allow people to have the singular interaction or the group interaction, and how do you think about those spaces? Because I think that’s really the special sauce, right? Not that you want to be something to everyone, but you allow people to experience the spaces the way they want to.

SK: Well, and I think meeting our guests where they are, right? That’s one of the things that we talk a lot about is that the first time you come to Miraval might be very different than the next time. It should be very different than the next time, right? And meeting our guests where they are in that particular moment is how we should be thinking about it. So that again, it’s not… We’re critically saying that you need to do this, this and this, prescriptive, right? We’re giving what is on offer is for how you want to engage with it, right? For you to take in what’s important to you. And again, like you said, we don’t want to be everything to everyone because then you’re nothing, right? We want to make sure that we’re thinking about these spaces in a way that guests can consume it the way they want to.

SM: To build on that, I think that when we think about the challenges of scaling something like Miraval, that happen so organically costs a lot of reflection. And I think at the end of the day, the way… I ended up thinking about the Miraval experiences that essentially we create a platform where people can come no matter where they are in their life and discover things about themselves, discover things about the people that they’re with, building those connections. I think when we think about how the value is created, our guests bring it. They bring their needs into the process of discovery of different ways to think about things, different experiences, different internal states.

What are the things? We don’t allow cell phones except for prescribed areas. That does an enormous amount to create a sense of stillness and allow people to hear things, not just listen to the chime of their cell phone. And I think when we think about what Miraval delivers, it really does deliver a connection to yourself. And that exploration means it’s somewhat infinite, right? While exploring ourselves, we have infinite places to go and to learn and be surprised and discover. And that’s why I think Miraval does really well. And as Sarah pointed out, each time you come is different because you are necessarily different each time you come and you’ll have a different experience. So I think that’s part of the… Yeah, go ahead, Sarah.

SK: Simon, it also makes me think about the thing that I think is really beautiful about Miraval is that when you go to the property, and I was just in Austin last week, when you go there, it doesn’t feel overwhelmingly like you’re at a wellness spa, right? It feels very comfortable. It gets people to let down their guard. You have a connection to the colleagues because they’re much more open and it’s less formal. The whole environment creates that opportunity for you to really be able to consider your wellbeing. And I think that’s what’s really special about it, is it’s not this overly prescribed experience. It’s actually something that feels really natural and easy and easy for our guests to be comfortable in the experience that we’ve created. And that’s what we’re trying to achieve with Miraval, I think in a lot of ways.

SM: Yeah. One thing, Stacy, about the comfort level, I always see people having dinner in their robe as a victory because it means that they are feeling safe and comfortable and that we’ve done our job. And it’s a very good indices of the environment Sarah’s describing.

SK: And also too, if you go to Miraval, do not wear a navy blue blazer if you’re there even for work because you stand out. Everyone else is in yoga pants and casual, in their robes. If you have on a blue blazer, you will stick out.

SSR: I love that. When I think two things that you said that I just want to layer on. One, the no cell phone thing. I think I was just at the masters and even watching a sporting event that you can’t have cell phone, you can’t have technology, I mean, you just become very present, right? You engage in conversations you wouldn’t have. Or after the first initial stress of not having it, then you just start to relax, right? Because you’re not checking in. You’re not updating whatever is going on in your life. And I think that too allows you to maybe be a little more comfortable, right? Because you are so present and then add in that informality and it allows people to really take that deep breath.

SM: Without a doubt. I think that it is not an easy environment to create because people do feel the draw to their phones, and it is method of coping and creating comfort for oneself. And part of our role is to raise that to people. And one of the things that used to say is to ask people who were on their phones, I’d say, “How much of your time at Miraval did you plan on talking on the phone?” And people, “None really. Okay, I’ll put it away.” And helping people see that is one, that there is a choice and they could make it. And then how do you feel, right? Then is self-reinforcing and all of a sudden there’s a stillness and people remember. And I think that’s what brings people back.

SK: Yeah. I think it’s actually one of the most powerful things that we do that has been a bit of a struggle to maintain just because it’s hard, right? It’s hard for all of us to step away from our phones, but I think it’s one of the most powerful things that a lot of people will say, “After I put my phone away, I felt so much different… So different.”

The education center of Miraval the Red Sea; rendering courtesy of Hyatt

SSR: Yeah. Once you get past that initial freak out. Okay, so the brand is now celebrating 30 years, especially you Simon, you’ve been with the brand in different iterations and along the journey and before and after Oprah. But why do you think it’s been so successful? And then how has it evolved since Hyatt’s acquisition?

SM: Yeah, gosh. I think one of the strengths of Miraval, it really is the intention with which it was created. And the intention with which it was created is to prevent people from reaching a point of crisis either in their health or their wellbeing and teaching them the skills to prevent those catastrophes from happening. And I think that it has been a concept that has clearly been proven not to be way ahead of its time. And people are only now just discovering what the benefits of the digital detox, the benefits of being awareness and mindfulness in one’s life, and how it can enhance your experience and enhance the experience of your loved ones. I think that Miraval has evolved as the individuals who commit their lives to creating the experience have changed. One of the things that is a wonderful part about being at Miraval is that the level of commitment that the individuals who create the experiences bring and being present themselves.

I think that’s really what’s driven the quality of the experience is the people who create it and the wonderful gifts that they possess, that they choose to share and create experiences that are second to none. And I think that’s been a huge part of the organic nature of Miraval evolving. And since Hyatt, I think the challenge initially was really to understand how do you take something that again, has happened so organically and reproduce it. And I’ll be honest, I made some serious mistakes with the programming and thought, “Well, what we’re going to do is we’re going to do the same things. We’re just going to do them with different people.”

And we had a group of brand loyalists come and their feedback was, well, where’s Josh? Or where’s Wyatt? Like, well, they’re not here, they’re in Tucson. These are different people. And what it evolved from that was a better understanding that in order to really create an authentic experience that is honors Miraval, we really needed to embrace the folks who were working there and what they were passionate about and essentially transitioning that into the experience, a building experience that’s authentic to those people and the needs of the guests who come to Austin and to the Berkshires.

And I have to say that I think that shift in understanding how critical the individual is to creating a Miraval experience and creating those connections with our guests has been largely responsible for the success we’ve had over the years and continue to have after the Hyatt acquisition. And I will say it makes me incredibly optimistic when we think about the experience at the newer properties, just being as great as it is and the level of reinforcement that the people who come and work at Miraval is really nice to see because who you are matters at Miraval. And that’s part of what… I think it makes it a unique place to be and unique place for guests to visit. So I think that’s a critical piece to the longevity and the success across new properties as well.

SK: Yeah, I think just to add, Simon to that too, that is very different. I think about the way that Simon and the team think about creating these experiences is what was done in Tucson and has been done really well there with the different programs weren’t just taken and put in Austin or put in the Berkshires, right? Instead, we really look in those locations to find the healers, the specialists, all of the people that are going to deliver these experiences and let them bring their craft to those properties. And that’s how we really think about programming versus just trying to replicate it across different properties. You get a real uniqueness on these other locations because of the people and the connections that you have.

SSR: Okay. And how has the design changed or not changed or how have evolved it? Or I guess, how have you rethought it or not along the way? How are you approaching design differently for wellness than you were five years ago?

SK: Yeah, well, I have an interesting thought about that because Simon just explained how Miraval has evolved over the course of the creation of the experience, right? From my standpoint, I think from a consumer side and how we think about design, when we first acquired Miraval in 2017, I just thought quite honestly, Stacy was going to be like any other brand, right? Like any other brand that we’ve acquired, maybe it just had a really nice spawn, had some programming on offer. I just made that assumption. And the first few times that I went to visit Tucson, because Austin and Berkshires weren’t open at that point, they were under development, but I went and visited, I did the quick 24 hours at the property stay and was in and out, did the meetings and left. And I did that for a couple months. I met Simon and we had this conversation where he’s like, “How can you be designing these spaces when you don’t fully understand what the experience is?”

And I was like, “Oh, okay. That’s a great, great thought process.” The next time I went back to the property, I stayed an extra night, I did some programming and I really started to tune into what was so special about this property. And it honestly, again, took me some time to really understand the nuances. This is not a brand that is easily replicated from a design standpoint or from a program standpoint. So it really took me investing a good amount of my understanding in the brand. It took Simon and I spending lots of time actually talking about what makes Miraval really special, how do you think about how that gets translated to Austin? How does the design come to life based on that? How do we translate that to the Berkshires? It was a lot of investment of us coaching the designers and talking through what was important with the experience.

And we do this because of this. We don’t do that because of this and explaining that every reason and every decision we make is based on the intention of what we’re trying to create. So yes, the design aesthetic is very important and we have to get people to feel comfortable with the design, but it’s more about making sure that the spaces are designed in a way that’s very intentional and we make the decisions that support what the guests need out of it and also actually allow the colleagues to connect too. That’s another big component that’s really important. So that’s how we think about them.

SSR: Okay. I guess, are there core wellness pillars that you focus on at Miraval? And if there are, can you talk about those a little bit and maybe then how do you have those throughout the different spaces?

SM: Well, there certainly are. And I think when we looked at creating the Miraval experience of the individual experiences that make up the Miraval experience, one of the primary foundational elements is what we call the lessons of Miraval. And the lessons of Miraval are many, but essentially they’re founded on helping people have a sense of agency in their own pursuit of well-being and empowering the individual to assert a level of control and a realistic view of their role in the pursuit of their well-being. I think there’s a number of different principles that are explored in our programming that are directly pulled from those lessons of Miraval. One of which is the power of reflection.

And as we mentioned reflection earlier, and I think about the spa experience that exists. We have an intentionally designed, and Sarah can speak more to this, but an intentional transition in Tucson, for example, from these tall windows where you look out and you see the enormity of the Catalina Mountains. And then as you transition back into the treatment area, there’s a sense of compression and a portal that you travel through, and that’s intended to shift your focus from outside yourself to within and to really allow yourself to be prepared to actually surrender and experience the spa.

We actually in the process of renovating the spa. When we did it in 2012, one of the things that was critical for us, but when it first opened was that when people came in, they whispered and they brought their voices down. And there’s an assumption that that’s going to happen, but if you do not have the right environment, people will come in with the same level of intensity that they arrived with versus the environment signaling a bit of a transition, which is I think a good example of how the design really supports the intention of the experience and just cannot be separated from it. I think that’s part of what Sarah’s identified. You really can’t separate the intention for what the experience is in each space from the design of that space.

SK: Yeah, Simon, you give that reference of the Tucson spa, and it is really interesting, Stacy, because you go from outside where there’s the sound of the water moving from the fountain, the birds chirping, and you open that door, the ceiling’s compressed a little bit, and you can watch people literally slow their walk down, their voice goes down, they change their whole engagement with the space because of the design, right?

And so those are the type of things we’re constantly looking for. If that’s through signaling contrast, right? Contrast between spaces with light and dark, contrast with materials soft to rough, those are the type of things we’re really thinking about as we’re looking at the design, the engagement of your senses. How can we do it from more than just what you see, but what do you hear? What do you smell? What do you touch? All of those types of engagement of the senses and not in a way that is again, additive or cliche, but in a way that’s meaningful, that feels integral to the space. That’s what we’re really trying to engage the guests so that again, it focuses them and focuses them on their current present moment.

SSR: How important then is community building to your definition of wellness and what you do at Miraval?

SM: It is so foundational that it’s difficult to even call it out as an element. It is everything. And I think one of the things that happens at Miraval is that you have reflected back to an accurate vision of the opportunities that you have within to take responsibility, as I mentioned earlier, that you’re likely the greatest opportunity and the greatest obstacle to get to where you’d like to be in your wellness journey. And I think when we think about being in that environment and being in a reflective environment that you feel safe, you can’t help but be open and share with others. And there’s so many times that I would just walk through the property and people will stop you and ask you to start with a simple question about what plant is that? And then before you know it, they’re telling you that, “Well, I did the equine experience this morning and I just realized I’m leaving my job, I’m starting a whole new career, or I’m going to take the leap to create the business I always wanted to create.”

So people connect very readily. It can be startling at first as an employee or colleague when you’re first day on the job and people come up and share with these intimate things. And then you realize that the environment really is supporting that and allows you then to connect with people’s experience and be able to really help support it. I think that what that does is make people so much more open to connection. And the connections built at Miraval are so strong that it is not uncommon for people to return to Miraval and coordinate their stay with people that they met on a previous stay.

And I would share even just personally, my mother came to Miraval, it was like 2010, she’s still in touch with the women she did the high ropes course with, and they coordinate their stay every year and get together. Because they really enjoy each other’s company, and it’s wonderful. So the sense of community is not forced, it’s not contrived. It is creating environment that allows people to feel safe enough to connect with others in a meaningful way. And then that’s so reinforcing that it’s just such an incredibly important part of the experience.

SK: Yeah. Simon, the way that you talked about it too in the beginning about how important reflection is, right? So one of the design principles, Stacy, that we talk about is having this opportunity for moments that are both inward but also outward, right? So inward, meaning having your own internal reflection moments, time for you to process, time for you to connect with your emotions, but on the opposite end is the opportunity for you to connect with others, right? And so that’s one of the beautiful things about Miraval is we have to, from a design standpoint, flex from allowing for those very private intimate moments individually, but also have opportunities where our guests can connect with each other.

So even the food and beverage is a great example of that is you’ll have people that come to Miraval for all different reasons, right? You might have women that are there to celebrate. You might have someone who’s mourning a loss. There’s a range of purposes for visiting a Miraval. And we really have to think about from a design standpoint, how do you allow those things to come together in a way that supports those connections and gives our guests what they’re needing in those moments. So it’s not as easy as putting tables and chairs and designing the space to make it look beautiful. You also have to think about all the emotional aspects of it too and allowing those connections to happen.

The upper-level reception of the Miraval the Red Sea; rendering courtesy of Hyatt

SSR: Right. And how do you integrate nature and the surroundings as well as part of this entire journey?

SM: The outdoors and nature is also a very important element to the Miraval experience because it is grounding and affords us perspective. Early on when people ask, “What’s the most powerful part of Miraval?” That is an individual answer, but for me it was always being able to look at those mountains in Tucson, just how grand they were and realize that you are part of a greater whole, and that helps put things into perspective at times and can support a sense of being grounded and not carried away by the future or what happened in the past.

And I think that that’s one of the things that nature really does afford us is an opportunity to remember that we’re part of something greater than ourselves and that there’s beauty found in the reach of a branch or the gurgle of a brook as we walk past them. And being able to be present enough to actually take in that beauty is what we’re responsible for creating for people so that they have an opportunity to actually see the beauty that nature can represent. And I think that it would… Again, foundational to the Miraval experience to be able to spend some time outdoors and realize how much is afforded in that, even if it’s a 10-minute walk, if we’re fully present and really taking in all that we experience, there’s no end to the benefits for all of us. So I think it’s a critical piece.

SK: Yeah. And I think also too, a lot of our spaces, we try to connect people, whether that’s in their guest room to having outdoor spaces or if that’s through very intentional views of spaces that give you that idea of nature. We also do not… This is not a brand where we’d probably do a green wall or something, but instead we’d use materials that are reflective of nature that encompass the space and the design in a way that allows you to know that you’re in the Berkshires versus being in Tucson in the desert, that call and reminisce the landscape that’s around you, right?

So I think that’s how we try to think about design. And quite honestly, the other thing that’s interesting about Miraval is that because we are trying to get people to let down their guards, we’re using materials in a way that’s very different, right? We’re not using… Even though we’re a luxury product, we’re not using marble everywhere. That’s not what we would do, right? We would use materials that are simpler, easier, and more related to people to be able to feel that connection to the natural environment. So maybe we would use a coarse wood or we would use a stone material or something that’s reflective of where the property is.

SSR: And then how much then also does lighting and acoustics to air quality, biophilia, how much is that incorporated into the design and the operations as well?

SK: Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the things that we try to do is incorporate those… The sense of nature and making sure that we have those natural elements throughout the space and that we’re tuned into how we can make it as comfortable for our guests. And so I think that we do have some elements from an operation standpoint that we incorporate, like landscaping and plants and trying to incorporate the biophilic elements.

SSR: So how many properties do you have now and what are some of the exciting ones on the boards that you can talk about and how do you think that will evolve this ethos that is Miraval?

SK: Yeah, we have Tucson who has been open for the 30 plus years. That’s our legacy property that’s been around for quite some time. In 2019, we opened Austin, and then in 2020, we opened up Berkshires. The end of this year we’re targeting opening up the Miraval in the Red Sea, which is going to be a great opportunity for us to have a beautiful new product. It’ll be our first international Miraval, which the team is really excited about. I mean, the location is phenomenal. The design of the property is so beautiful. The enormous spa that we’re going to have. We’re one of the only wellness resorts on the island, so we’re quite excited about all that we can really bring to life as we scale this brand internationally. And then we have several that we’re also considering in the pipeline as deals that we’re working through. And we also have the Miraval Life and Balance Spa that is in the Park Hyatt Aviara. So we have quite a few different locations that are really wonderful for the brand as we start to expand it.

SSR: Yeah. It must be exciting to be working on your first international project, and how are you rethinking that, especially for the Red Sea?

SK: Yeah, it’s been an interesting process because going international, we didn’t have exactly the presence or the awareness of Miraval that we do in the U.S. market, right? So we’ve had to really think about what the guest profile is in that location and what they’re looking for, what their expectation is, and then how does the Miraval brand translate to bring them something that still holds true to the brand pillars and the essence of the brand, but also works within this new location. So the design is a bit different, but still trying to achieve all of the things that we talk about, making guests feel comfortable, allowing for connection, allowing for these spaces, for reflection, all of that is really incorporated into the design for this space. And again, it’s been a lot of discussions about how do you achieve that? How do you work with our design services teams internally, how do we work with the design team working on it on the specific project? So it’s been a little bit of a labor of love, but it’s going to be a beautiful property.

SSR: Yeah. And what do you look for in collaborators? Because I know you use different designers for different properties? And what do you look for and what do you define as a successful collaboration?

SK: Yeah, I think this is a good question too because Simon and I have talked about it quite a bit with some of these renovations that have come up on the existing properties. Miraval is a very special place, and like I mentioned earlier, it takes a while to understand the nuances of it. So I think what we really look for is partners that want to learn, the partners that want to invest themselves in learning and understanding this brand. Because quite honestly, it is a brand that requires you to be on offer as well, right? You to take your special skill sets, you to understand what Miraval is and be able to implement it on a project. So I think really we look for collaborators that want to invest the time, that want to understand the brand, want to really understand and bring it to life. That’s probably the most critical.

SM: Sarah’s spot on. But I would just say additionally that the subtlety of the design voice, for lack of a better way to describe it, is very hard for people to grasp. And the ethos and the environment is so subtle that oftentimes when Sarah pointed out, we not going to put a green wall at the entrance to a space. And that’s where people start, right? Which is kind of this external focus and additive components.

And I think what usually happens is the first couple of meetings, I’ll try to explain things, then people just stare at me blankly. And then Sarah comes in and says, “What he’s trying to say is,” and then she will translate to everybody. So I think a willingness to… It’s just like the Miraval experience. It’s a willingness to pause long enough to pay attention to what you’re working on. And it unfortunately calls upon you to use some of yourself, and that is harder for some than others, but it’s ultimately what becomes gratifying work. And I think that’s part of what I’ve seen in our partners. And I think Sarah’s also very good at being the Sherpa to guide them through the process and translate when she’s not wearing a blue blazer, which is no longer happening.

SK: Yeah, exactly. No blue Blazers.

SSR: How do you measure the success or impact of the design features from … Is it guest satisfaction? Is it ROI? I mean, are you getting feedback from your guests? How do you measure this?

SK: But that is the key, right? Something I’ve been thinking about for the last several years in hospitality is how do you measure the satisfaction or the success of design, right? It is something that is so personal and connected to people, right? Individually, like how do we measure that? But one of the things that we are working on is really looking at data and information that we get from our guests and the feedback on the overall experience.

And I think connecting experience and design together will allow us the opportunity to measure what is the experience that guests are having on property and how is that connected to the physical space? And I’ll let Simon chime in more on this specifically with Miraval, but it’s a big part, Stacy, of being able to tell our owners the value proposition of design, right? What is it that we bring that is going to make them want to do, whether it’s a Miraval or one of our other brands with us? Is that how do we show that if that’s through financial performance, if it’s through satisfaction? It’s really critical that we have these success metrics in place to be able to show them.

SM: Yeah, I would say we measure everything, Stacy. We measure every movement. We have a good idea where our guests are at any point in the day, what their interest in activity level is so that we’re scheduling the right classes at the right time of day. But in terms of outcomes, we have really worked diligently to be able to measure the subjective. And we have some unique questions on our post-stay survey intended to tap into the impact on the wellbeing of our guests and how effective we’ve been. What I would say is that I think part of what we’ve done with Miraval and are going to evolve further in understanding how the experience supports the wellbeing of our guests and measuring it is where I think the future of hospitality is going. I think we’re in a post-satisfaction era and people expect to have a connection with an experience and a brand where their actual wellbeing is considered and supported.

It may be subtle, it may be less overt, but when we look at some of the key indices, and I’ll give you just one of the… One of the questions is, was your experience at Miraval memorable? And that is in essence what we’re all seeking. We’re seeking something that’s memorable enough. It means that I’ve been present enough to take in my surroundings, I’ve thought about what I’m experiencing and I’ve taken it in and stored it, and it is in fact a memorable experience. And I think we’re all seeking… Those of us who work to please consumers are all seeking that opportunity to create memorable experiences for them, and we do measure the wellbeing of our guests after departure.

SSR: I think you hit on something too. I mean, how are you then taking this information and this idea of wellness and all this research that you get and how are you, or are you then applying that or using that to help other Hyatt brands define what wellness means for them?

SK: I think that what we’re trying to do with the information that we have is really think about data-driven design and this idea that the design decisions that we’re making are driven by the experience and understanding of that experience. So it’s all informed by the data that we’re all collecting. And that we’re being strategic about some of those decisions, right? That we’re not just designing spaces because that’s what our brand experience guides say we should do, but we’re designing spaces that actually are very intentional and are what our consumers are looking for. So that’s how we’re thinking about the design and making sure that it’s informed by again, the data.

SM: Yeah. And I think that the opportunity exists across Hyatt to integrate many of the learnings from Miraval and the approaches to integration of the experiences that support the wellbeing of our guests to all elements and all of their engagement points by really focusing on what we want our guests to experience and helping our colleagues align with their own experience of having felt those things and how they deliver service and experience. And I think it is a really good opportunity to measure the impact and the feelings that people are left with in a deep way, which I think speaks to an opportunity within hospitality as a whole and within Hyatt to explore those same dimensions of wellbeing and effectively using those levers to elevate the product and experience.

SK: Yeah. And I think also too, part of the reason that we acquired Miraval was to learn from Miraval, right? We knew that Miraval was an expert in this space, and the intention from our perspective was never that you take exactly what Miraval is and try to put it into your other brands, but you learn from what Miraval and the experiences that you’re creating and learn how maybe a Thompson Wellbeing experience would come to life or one of our other brands. It’s not, again, intended to take Miraval and put it in the other brands. It’s to learn from it and then translate it into meaningful experiences that people can experience through those other brands.

The satellite kiosk at Miraval the Red Sea; rendering courtesy of Hyatt

SSR: I don’t think you can replicate Miraval the same way, but you do, the amount of research and knowledge you get of what people are looking for in wellness, which is exactly what you said, why you purchased it, right? To learn and to grow with it. You mentioned one trend, Simon, and I think very smart one, and I hate the word trend, but what else are you paying attention to in the wellness space? Where do you see it headed, especially in hospitality, and how do you think that will affect what you do in the next, call it five or so years?

SM: I am very focused on two pieces. One we’ve talked about already, but the other piece is focusing on our attention. I think the frontier of wellbeing will be our ability to reclaim our attention. We have reached our capacity in terms of our ability to take in the level of information, the volume of information we take in every day, the volume of interactions we take in every day. Yet we know that the levels of connection, the meaningful connection don’t exist in many people’s lives. So I think the opportunity to understand and reclaim your own attention is the greatest frontier. And I think that it sounds very basic, but ultimately it’s simple, not easy. But when we think about creating an experience that really is profound for people, it is about where they place their attention and helping empower them to identify that they can have a level of control of where they place their attention.

And I think one of the exercises we do for groups, and one of the things we did for a higher group recently is we had them join us in a conference room, typical conference room. And Sarah and I started out by talking to them a little bit about their walk there. And ask them to bring their attention to walk back the same way that they walked to the meeting room, to their rooms, but instead to take pictures of nature and specifically looking at the micro-visions of nature. And to the individuals went back, came back, submitted their pictures, and then there was this wonderful slideshow of photos that they’d taken. And identifying the fact that where you placed your attention from your walk to your room to this meeting determined your entire experience, that mood elevation of paying attention to the beauty of a simple flower, the imperfect nature of a branch or a leaf, I think it’s learning to take control of our attention and creating environments that support the individual’s control of their attention.

It’s probably a little abstract, but I think it’s the frontier that I think is going to be explored most because it’s only going… We’re only going to have more competition for our attention and organizations, companies that are seeking our attention, they will only get better at it. And being able to reclaim it and have a space that you create for yourself, I think is probably going to be the largest determinant of a sense of well-being that one can have. And I think along with that, the connection piece that I mentioned I think is people are just beginning to understand that and how critical that is. And I think when we look at the future, I think for Miraval and for the industry, it is less about the trends. I share your disdain for the trends term, it’s less about things and more about helping create space for people to connect with themselves, to connect with loved ones, to connect with place, right? To connect with inspiration, to be able to meaningfully connect with all of the things that we know are supportive of well-being.

I don’t think that we have really made enough progress to crack that code, and it’s something we work diligently in the Miraval setting to offer. And I think that’s a huge part of where I think the future lies. The other piece I would add is in the industry is understanding the colleague experience. And I firmly believe we are going to soon be required to have a branded colleague experience where a colleague who comes to work knows what type of environment they’re supposed to be creating, but also know that their own environment has been created intentionally to support their ability to deliver the expectations. I think when we think about well-being at work, that’s one of, I think the frontiers that exists and will be more and more important is how effectively are we supporting the well-being of those who make our enterprise what it is, and being more thoughtful and intentional about that. I think those, I would say, are three areas that are going to be terribly important in the future.

SK: Yeah. And I would say, Simon, just to add to the colleague piece, I feel like these are the people at the property that are delivering the experiences we want to create. We need to prioritize their experience just as much because they’re the ones delivering these types of experience for our guests.

SSR: Time is luxury, right? So having the time, having the luxury to connect with yourself with others or allow team members to sit back and really understand and involve themselves. I mean, I feel like it’s so important, especially what you all were saying earlier of how inundated we are with technology and content and all the things.

SK: Can I just say one other thing? Because I think that from a design standpoint, if we’re thinking about future direction and how design and hospitality will take shape, I think in the next little bit, I think that so much of our industry has shifted from lodging to experiences, right? And so much of what we do as designers is really inspire projects, right? But I think the big shift is going to be from this idea of thinking about aesthetics to thinking about strategy and solutions, right? And creating beautiful experiences with the design. So again, no longer just about design aesthetics. Yes, of course spaces need to be beautiful, but they also need to be intentional and strategic and fit within the framework of whatever you’re trying to create. So I think this idea of design shifting from aesthetics to being much more strategic will be very important in the next phase of hospitality as we start to think about experience creation.

SM: I think Sarah touched on something so critical that I just want to build upon quickly, which is the experience creation, the value of experience rests within us, right? It is something that we take with us long after an event has ended. And I think what Sarah is beautifully articulating is that that experience focus is intended to drive lasting meaning for people and help them create a sense of meaning from their experience. And I think that is a precious thing to offer and is easily stepped over for more grandiose aspirations. But at the end of the day, I think you use a term luxury. I can think of no greater luxury than feeling and being present in the moment to enjoy all that there is to enjoy.

SSR: I think that’s a perfect place to stop. Thank you both so much for this enlightening conversation and can’t wait to see the next iteration of Miraval and see where it all takes us.

SM: Great. Thank you so much.

SK: Thank you so much, Stacy.

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Paris’ Montorgueil district was gritty back in 2007, but that didn’t deter Olivier Bon, Pierre-Charles Cros, and Romée De Goriainoff. Instead, the young, ambitious childhood pals took a gamble on Rue Saint-Sauveur, brightening it with their speakeasy-style Experimental Cocktail Club.

Temple & Chapon chop house, located in the Hotel Experimental Marais in Paris

As students in Montreal, the trio spent ample time in New York relishing the city’s budding cocktail culture, but when they returned to Paris, they were disappointed to learn “the only cocktails available were the mojito and caipirinha,” recalls De Goriainoff. “So, we thought there was something we could do there.”

Together they scoured locations, looking for a space that would introduce Parisians to quality imbibing in a buzzy atmosphere. “We were about to give up because we were couch surfing, still living like students. But one of the traits of an entrepreneur is you don’t take no for an answer,” says Cros.

Experimental Cocktail Club transformed nightlife in Paris, sparking demand for elevated, imaginative libations. “We saw the scene being created with our own eyes, which was just incredible,” remembers Cros. “Having virtually no previous experience made a lot of people laugh at us originally, but it was our biggest opportunity because we could start with no pre-judgment. We were driven by our customers. Since then, we always conceive everything without forgetting about the customer.”

In 2010, in tandem with Experimental Group’s second outpost in London’s Chinatown, Xavier Padovani, who made a name for himself at spirits producer William Grant & Sons, joined as partner.

And they were just getting started. The brand’s expansion was rapid—shoe designer Christian Louboutin signed on as a shareholder in 2024—and today, it also flaunts bars, restaurants, and hotels beyond France and England to the likes of New York, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland.

Eclectic seating at La Compagnie Flatiron, the group’s second wine bar in New York

“The restaurant business is a difficult business to run, and we’ve been pretty good at it. We were quite confident that once we got a hotel, we’d run it well, and we haven’t been wrong,” says De Goriainoff.

Experimental Group’s first hotel, Grand Pigalle Experimental, opened in Paris’ 9th arrondissement in 2015, its design courtesy of longtime collaborator Dorothée Meilichzon, who most recently dreamed up ski-inspired interiors for the Experimental Chalet Val d’Isère in France.

Whether Experimental Group calls upon Meilichzon, Fabrizio Casiraghi (he handled the minimalist Experimental Chalet Verbier), or Tristan Auer, who is behind the recently opened neo-Gothic-informed Hotel Experimental Marais in Paris, each property straddles modern and timeless while emphasizing strong F&B components.

Retro-tinged furnishings and terracotta hues bring a ’70s sensibility to the lobby at the Henrietta Experimental Hotel in London

In the Marais, for example, grand arches, stained glass windows, and bold architecture lines juxtapose a sophisticated cocktail bar and Temple & Chapon restaurant, which reimagines the classic New York chop house with an atmosphere enhanced by rich brown hues and a mix of drawings and photographs.

Up next for the quartet: a hotel in Rome by Parisian architect and designer Rodolphe Parente. This growth is organic, stemming from the friends’ natural instincts and long-cultivated passions. When the first bar made its debut in Paris, for example, “we were free as birds. We were like, if it fails, we’ll go back to square one,” explains Cros.

But the bar was a success, and for the next almost two decades it has been the foundation of the group’s business. “We like innovation and coming up with new concepts, but we’ve also managed to keep the old ones because of our legacy,” De Goriainoff explains. Now those same clientele are following Experimental Group to the next chapter. “[Our customers] grew with us,” he adds.

Original brickwork and parquet flooring were retained at La Compagnie Flatiron

This article originally appeared in HD’s April 2025 issue.

The post Experimental Group Balances Innovation and Legacy appeared first on Hospitality Design.

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I’m here with Jonathan Leary. Jonathan, thanks so much for joining me today. How are you?

Jonathan Leary: Amazing. Thank you for having me.

SSR: Yeah, I’m excited. Okay, so let’s dive in. Where did you grow up?

JL: I grew up in Rhode Island. Have you been to Rhode Island before?

SSR: Yes, I’ve been.

JL: So I grew up in a small little town about 10 minutes outside of Providence.

SSR: I love it. What were you like as a kid?

JL: I was always active, always outgoing, always had big dreams, and I always worked really hard.

SSR: You’re one of those. Love it. Was there any hint this, what you do now, being in the wellness hospitality space, was there any hint of that or were you surrounded by any early influences that would have helped shape you to today?

JL: For some reason, I always knew that I wanted to be a doctor, and I always knew that I wanted to move to L.A. I think I was telling my mom at five or six that I was like, “I’m going to move to L.A.” And she thought it was so funny because I’d never visited until I actually moved there. But obviously my way of how I went about helping people changed as I experienced things in life, but the goal was to always be a doctor.

SSR: Got it. So where did you go to school to become a doctor?

JL: Yeah, so I did my undergrad at University of Rhode Island and I did my doctorate at Southern California University.

SSR: Awesome. And what kind of doctor did you want to be? Did that change over the years?

JL: Yeah, so I wanted to go be a traditional medical doctor. During that, I was everything from plastic surgeon to dermatologist. I was looking at exploring everything, but during my undergrad and studying pre-med, you have to volunteer and shadow a lot in the hospital setting. And I remember just thinking after doing it so many times, is this really what I want to do? It wasn’t how I imagined helping people, but also working in a hospital setting was crazy and chaotic and wild, and I just saw the stress on the patients, but also the stress on the doctors. And I remember just thinking the doctors aren’t sleeping. They’re away from their families. Their health is being compromised by their schedules and the amount of stress. And I was like, maybe I just need to create my own type of practice.

And that’s when I knew that I wanted to start working on Remedy Place. And I was like, what’s the fastest way that I could build this dream practice? And I found out that chiropractors in the state of California are primary care physicians and they can treat and diagnose anything. They just can’t prescribe meds or puncture the skin, perform surgery. So I was like, amazing. I didn’t know anything about alternative medicine, I didn’t know anything about chiropractic, but then I entered the program. So I knew that by the end of it I would have my scope and that I could build Remedy. And then through those years of school, I really started to see the power of alternative medicine and the science behind it and how impactful it actually was, which was contrary to everything that I was hearing or what I was told.

Remedy Place Flatiron; photo courtesy of Remedy Place

SSR: Interesting. You got your degree in kinesiology, right, in chiropractic medicine?

JL: I did my undergrad, I did pre-med through kinesiology, and I did my doctorate in chiropractic medicine.

SSR: Okay. And through that, did that just solidify what you thought? And then let’s go to how did you take that and what was the vision for Remedy Place?

JL: Yeah, listen, I was really specializing in sports medicine, so I was like, all right, who’s going to be the type of demographic that is really going to care about their health the most? I realized that no one can just make you healthy. The patient has to put in more of the work than the doctor. The doctor’s job is to educate, provide the tools, maybe help facilitate things faster. And I was just drawn to athletes because I was like, they’ll get it and they’ll put in the work. But I think at first, Remedy was supposed to just be this beautiful space with hospitality standards that had an experience built in.

And every time that I was in different practices or working under different doctors or doing rotations, I was introduced to all of these technologies from hyperbaric to red light to almost everything that we have in the space. And I was like, wow, why doesn’t everyone use these things? It’s crazy that we just wait until things are broken before we start using them. And I graduated, I had this 158 page binder, and I just thought if you had a good business plan, you got a business loan. And I worked on it for the entire doctorate program and I went to Wells Fargo and the woman laughed at me and she’s like, “Sir, you have no money and all this student loan debt. How am I supposed to give you a loan?” And I’m like, “What do you mean? That’s why I need a loan.”

So then I pivoted and I went into private practice for five years. It was a concierge practice, but that was the best thing that ever happened to me because I got to listen for five more years. I got to listen to patients, see what worked, see what didn’t work, what were they willing to do, what were they not willing to do, common lifestyle stressors, habits, routines, and just hearing, what are the biggest complaints or the areas of improvements that I kept hearing from all of my patients? And the number one complaint that I heard for five years was, “Dr. Leary, I feel incredible, and now that you’ve made me implement all of these different lifestyle changes to fix the root cause and to get me healthy, you’re really ruining my social life and now I can’t have any fun.” And I remember being like, “Why is being healthy so isolating and why do we have to stop doing all the social things that we do?”

And that’s when I knew that Remedy Place had to add the social component. I’m like, all right, well, each thing that you’re going to do to take care of yourself, why not be able to do that with other people? Because if you think about a date or an after work hangout or your birthday, there’s no reason why you have to do that at a restaurant or over food or over drinks. You could do it over anything. And that was really foreign at that time and I would say we created social wellness club or social self-care, all these words that we trademarked. And I remember people would be like, “Jon, that’s the most L.A. thing. That’s not going to work anywhere.” And now the trends are all over the world. And it’s so cool to see not only the awareness, but just the shift in people’s behaviors and how fast it’s happening.

SSR: Yeah, I mean, it’s been amazing just to see over the last five years how much, and not to go back to the pandemic, but I do think it was happening before that, and then I think COVID when people were stuck in their homes and realized what things affect their bodies, especially with COVID, I think that definitely accelerated people being like, “Okay, let me rethink this a bit.” What do you think about that? And do you agree?

JL: Yeah, I think COVID was the light switch that went on in people’s head to realize that if you’re not healthy, there’s not a magical thing that can save you. And I think we saw a lot of tragedy and I think that shifted the awareness around the things that make you feel better and the importance of health. But the bigger problem it caused was the isolation problem and the isolated humanity. And we know that human connection is one of the most important things for our health. And I would never say that 10 years ago because, as an alternative medicine doctor, if I said human connection is the most important thing for your health, that would’ve been the most woo-woo thing I could have ever said. But now from Harvard studies, the studies on Blue Zones, we know that the common denominator of longevity is community and our relationships. And it’s exciting to see that the science is catching up to what a lot of people have already known for a long time that just couldn’t be explained by science, but that shift is real and it’s really happening.

SSR: So you had this idea for Remedy Place. First, what was the name? Was that always the name or is that something you came upon?

JL: Yeah, honestly, I’m being honest, I don’t know if I ever said this publicly, it was called Remedy House and I couldn’t get it trademarked. So last minute change with a friend’s help, I transitioned it to Remedy Place.

SSR: And I think I even like it better than house.

JL: For sure, for sure. I think I was so inspired and motivated by Soho House that I was just like, oh, I’m just going to do Soho House, but wellness. And that was one of my inspirations. So I’m happy it wasn’t called Remedy House because then it would’ve been too much.

SSR: Yeah. Well, I guess that’s a good point. What were your inspirations? I mean, obviously, you were playing in a different field and you wanted to do something different, but once you knew that you wanted the connection and you wanted a place for people to hang out, how did the initial 150 something page idea evolve, I guess, and then what did you ultimately want to create with Remedy Place?

JL: Yeah, I was always inspired by companies that did something unique and innovative and paved the way. What Equinox did for Luxury Fitness was amazing, and their creative and their campaigns were always so out there and so different and pushing the boundaries. And I loved that. What Soho House did for private members clubs. Soho House made private members clubs what member private members clubs are, to see companies like Restoration Hardware, which is a furniture company, but turned into so much more, into a lifestyle brand and see how cool that someone could just take these concepts and grow them into something that is so much bigger and greater. So I was always inspired by the stories and the ability to be able to do that, and to dream really big.

But with Remedy, it was always really problem, solution. I would hear the problems from patients and I would document it and then be like, “All right, what’s the easiest solution here?” And then the design, I never knew anything about design, but I had a very clear vision of what I wanted Remedy to look like. And I remember when we were working with the design team and the architect, I’m like, “All right, here’s what I want. Here’s the plan.” I was sketching things out to talking about the flows to the colors, the material, like everything. And they’re like, “You can’t really do that.” I was like, “What do you mean?” They’re like, “It’s a wellness space and you can’t do black.” And I’m like, “I want to be the exact opposite of a clinic. We have to do black and dark.” I was pushed back on each room like, “That’s going to be too much, That’s going to be too much.” And I was like, “Guys, this is how I see it and we just have to do it.”

The IV Room at Remedy Place Flatiron; photo courtesy of Remedy Place

And then we started winning all of these global design awards. And I think what Remedy is really known for partially is really our design of the clubs. And that’s something that I’m so proud of because I’m like, once again, it’s really just thinking about design in a different way. I think when I’ve spoken at design conferences or hear designers speak, it’s always about how you want the client or the person to feel in the space, where I’ve always talked about how I want the environment to shift the physiology of the human in the space. And I think it’s really interesting to know the impact of environment on our health. And there’s so many things that you can manipulate to manipulate senses to positively enhance the human so they don’t even have to be doing anything to be enhanced.

And that’s what I’ve now grown a really strong passion for, is I’m not a traditional designer. I didn’t go to school to be a designer, but I just keep thinking of more and more ways of how to enhance the human in the space. But then, also, I don’t know, when I walk into some of these buildings when we’re about to sign these leases, I just know that it’s the right space when I walk in. I can just see what it’s supposed to be. And now we’re four clubs in and the designs keep getting more and more unique and special. And that gets me excited because I’m like, I could really mess this up if I do it wrong. I think there’s a point of just having to trust your gut and not one design is a match for all people, and I think that’s okay. But I think, if things are done intentionally and there’s so much thought and effort that go into every detail, I think people feel that whether it’s their design style or not.

SSR: Yeah, 100%. And how did you figure out who to work with on the design since, obviously, you had to hire somebody, since that wasn’t your expertise? But how did you pick the designer and have you worked with the same person over the last few spaces or do you switched that up?

JL: So the first two, we used a company called Bells and Whistles. They’re amazing. We first picked them because I was like, I don’t want to pick anyone that’s done anything in the health and wellness space. Because I know that even no matter how much we want to push, there’s going to be inherent things that are going to be biased based on other projects. And I’m like, I just want them to be inspired by hotels and restaurants. So that’s why we selected them and they were absolutely amazing and so talented and I really appreciate them. And then after that, our contractor for Soho, his wife did the plans for us, but we handled the design, and I’m not sitting there doing the elevation drawings or the architectural drawings, but eventually we ended up bringing that between agencies with our architect and then we had an in-house person that was helping with all the millwork drawings and everything. But yeah, it slowly transitioned to, I learned a lot the first couple and each one I’m hoping to learn and be better and better. But it’s been a fun journey.

SSR: Yeah. Well, first let’s go back to Bells and Whistles. Just FYI, they were one of our Wave of the Future honorees, which is people on our radar 15 years ago. They’re brilliant.

JL: They’re so good.

SSR: They’re so good. But what have you loved learning about the process, the design process since that was something new to you? Is there one part that you liked the most? Is it finding that building and walking in and being able to visualize it? Is it seeing the end result and watching how people use the space?

JL: I think my favorite part is just conceptualization, to be able to, like you said, go in the space, sit there, think about the flow first. Once you get the flow, sketching out each room of, all right, what’s going to be the focal point here? What’s going to be the unique thing that everyone’s going to talk about? Where do you want the special moments to be? And then I think the fun part after that is for me to actually learn, meet with these lighting designers and companies and learn about how lighting works, learn from millwork designers. There’s so many intricacies that go into design that I didn’t actually even know how crazy and in depth all of these things are. And I just want to be a sponge and learn as much as possible. So I think the funnest part for me is, one, building out the concept and figuring out the flow and, what are the focal points in each room?

And then secondarily, just learning, learning each thing. Even down to the construction because it’s an important tool in life, I think, to understand how things are built. And I think the more that you understand, the more you can appreciate. So when I’m going to hotels or traveling, the things that I’m able to catch in the architecture of the building or the design of whatever room, you start to understand that your awareness around all the special things really stand out. And then that helps me be inspired. Whether it’s a vacation or I’m on a work trip, I might be inspired by a shape or I might be inspired by one finish on a wall or the way that they lit up the hallway. There’s always something. And I just always take pictures of things I’m inspired by.

And then I figure out, I have a folder for each club of, all right, what in here could I use as inspiration to create our version? Or if that lighting was in a hallway, could I do that lighting over an ice bath? There’s always these things that it’s fun. And I think what I realized is there’s not really a right or wrong thing. There are rules, but sometimes it’s fun to break those design rules and do things that you’re not supposed to do and see if it works.

SSR: Yeah, true. And I guess, too, my other question is, so you had the original idea and you opened your first one. Now you just mentioned you have four. How have you evolved? There’s always new things happening in wellness and new ideas and new remedies. How have you evolved that one through four? And are there certain things that are essential to each space that you know are deal breakers, that you have to have X?

JL: Yeah. I think everything’s there because I know that it works. These aren’t things that just people are pitching me of this new fancy technology. Our technology, the modality like a hyperbaric or a red light or an ice bath, they’ve stayed the same. Maybe the technology of it being better or more enhanced is the same. But for me, I want everyone to know that anything that’s in Remedy is there because we know firsthand that it works and that everything’s been there for 10 years or something. If it were tested on patients and myself for over 10 years, something like that was new that was added to Soho and then in Boston was we have an AI robotic massage. Have I tested an AI robotic massage for 10 years? No, but I know I’ve tested massage for 10 years. So I think there’s ways there that maybe how it’s delivered or how the guest experiences it is different, but the modality is the same.

And for me, the evolution is how to make it more and more social because it isn’t just parties of two that want to come in. Sometimes it’s parties of 10 that want to come in. And initially our clubs weren’t designed to have reservations of 10. And also events have become a major part for our business where companies don’t only want to host parties over a dinner or an open bar. They want it at a social wellness club and they want it to be experiential and they want it to be healthy and different. So now that we know that our event business is becoming a major part of our business, I think it’s exciting to see also how we’re using the clubs for event spaces and making sure that we’re keeping that in mind as the clubs evolve.

SSR: Right. And what does that mean for space planning? Because you can’t do all events around ice baths, right? You need other spaces to let them hang out and be together.

JL: And I think it’s important. Only one small portion of our clubs are ice baths. We offer so much more. Some people don’t know. Some people are like, “Oh my god, you do saunas an ice bath?” I’m like, “Yeah, and here’s 15 other things.” But it is funny because, in the beginning, we were the first place to turn ice baths into a class format in a commercial setting and now it’s a standard or a staple and all of these new places open up. But we blew up on social media and we had hundreds of millions of views from our ice bath classes. So in the beginning everyone was like, “Oh, you’re just that ice bath company.” And I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no. We have so much more than that.” So sometimes when people are listening, it’s always either the ice bath Sauna company or they think that we’re a private members club. And I’m like, “We’re not a private club.” I think the word club makes people think that they can’t come. And I’m like, “No, our whole thing is we’ll never be a private members club because I’d never want to cut anyone out because our vision and mission is too big.”

SSR: Yeah, that’s really interesting. Okay, so tell us all the things that you do then. I guess break it down. Besides ice baths and saunas, what are some of the other major things that you have? And then let’s talk about your non-membership model too. I think that’s interesting.

JL: So we have your chiropractor that does chiro, physio, and Chinese medicine all in one. We have our acupuncturist that does acupuncture and cupping. We have naturopathic doctors that do full functional medicine. They also do our vitamin IVs, vitamin injections, and then occasionally we offer peptides where necessary. Then we have all of these testing that we call Meridian. It’s in our assessment suite where we capture up to 600 biomarkers from VO2 max testing to resting metabolic rate, to measuring the range of motion of every joint, stability, cognitive function, memory, all of these different tests, down to even doing your blood work to vitamins that are made in Switzerland that are specifically to you. And then we retest your blood work every quarter to show you that you’re actually absorbing your vitamins.

And then we have everything from hyperbaric chambers. We have these Remedy rollers, which are these automatic foam rolling devices with red light technology. We have red light. We have lymphatic. We have cryo. We have our AI robotic massage. We have private sauna suites. We have contrast suites. We have breath work ice bath studios. And then some of our clubs have atriums that we hold classes in, whether it’s breath work, sound bath, meditation. In Boston, we actually opened up doing yoga and floor Pilates for groups of 10. And that’s a new thing that we’re exploring. Because my background with working with people that were coming to me because they were in pain, a lot of people are getting injured from their workouts now, which your workout should fix the body, not break it.

And what would happen is we’d fix the patient and then they would go do their workouts again and then get broken again. And I’m like, I do think that a personal trainer should have the same schooling as a physical therapist because the body is really the intricate and it’s really complex and if you know how to get someone to move their body, you can do a lot, especially with anyone that’s in pain or has injuries. And I think I was like, you know what? We’re never going to be a gym, but maybe we have these programs that we oversee to make sure that they’re the safest movements. That way people can get their movement in while us knowing that it’s safe.

SSR: Interesting. So when people came to you broken, how do you take that and help? Let me start that over. Talk to a little bit about, before all this, what you need before you get broken? Because I feel like a lot of people go to chiropractor, go to acupuncture, myself included, I have hurt my shoulder and now I go to a chiropractor, now I go to acupuncture, but there’s so much more now about preventative than after. So is that also part of what Remedy can offer?

JL: For sure. Our whole thing is, obviously, prevention is so important because we don’t want to get sick, but I think we’ve also gotten so sick in the U.S. that the goal of being healthy is to not be sick. And I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Healthy is just not the absence of illness. Healthy is so much more than that. But yes, the goal of being healthy is primarily in the state that we’re in to make sure we don’t get sick. But then there’s the whole other half that the healthier you are, the more successful you’re going to be with everything that you’re trying to accomplish in life. Whether it’s achieving happiness or creativity or work, it doesn’t really matter.

But when you’re healthier, you perform better and you do better and you think clearer, and I think that’s really important, where I always thought it was so funny that all of my patients that were athletes, they weren’t taking care of themselves to not be sick. They were taking care of themselves to be the healthiest they could be so they could perform their best. And I was like, “Okay, well, most of us aren’t performing on a field, but we are performing in life.” It would make a lot of logical sense that, that would go hand-in-hand.

The sunken living room at Remedy Place Soho in New York; photo courtesy of Remedy Place

SSR: Okay, so let’s go back to the social aspect too. So how do you think about that social, and you mentioned that there’s sometimes 10 more people, but I guess how have you grown that from club one to club four?

JL: I think really making sure people understand what we mean by social. I think there’s so many different ways to go about social wellness or social self-care where there’s things like a bathhouse that you could go share a space with 150 people and you’re meeting new people, where Remedy is more social for you and your party size. So I always say it’s like going to a restaurant or going to a bar. A bar, you’re going to go meet a bunch of people that you don’t know, but at a restaurant you’re going to be around a lot of people where you’re going to be sitting with your table. And you might meet people or say hi as you’re crossing paths, and I think that is really, people are going to go to whatever they’re more attracted to. I think there’s different moments, whether it’s certain things you’re celebrating or just different routines that maybe you want to be around a lot of people and some things that maybe you want to just be around who you go with.

And I think it would be interesting in the future, because I think there’s going to be so many ways to go about it. Everyone’s like, what’s the right way to do this? And I’m like, it’s saying what’s the right way to build a restaurant or a hotel? There’s going to be a million different ways to go about it and people are going to resonate with whatever environment, community, and level of hospitality that they are attracted to.

SSR: Is there one thing you rethought after watching people? Do you watch people in the space and figure out how they’re using it or does your team, and has there been one interesting solution that you found that you were surprised by?

JL: Listen, we’re analyzing and looking at it. Every day I walk in the club, I’m like, how do I make this better? Because I think forward-thinking and thinking about future clubs, it’s hard to just walk through a space once. But what will we do differently for the next time? I’m like, “No, no, no. I need to see this in a million different ways and a million different times and see and evolve.” I would say we’ve done everything with each club. The newest one looked at all the areas that could be enhanced. I think there’s a lot that I want to do in the future that is a little bit more confidential. For us, it’s have to constantly innovate and think ahead and you can’t just think about, what do you want to do next year? You have to think about what am I going to do in 2027 or 2028?

And some of these developments are so far out and I think it’s important for us, and I think that’s really one of our unique traits is that, I’ve been working on Remedy since 2012 and we’ve been running clubs since 2019, it’s not just about creating a cool company. There’s so much that goes into all the learnings that you figure out through that time. And I think that is really important, because sometimes you think you just go throw a bunch of things in the space and make it beautiful and it works, and it’s actually not that easy. It’s really hard. You get it. Brick and mortar business and construction and you build things out, there’s a mistake, it’s like you can’t just go tear down the walls and start that area again because it’s expensive, but it’s interesting.

And I think also when I’ve worked for different companies as a consultant and seen that when you’re building out a hotel or something that’s four or five, six years away and trying to think of, oh, this is what our wellness is going to be in four or five, six years, I’m like, “Oh, you really need to know. You to be in the industry to understand what it could be, and then hope to get really lucky.”

But I think it’s hard to innovate something if you don’t actually see it firsthand over and over again. And I think that is something that we’re really proud of because I think that helps us keep progressing.

SSR: Have you thought about going into hotels or partnering with hotel companies?

JL: For sure. I think we’ve talked. We’ve spoken with a lot of different hotels and eventually I want to create a Remedy Hotel. But I think, yeah, it’s just either time, place, opportunity hasn’t been a right match yet. I’m being really patient. I don’t want to just throw the Remedy Place brand on someone else’s concept. Right now my job is to protect the brand at all costs, meaning that I shouldn’t ever compromise what we should be doing. If we’re going to do a hotel, we’re going to go do it and I want to do it the right way and that’s definitely not going to be the most affordable way to do it. But I would never just make a not as nice Remedy just to be in a whole bunch of hotels. So stay tuned with that.

SSR: TBD. I guess, too, as you grow, outside of the Remedy Hotel, where do you see Remedy Place in the next five years and how do you hope to grow it?

JL: I think, one, we’re going to continue to grow the clubs. I don’t want hundreds of these. I want 15 clubs and I want to build residential towers and hotels. I think us getting into the product space, we’re releasing an ice bath in a couple of months with Kohler that we’ve been working on for about two and a half years. What we’re finding is we can’t be everywhere, but we could supply everywhere. And also working with a lot of these manufacturers and companies, you realize that either they’re not set up for scale or it’s not the white glove service. If you’re going to spend that six figures on a product for somebody, they’re expecting white glove service like they would get with any other six figure product that they’re buying. And I think there’s limitations there.

The companies to date of these big modalities, there’s a lot to take into consideration whether it’s like they look extremely medical. No one wants a crazy looking medical thing in their home or in their beautiful hotel. So there’s a lot that needs to happen there. And we just saw that, okay, we know how to design, we have a trusted brand, we have learned a lot and we know how to make a lot of these things way better. And now we’re just partnering with the top manufacturers to then create the best products. That way we can have a perfect compliment. I think, with Kohler, for example, I was never going to make the best ice bath in the world by myself. There’s a lot of money, there’s manufacturing, there’s engineering, there’s a lot that goes into that. But I knew what our strengths were and it was the perfect compliment.

I think two brands coming together and making something phenomenal. And I can confidently say that it is the best ice bath in the world because we looked at every ice bath. We had over 10 years of data of how to make each thing better. And it’s the Kohler name and the Kohler manufacturing and whether it’s warranties or customer service or installation, you can guarantee that their infrastructure is very different than anyone else out there. And we’re just really excited to have a partner like that, especially on a product like this.

SSR: Is there one thing that you always do as part of your wellness? You have all these tricks and tools at your fingertips? What’s your health and wellness ritual? Is there something that you do every day?

JL: We might need an eight-hour documentary for that, but I always say, because this is a common question, I always say the most important thing is my program and plan won’t work for everyone else. And I think the first thing that everyone can do is start to understand themselves. I always say your body’s your number one asset and most people don’t even know how it works, nevermind how to take care of it. So the first thing that everyone needs to do before they start anything is start learning about their body. It could be as simple as a wearable or it could be as complex as doing functional medicine on a regular basis and doing their full blood work. I like to do it all. I think whether it’s my blood work that I do every six months, whether it’s my wearable that’s on my arm that I’m tracking every day, whether it’s my mattress, whether it’s the quarterly test that I do in Remedy with my VO2 max to range of motion to all of cognitive function memory, that gives me a benchmark of how healthy I am, what are my areas of improvements.

And then also allowing me to set goals and parameters of what I need to focus on, because I use everything that’s in Remedy and that’s why they’re there, but how often in the frequency and how I change it always evolves and it should never be always the same. Because my stressors or my lifestyle or my travel schedule or the workload that I have, all of these things change. And I think I do weekly, monthly, and quarterly audits of my life, and then with my data figure out, all right, how do I create the next level of routines to make sure that I’m prepared? Because I know with working these 100 hour work weeks for now, my whole adult life I feel like I’ve worked around the clock, the only way I would be able to do that is if I was my healthiest self. And I think even at the most stressed moments of my life, I force myself to be the most healthy because that was the only way that I could successfully perform.

SSR: Yeah, makes sense. I guess there’s a lot of noise out there in the wellness space right now, so how do you all stay on top of what’s happening? And then also, how do you see it continuing to evolve? We talked about how it’s evolved the last couple of five, 10 years. How do you see the wellness space, especially where you’re playing and in hospitality changing or evolving, I hate using the word change, but evolving over the next five years?

JL: Listen, I think it’s going to become more and more social and I think it’s going to become more and more holistic. I think people don’t want to have to do medication if they don’t have to be. They don’t want to get surgery if they don’t have to. And I think the shift is going to be from the goal of not being sick and being preventative to thinking about health as a tool for your success. And I think that is really where we’re going to see health being integrated into every aspect of our life, whether it’s an actual modality or whether it’s something that we don’t even know is enhancing us while we’re experiencing or interacting with it. And in the hospitality space, there’s so much. If we went through my business extension ideas and all of these things that I would do for a hotel or for residences or anything, there’s so many opportunities right now.

Because everything can be done better and there’s a lot of things that also need a lot of correction, and I just think that the future is going to be health and AI. These are the two industries that are exploding because AI, whether you like it or hate it, it’s taking over and it’s going to keep evolving. And then health, I think that we’re going to be able to save a lot of people’s lives with advancements in AI and I think also within the education. I’m telling you that the biggest thing that I think is missing in our healthcare system is education, because people don’t know anything about their body or how to take care of it. AI is going to help make everything much more accessible. And that’s exciting for me because I think you don’t need to go to Remedy to be healthy. The foundational pillars of health are a lot simpler than we think, but people just don’t know them.

I do think it’s going to be really interesting. And I see already the science catching up on alternative medicine to show people, as a first line of intervention, why wouldn’t you try something alternative? It sounds so crazy to me now. When I was starting my program and everyone’s like, “Alternative medicine is fake doctors and they can’t fix anything and there’s no science,” sometimes in school I was so science-backed and I’ve always been, I’m like, “I don’t get how people can say there’s no science here because I’m seeing it work over and over again.” And I think it’s finally having a level of, not only awareness, but I think appreciation where more people are way more open to it. And I think once they’re open to it and then they’re like, “Oh wow, this works,” they’re like, “Why haven’t I done this?” That was the common story in my practice. People were like, “Why doesn’t everyone have someone like you?” Or, “Why have I never done this before?” And I’m like, “I don’t know. It just wasn’t how our healthcare system was trained.”

The lounge at Remedy Place Soho; photo courtesy of Remedy Place

I think you go to medical school to study medicine. I learned a little bit about pharmacology, but I learned mostly about the body. And while they’re learning about biochemistry or pharmaceuticals, I was learning about biochemistry of nutrition. And I think, you think of the problems that we face on a day-to-day basis, they’re all mostly fixed through lifestyle changes and just learning how to be healthy. But I think what’s interesting is just, I used to have so many patients that would be so upset. They would have very amazing doctors all over the world and they would spend a lot and they’re like, “Well, why isn’t so-and-so telling me these things?” Or, “Why is this the first time I’m hearing it?” And I’m like, “Well, they weren’t trained. They didn’t go to school to learn how to make you healthy. They learned how to take care of you when you’re sick.”

And then I think the level set, I always say, if someone’s unhappy, it’s because expectations aren’t clear. And I was like, “So I think if you’re looking at how to be healthy, that’s where you need other health professionals to teach you that. Don’t come to me if you just got an accident or if there’s an emergency.” But I think there’s a lot of things that if there was an emergency after you do have that intervention that no matter what, you should always be at least co-managed with something alternative, even if you have to go the traditional route.

SSR: Yeah, that’s really interesting. And also, speaking of education, you guys have set up a framework which is an educational platform. Do you want to talk about that and how that speaks or helps continue your pillars of what you believe?

JL: Yeah. It’s something that will slowly build over time. I think for me what was really important is Remedy is a luxury experience and I’m like, how do we use the brand as a platform for education? And that’s the end goal is, how do I make this company as big as possible so that we can be the most trusted source that people can go to, to learn how to take care of themselves? And that’s where, do we do a blog? Do we do a podcast? And so many of these things are so crowded. I was like, listen, I want to just give people lessons or things to work on that they can apply anywhere no matter what they have access to or what their financial status is. And just really learning about how to change their thought process, how to analyze their environments, how to strengthen their relationships.

There’s so many things that aren’t traditional when people think about health and I think it’s a starting point that we kicked off last year, and it’s something that as we’re able to grow and invest more into it, it’s something that I’m really passionate about because, like I said, it’s just about education. Education’s what we need to, really. Every brand, every company, every platform, it’s just making sure that we’re sharing the right information. Because like you said earlier, there’s a lot of information out there and it’s crowded and it’s confusing and people don’t know what to trust. And when you’re in a vulnerable state and then you feel like I don’t know who to trust or what to read, it’s really complicated. And one person’s solution is not everyone’s solution.

And I think that’s the other thing that’s, probably, you’ll notice in the next five years, is everything needs to be individualized. Yes, there’s generic things that will help everyone, but when you’re on a specific program, whether it’s for your supplementation or your diet, what you should be doing for your self-care, there’s always things that are going to make you better, but if you’re going to put in the time or effort or the investment, you probably want to be as precise as possible to you.

SSR:  I guess my question is, with all the noise out there, besides coming to Remedy Place or your other things, how do you tell people, I guess what you said earlier, figure out, get a baseline for yourself? Somebody can be like, “Get mad, then you need this supplement or this supplement. Why aren’t you taking magnesium?” There’s always something out there that people are saying. But I guess, to your point, just come and get a baseline and figure out what’s best for you.

JL: Just learn and listen to your body. The healthier that you become, the more your body tells you. It gives you signs for what you need to do. If you’re eating something and you’re always bloated, it’s probably something that’s causing a little inflammation while you’re eating. If you feel lethargic after your meal, probably something also that is causing inflammation that’s working against you. I think also it’s even when someone’s in pain, usually people just ignore it or they don’t focus on it. Oh, it just will go away. And I’m like, pain, your body can always get in a pain-free position, but then you’re going to be in all these antalgic positions that then you start having a pain somewhere else. And I’m like, “Just pay attention and be proactive and try to be inquisitive and learn.”

SSR: Speaking of learning, what has been your biggest takeaway or lesson learned since you’ve started Remedy Place?

JL: Wow. I think a couple of things. I think in the beginning it was always be okay with being misunderstood because everything that we were doing wasn’t traditional. And if I did listen to other people, I probably wouldn’t have done a lot of the things that I did, which wouldn’t have made Remedy as special. And then I think the other lesson that obviously any entrepreneur or anyone that’s opening brick and mortar, it’s challenging. There’s a lot of resistance and learning to be uncomfortable and look at it as a positive because when you’re uncomfortable or you have to overcome your environment, you have to change and you have to evolve. And I think the best part about Remedy is, not only is it my passion and what I love and that it helps people, but it’s continually pushing me professionally and personally to adapt and learn how to thrive in different scenarios and different challenges.

So I think I’m so grateful because it allows me to grow as a human. And I just turned 35 this year and to be able to have something that constantly challenges you, to have constant things to learn from and to add more and more tools to your tool belt, it’s the coolest gift that you could ever ask for. And I think you could always look at it as, oh my God, it’s terrible, it’s so stressful. Or how do you do that? Or you’re like, no, this is actually helping me develop and, while I’m here in this lifetime, I want to be the best version that I can be. And I think you only fail if you give up so just keep going and try to do your best. And that’s it.

SSR: . It’s a great place to stop, but I also was curious, too, you were in practice and now that you’ve taken yourself probably out of that, so people can’t come to you, they can come to you, but you’re not the main person that is seeing patients, a, do you miss that? And B, how do you hire you, you know what I mean? Or hire for or other versions of you to make sure everyone’s getting the best treatment? Because that must be a huge part of your process.

JL: Yeah, I think to start, what I realized in practice was no matter how long my wait list was or how many people I tried to squeeze in each week, there was a limitation. And my dream was to leave a much bigger impact than just help X amount of people per year. The dream was always, I want to change globally how we approach our health. And one of my patients, a lot of my patients became my mentors, but it was a year in and she was like, “Jon, you have such a big vision, but how are you going to change healthcare if you’re only seeing one patient at a time?” And that really stuck with me. And I think when I opened Remedy to Transition, I tried to still see patients while building the business. I could be on an investment call or doing a design or handling something internally with the team and then be with the patient and then have to go back to marketing or PR.

Coming in and out of being in the zone of treating a patient and then work mode, the guests would never know, but I didn’t feel like I was being as present. And then I’m on a plane every week, so if someone really needed me to do a full rehab program, I wasn’t the most reliant because I didn’t even know my schedule. So one, I miss it so much, and when I do get to work with patients or I am doing, I still do favors for close friends or someone that it happens and I’m like, wow, you missed the instant gratification of seeing how much you can help somebody in the moment. And with Remedy, I just hear about it and I see it and I see the movement happening and I have to trust it, but I’m not sitting there and having an emotional cry with a patient that’s finally better. Sometimes I do miss it a lot, but I think for the greater good and for the bigger mission, Remedy is going to allow me to do a lot more impact than just my private practice.

And then, for the doctors, I think everyone has their own special niche, and I think for us it’s important that their skillset and they’re highly educated and they’re good at their craft, but it’s also about allowing everyone else to have their moment to shine with their uniqueness and personality. And I think there’s not one way to treat everybody, so having a wide array of different doctors that have different thought processes is always great to add more and more of them to the team, and that’s something that we really are going to lean even more into in the future.

SSR: Well, amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. I can’t wait to see as you continue to evolve and create more clubs.

JL: Well, I really appreciate it and thank you for the opportunity.

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Digital platform Art Blocks will host its fifth annual Art Blocks Marfa Weekend this October in Texas. For the generative festival’s 2024 edition, international studio and gallery Trame presented a lineup of four multidisciplinary artists using algorithmic technology to create standout pieces.

A.A. Murakami

The duo known as A.A. Murakami first met as architecture students in London, where they shared a passion for experimentation. In the years since, their collaboration has yielded artistic explorations of materials so ephemeral—think bubbles and fog—that it’s a provocation to categorize them as materials at all.

A.A. Murakami’s A Thousand Layers of Stomach takes inspiration from Asari clams

Debuting at Art Blocks last year, A Thousand Layers of Stomach engages more tangible elements, composing a wool tapestry woven in perpetuity through automation technology. Inspiration was drawn from Asari clams, whose distinctive patterns echoed an algorithmic uniformity A.A. Murakami cofounder Alexander Groves hoped to transform into a textile. “They had a look that reminded me of weaving,” he says.

Groves and his partner Azusa Murakami drafted mathematical formulas to mirror the patterns through generative code. They also sourced a 1980s knitting machine, which was deconstructed and rebuilt with a panel of dials inviting users to add human variations into the stream. “Whenever you try and mimic nature, I find it deeply humbling because the sophistication of even the simplest thing is so vastly superior to anything we’ve created in terms of what it can do on such a scale,” Groves adds. “You look at something as simple as a clamshell, but you think about the sophistication of life.”

Fingacode

The Cameroonian-British artist dubbed Fingacode bridges backgrounds in art and software engineering to guide a practice of both function and fun. Distinguished by a range of color, texture, and depth, his pieces inject humanity into the sturdy perfections of code. For the work he showcased at Art Blocks, Fingacode imbued imperfections into his code by applying height mapping to his color palette, resulting in an undulating landscape of artful disorder. “Algorithmic decisions can’t make errors. I wanted to break out of that grid and have a human touch,” Fingacode says. “I wanted it to be created by a machine but still feel human.”

He continues to explore identity in his textiles as well as the fashion concepts he drafts, but his technological prowess is not one he believes separates him from other artists. “My generative projects are essentially sketches. I’ll start off with a simple for loop [a repeat of a block of code]—something to get an idea on the screen. Then it evolves over time,” he says. “I’ve skipped the manual process and gone straight into the technological.”

Linda Dounia

Senegalese-Lebanese artist Linda Dounia embraces a wide range of media from pastels to video. But when she intersects craft and technology something truly groundbreaking emerges. “I received a comment early on that some of my work, especially work that either used code or an AI model, had a textile quality,” points out Dounia, who currently resides in Dakar, Senegal.

Dounia’s childhood home in Mbour, Senegal inspired a new rug design presented at Art Blocks. “Whenever I think about my hometown, I think about the buildings,” she says. “I wanted to play into code strength, which is the ability to create forms that are structural and mathematical.” Even the code she created to achieve her new design evokes an architectural quality in its very composition. “Once you go from code to threads, organic shapes sort of force themselves onto the design,” she says. “If you look at it in this digital form, it’s so mathematical, so angular. Then once it gets turned into a rug, it softens.”

Machine-tufted and refined by hand, Dounia’s exploration of textile brings a welcome sense of collaboration to a practice often characterized by solitude. “Code shares a lot with textile, but it was amazing to see it through the artisan lens,” she adds. “They understood it in such an analogous way that felt very validating.”

This article appears in HD’s April 2025 issue.

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Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I am here with Caroline and Sabri from Farouki Farouki. Thanks so much for joining me today. How are you?

Caroline Farouki: Great. Thanks so much for having us.

SSR: Okay, so we always start at the beginning. Where did you grow up? And maybe Caroline, we’ll start with you.

CF: I grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana, so Southwest Louisiana, the heart of Cajun country.

SSR: Amazing. And what were you like as a kid? 

CF: I was typical type A nerd, but big soccer player, captain of the soccer team, travel soccer, and just straight A student, total perfectionist. And yeah, those traits I think have not left me as much as I wish they had, but I had a wonderful childhood. It’s a great place to grow up.

SSR: Any inkling that design would be your career? Were you creative or were you influenced by anything?

CF: Yeah, definitely. I was fortunate enough to grow up in an amazing house designed by A. Hays Town, which if you’re not from Louisiana, you might not know who that is, but he was a pioneer in reusing materials. So the house I grew up in had reused bricks and reused timber, and it definitely was inside outside living. And I think both my parents loved collecting antiques, so a lot of my childhood memories are coming to New Orleans and shopping in all these French antique stores. So I think it was both of my parents, even though neither one of them are designers, they both love architecture and interiors. And so I was definitely around it, and my best childhood memories are making tents or pretend vet hospitals with my sister. And then I guess it was middle school, I took over my brother’s room and my parents let me decorate it. And it was the funnest thing ever. I definitely was surrounded by it and was interested in it from an early age.

Hotel Henrietta in New Orleans; photo by Alex Marks

SSR: Did you end up going to school for design?

CF: Yes. So I went to college and I studied architecture for undergrad. And about three quarters of the way through the program I realized, or I started questioning if it was right for me. Some of architecture school can be really technical and I was missing, I wanted to talk about lighting and materials and it was way more technical at times than that, and just so intense. So I ended up switching to environmental studies because I always had an interest in the environment, more of the sustainability aspect of it. So my actual undergrad degree is in environmental studies with a minor in architecture, even though I spent more time in architecture than environmental studies.

SSR: You kept both of them?

CF: Yes, yes. And then I went back to school for interior design. I went to Savannah College of Art and Design for Masters of Fine Arts in Interior Design after undergrad. Yeah.

SSR: Amazing. Okay, so Sabri, let’s go with you. Turn it over to you. Where did you grow up?

Sabri Farouki: I’m a bit of a weird one. It’s all over the place. I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. My dad is in oil, so my dad is British with Palestinian heritage, which is what the Arabic name is from. My mom is Polish, super Polish, to this day, sounds very Polish. People ask, where are you from? And she always says from Poland, but I was first generation American, born in Tulsa where my dad was for oil, so I just kind of grew up this American kid in Tulsa, Oklahoma with immigrant mom and dad. They eventually got their citizenship, and then we were all a happy American family. So that’s where I started. And then when I was a little bit older also for my dad’s work, we moved to Egypt where I lived for all of middle school and high school.

SSR: That’s cool.

SF: I went to a really cool American school, yeah. It was very cool. There were lots of other oil families and embassy families and international kids, so I was kind of this oil kid that moved around a bit. And yeah, that’s kind of how I started.

SSR: Yeah. Were you creative or any kind of early inclination from your end?

SF: I would say the art classes really started to become a thing that I enjoyed in middle school and high school, so maybe not so early. I think when I was really young growing up in Tulsa, it was Legos and forts and playing outside and things. Neither of my parents are particularly art inclined, so there wasn’t a lot of that around. But yeah, it was really more through school I think. And then in high school, we had an elective that was drafting. We started with hand drafting machine and kind of a double-sided ruler thing that you could rotate. So strictly just as a cool thing to learn, we had that as an elective in Cairo. And I took it, and then took AutoCAD. Again, not really about design, but more just another form of art in a way that was offered at our school.

SSR: And how did your time in Egypt, and did you guys travel over there as well? How has that influenced you and do you see that coming through in some of your work?

SF: Yeah. Yes, we traveled a lot. It was great. Whether it was for school sports and things, we got to travel places or just my family would use living abroad as a little place to get to Europe or other places in the Middle East. Yeah, we did travel a lot. I think the way I guess it’s probably influenced me or us is just maybe just a really open mind about what a building can be or what a restaurant can look like or what a shop is. It wasn’t just like if I had just stayed in Tulsa my whole life or we were in Houston for a little bit too, it would’ve been, well, a store is the Galleria or a house is like a Houston house. But I think when you get out of a place like that and you’re in the Middle East or you’re in Europe, or I think you realize that a home is lots of different things. And a shop could be a souk or a market, and it’s not just a shopping mall. So yeah, it’s probably the simplest way to explain how living abroad affected our design.

SSR: And then you came back to the states for school?

SF: We had college counselors, just like a private school in the U.S., and they told us about all the different American schools. And so yeah, the majority of Americans at that American school came back to the U.S. for school, and so did some other international students that kind of piggybacked and came to American schools too. And then at school is actually where Caroline and I met in St. Louis.

SSR: Now I see. Okay, now it makes sense. Okay, I got it. All right. So you’re in St. Louis, and then also you did Columbia University too?

SF: Yes. Yeah. After Washington University, when Caroline went to SCAD, I went to Columbia for my master’s in architecture.

SSR: Long distance relationship.

CF: Yeah. And we’ve left out a scandalous part that Sabri was my first architecture TA, so I was a freshman and he was a senior. He was dating somebody else, and we didn’t start dating until five years later.

SSR: So you knew each other and then got together later?

CF: Yeah. So when I was a freshman, all the freshmen had a big crush on him. He was the sweet quiet guy, and he made me and one of my friends a mixtape. That was the biggest deal. It had Moby and all these other cool drawing jams on it, so that’s where it began.

SSR: I was having a conversation the other day of how much we miss mixtapes and how much time we used to spend. Why did we give this mixtapes CD to Caroline and this other woman?

SF: It really was, I think innocent about this drawing class. We had a great professor. I had him and then Caroline had him three years later who just really inspired us to think about how to draw what we were drawing and just made a really cool vibe in the class when we would do whatever we were working on. And I was his TA, I think at the time. And so it was sort of to say, Hey, these are all the jams that we’re listening to in Bob’s class. Keep it up. You guys are doing great in class here. If you want to listen to this music when you’re drawing in your dorm room, here’s the CD of it.

CF: We totally read into it differently, just FYI. Nobody’s ever asked Sabri that.

SSR: He’s really going to kill me.

SF: Honestly. I do remember specifically why I made this big CD for you guys, but you were some of the best students in the class for sure.

SSR: I love this. Okay, you went to Columbia University, and then you both went to New York and worked at different firms. So Caroline, you’re at Pompeii and AvroKO, right?

CF: That’s right. Yeah, right out of school. I really wanted to be in New York, and Sabri had actually tried out Seattle for six or eight months before I graduated, but it was the recession of, I guess, when was that Sabri? You moved there in 2009. And not to put words in your mouth, but it was just impossible for him to get a job out there. No, architecture firm was hiring, and yet Home Depot also wouldn’t hire him because he was overqualified with a graduate degree from Columbia. So he thankfully wanted to move back to New York when I was graduating, and I really wanted to move there as well. So I just kind of networked, sent out a ton of applications and landed at Pompei A.D. That was my first job up there.

SSR:  And what did you learn from both of those firms? I mean, they’re both doing really innovative work and so I’m guessing you touched retail and F&B and all those kind of things.

CF: Yeah, so I started, right, Pompei A.D. I mean it’s not really around anymore, but they did some incredible work with Anthropology and Urban Outfitters, right at their conception. So Ron Pompei was an amazing person to learn from, but essentially after working there for a few years, both Sabri and I were feeling kind of burnt out of our jobs. And we actually took six months off. His parents were living in Singapore at the time, and we were pre kids, such an easy time, late twenties to be able to just take off and travel for six months throughout Southeast Asia.

And as we were traveling around there, we were both so inspired by design over there. I think what Sabri was talking about growing up in Egypt, having a lot more freedom of thought about what a house is or what a shop is, when you’re in Singapore, it’s like, holy cow, they really reach here in design. And so I did a ton of sketching and at the end of my time there, I really wanted to work at AvroKO. Since graduating, I really wanted to work there. And so I sent them my sketchbook, and I think that was different enough to catch their attention. And I actually interviewed at their Bangkok office.

And basically, got the job in New York because I had interviewed in Bangkok. And I just adored working there. They have incredible projects. The leadership is really great. The team itself is amazing, and I learned so much from concept through construction documents. It really was a dream job. But we had our first child up in New York and just decided working long hours and a long commute, we wanted to spend more time with him, and that’s what drove us to move home.

SSR: Before we get to moving home and launching your firm, Sabri, talk a little bit about your career. You worked at some incredible firms as well, Diller Scofidio and Bjarke Ingels. So talk about what you learned from that and some of your key lessons or takeaways.

SF: Yeah, I just feel so fortunate having gone to Columbia and being in New York, just exposed a lot of us to these opportunities to intern early on or to meet some professors at some of these amazing renowned New York firms. And for me, the first one was Sharp Architects, and that was just by way of someone who I was TA for who knew the principals really well, they were looking for someone for the summer. So I spent a summer when I was still at Columbia interning there, ended up working there full-time afterwards. And then later on, like you mentioned, a good friend was at Diller Scofidio and Renfro. And so I ended up taking a job there, and then, yeah, later, a few years after that, Bjarke Ingels Group.

So in a way it wasn’t planned at all, but in hindsight, it’s this crazy trifecta, at least for me, of my interests of these celebrity firms. I learned something different at each of them, but the thing that I took away from all of them I think is just to always challenge ourselves to think differently, to think about architecture and design differently, to do something new, to do something innovative. And it doesn’t have to be always… Our work isn’t I think necessarily as avant-garde or innovative always as some of those firms try to be, but we at least always try to have some part of it, which is kind of new or rethinking something. And I think that’s the main thing I took away from that is don’t just settle for what people expect or what people think design is.

Hotel Henrietta in New Orleans; photo by Alex Marks

SSR: Love it. All right, so you had your first baby, you move home, and so then you decided to launch your own firm. Did you have an idea of what you wanted to create or like you said, was it a necessity or something you guys had been talking about?

CF: Okay, so prior to starting our firm, we had only worked on one thing together, which was this tiny competition to design the backdrop of a fashion show at SCAD. And we didn’t even win it. Yeah, I don’t know where we got the confidence to think that it was going to work, but I think Sabri is a really independent minded person and I think being an entrepreneur is in his blood or it’s just what he needs to do. I’m definitely the more safe person. If it wasn’t for him, I never would’ve started our own thing, but I think probably starting our own firm was probably the only way to get him to move to Louisiana. So it was a good balance between, okay, I’ll give you starting a firm together, which was really scary to me if you’ll move to Louisiana.

And so we tried to do a little bit of networking when the idea first started, and there was one developer that we were introduced to down in New Orleans who had actually recently moved from New York, and we just had some mutual friends and connections. And we hit it off with him, and he basically had a little bit of work to give us right when we moved down here and we just started hustling.

I had 50 coffees the first month that we moved down here, but we really just decided we want to be in New Orleans and we want to try to start our own firm. And within two weeks, we made the decision to leave. AvroKO was asking me: Do you want the same desk that you had when you come back in two weeks? And then all of a sudden I was like, we’re going to move.

SF: I was going to say as commonly used as it is, if there was a slogan for our thinking when we came down here, it was big fish, small pond. For those couple years, I think it could have been tattooed on our foreheads that that was our mentality is that we were going to tell everyone that we could where we worked and that we were in New York and we were at SCAD and we were at AvroKO. Without being too showy about it, we were trying to leverage it.

And I think to the right people who maybe were also ex-New York expats or ex-LA expats who saw design a little bit differently and thought a little bit differently than maybe was really common here, I think it really resonated. And they said, okay, I’m a developer and I just moved here from this place, and I’m trying to do something a little extra with my projects. Well, these two will get it because they had this experience. And so I think that was our strategy. And I think even to this day, I think it still kind of makes sense to certain people. It’s like, okay, they’ll probably get it. All the places they’ve been and the places they’ve worked, I think that. Yeah. Does that make sense? Big fish, small pond. Yeah.

SSR: Yeah, 100%. It makes complete sense. And I think maybe that made it easier too to jump?

CF: We asked ourselves if we were to move down there, who would we want to work for? And there are some really great firms here, but just nobody that was doing the kind of work that we wanted to do, or at least that I wanted to do, hospitality as a number one focus. And our project started really small at first, probably the first six months we were making $2,000 billable. But the way that our firm has grown has really been organic in that we got a small restaurant here in New Orleans and they had a low budget, but we sunk it into this really cool one wall in the restaurant, and that got us a lot of attention. And it just spread by word of mouth that chef recommended us to somebody else. And so it’s been a really wonderful slow, organic growth trajectory.

SSR: Is there something you wish you’d know then that you know now, or was ignorance kind of bliss?

SF: I think it’s pretty easy to think back to the size that we thought we could be or wanted to be. And I think year one it was like, oh, I bet in five years we could be 20 people or 30 people. I think we thought a lot about how big of an office we wanted to be, and I think we compared it a lot to our past offices.

And I think the places I had worked, it’s funny, each one of them, of the three, I was at them for a big expansion, kind of a big growing period and saw them become big studios, whereas they were maybe smaller before. This is just to say that I think because of that, we both agreed we didn’t want to be some massive thing. And I think Caroline too had seen AvroKO at its size, but I think we were still saying, oh, maybe we’ll be like an office of 30 people or something. But I think now we’re both, we’re very happy being very small. That’s one thing that I think we feel differently about now than we did then. I don’t know that… Yeah.

CF: I’m trying to think of if I could teach us something back then. I feel like it’s taken a few years to figure out how to work together as a couple. We’re parents, we own a business together and we’re married, and that’s a lot to figure out. And it’s taken a long time and I wish I could have just been like, hey, Caroline, think about X, Y, and Z from the beginning instead of struggling through the hardest parts of working together with your spouse.

SSR: I know. Does it ever shut off? Do you ever have to say we’re going to leave business at business and come home and be there?

CF: Yeah, we’re really good about that. I think very early on, as soon as we had an office outside of our house, I think we realized early that we have to. When we leave the office, do not talk about work. Our focus is on us and it’s on the kids, and we got to leave everything at work. And thankfully, we were totally on the same page about that because it would take over our lives, the stress of it would.

SSR: Do you, Sabri, do more architecture and Caroline, you do more interior design or how do you guys kind of separate? And then I’m going to ask you, Caroline, what is Sabri good at and vice versa. What are your strengths and weaknesses if you want?

SF: That definitely was the plan from day one was that we would have both architecture and interiors projects, and ideally we would have both. We would have full service. It took a while for that to happen, but it did happen and we’re super proud of it. A few years ago, the same developer who Caroline mentioned, who is part of the reason we’re down here, brought us on to do a 40-key ground up boutique hotel on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, which is our main historic thoroughfare here.

So that was what I at least had been waiting for. So we did the building, and then Caroline did her magic on the interiors. And then what’s really nice is Caroline, while I’m looking at the facade and the massing of the thing and the fenestration and the columns and the arcade, Caroline’s definitely there as a sounding board for all that. And then when we go on the inside, I’m doing my part. She’s leading the interiors that I’m a sounding board for her. And then would you agree, Caroline, when we have strictly an interiors project… Caroline, why don’t you explain how that works?

CF: I’m definitely leading the interior design. I’m very heavy-handed in concept through design development, and Sabri is definitely there as a sounding board and big picture ideation. And he’s really good about pushing us to be more innovative or to think about the spaces more architecturally, not just materials, furniture, and lighting. But then I basically hand it off at the end of design development. All of our projects are designed in Rhino and so by the end of design development, we should have everything “designed.” And Sabri is detailing and documenting it and coordinating with all the consultants. He’s really acting as the architect at that point, and I’m handing it off to him. And then I’m kind of in spec world along with our team.

SSR: You said you’re small, but how big?

CF: There are four of us, including us.

SSR: That’s great though. Nimble?

CF: The biggest we’ve been is six, and even at six we decided it’s more managing than designing. And we want it to be designing more than managing.

SF: Our goal is basically to produce, whether it’s the design presentation or CDs, and not let anybody know and have it be like, oh, well this is 100 page, 100 sheets set for this drawing for this thing. It’s like, oh, well probably there’s a project manager and a few interns. And it’s like, no, we just banged that out ourselves.

There’s something super efficient about it, which is a little bit of a lesson learned I think from my past. I don’t know if Caroline would agree, but some of the things that I would see in New York where you have these whopper fees, probably like tens of millions of dollars for projects and they can afford all these different levels of people, but it could be potentially really inefficient. Lots of ideas, good ideas were being wasted and things were being changed, and time wasn’t always being spent super well. So there’s something nice about being efficient.

SSR: Well, and developers get you, right? So you’re not passing it down. I hear that a lot that the biggest problem is when you get wooed by a principal, and then you get a team and that principal falls off and you’re like, wait, the wooing is gone or why you went there is no longer a part of your project, which not all firms, but it’s nice that they get you. Okay, so back to you two. So Caroline, what is Sabri’s greatest strength and then vice versa?

CF: I think his greatest strength is number one, pushing us. I kind of mentioned this already, but number one, pushing us to be more innovative and to think about spaces architecturally and not just as a series of flat planes with beautiful finishes and furniture. And then on the more technical side, I think he knows how to execute a project to a level of detail where it just sings. And it’s one of those things where a design could be executed without that eye of detail and just be like an okay project, or it could be executed with Sabri’s level of detail and it’s amazing. And it’s those little things that he catches and he cares about that make it just so much more beautiful than if I had detailed it.

SSR: All right, Sabri, you’re up.

SF: Caroline has many amazing attributes. I would say Caroline sees space and design. I think she’s able to see many different layers of things all at the same time, whether it’s tone, color, light, softness, focal point, I don’t know, any number of things that could suss out what’s working, what’s not working in a way that at least my mind doesn’t. I think she can kind of pretty quickly say, this is why this feels good, or this would make this feel good. I think she’s able to see it all separately, and then put it all together in a really unique way.

A little bit more specific to that, and it’s just a really unique part of our process is Caroline’s also a beautiful drawer and it’s a big part of our SD presentation is Caroline’s hand sketches, which are a really kind of pivotal point in the process where you could start to freak a client out because you could start to get a little bit too real and they could start to get nervous, and Caroline’s drawings at that stage in our process, I think really secure a level of trust and bring a lot of joy into the design process. So kind of a holistic way of seeing space, and then a very specific technical thing. Caroline has, I think are two of her best assets.

SSR: I love that because I feel like the art of drawing has been lost a little bit, right? Technology.

SF: Yeah. I think both of us are obsessed about drawing, actually, whether it’s Caroline’s perspectives or I have a running list, I don’t really, but every time someone says who drew this? These are really beautiful details. I’ll always look at Carolina and smile. Yeah, even if it’s a lighting fabricator who needs to understand a custom chandelier, I’m obsessing. There’s a very old school way of thinking as an architecture student, but there’s five different line weights in this drawing of this chandelier, which is going to show this fabricator that this material is in front of this material or this is for seating. I think I really do believe that that kind of obsession leads to him understanding it better and leads to him making a better product.

SSR: So you mentioned the Hotel Henrietta, which was the culmination of doing architecture and interiors, which is beautiful. Was there one project that was your big break or helped you to get your firm to where you wanted it to be or get to even this project that was both?

CF: Yeah. I think the Hotel Indigo in Grand Cayman is a giant one for us. It actually opened at the same time as Hotel Henrietta, but we started that project in March of 2020, which was the beginning of COVID, and it really kept us excited and invigorated through COVID, but it opened the door to a ton of work in the Caribbean with that one client who just keeps giving us amazing project after amazing project.

And we’re also doing a project in Mexico with somebody else. And I think just having the work in the Caribbean gives people a level of comfort that you understand humidity and heat and outdoors, and it’s definitely become a space that we are very excited and comfortable in. And also the scale of Hotel Indigo was giant. It was like 280-keys, or at least giant for us, 280-keys plus several different F&B venues and lobby, pool deck, pool bar. So to be able to prove to people that we’re a tiny firm, but we can do really big projects at a high level has really helped us.

Hotel Indigo Grand Cayman; photo courtesy of Farouki Farouki

SSR: Yeah, must have been crazy for your small team to have two openings at the same time.

CF: Yes. That was a very stressful April of 2024.

SSR: Crazy, crazy. Okay, I love that. Is there one project on the boards that you guys are really excited about? I know it’s hard to pick your favorite child, but you probably can.

CF: Okay. Let me think. I’d be curious, Sabri, what you would say. Let me think. I’m actually really excited about, we’re redoing the spa at the Kimpton in Grand Cayman, and I’m really excited about it. The scope is quite small. We’re basically redoing the lobby and a nail salon and a hair salon and then just some little refreshes throughout. But I really love what we did with the existing space, and I think it’s also proven to me that it’s really good for the environment to not just start from scratch everywhere and to be just as excited about a renovation as I am about a new build. Yeah, I’m really excited about that. Sabri, what about you? What’s your favorite current project right now? You’re on mute.

SF: Yeah, I was trying. I don’t know how much to mention the brand or not mention the brand. So I’ll mention it, Stacy, and then you use your expertise in the field whether or not you want to edit it out. But Caroline, for me, it would be the Kimpton St. Louis. We’re doing just the restaurant, just the specialty restaurant at a new Kimpton St. Louis. The restaurant’s on the second floor. And so we thought a lot and a lot about how to make it really compelling from the street and it’s got this amazing, if we can pull it off and it makes it all the way, this really cool vaulted ceiling that I think back to the architectural thinking on interiors projects, I think that one is going to feel really… I think it has the potential to be really iconic and to really be striking so yeah.

SSR: That’s where I met you guys with Ave on the show.

CF: Yes, yes, that’s right.

SSR: I was like it’s going to come to me.

SF: Caroline didn’t mention that, but what she was mentioning how fortunate we were to get to know the owner of Indigo. We were also super fortunate because even though it’s an Indigo, Ave had a relationship with them because they had done a Kimpton across the street. And so, she was kind of pulled in with the Indigo team work on this Indigo project. So we got to know her, and then she’s kind of pulled us into a couple other things.

SSR: Yeah. We’re talking about Ave Bradley of IHG Hotels for those listening. But she’s an amazing champion of designers, so that’s awesome. So is there still a project you would love to do or something like on your bucket list, wish list?

CF: Yes, we would love, this is a dream of mine. I love camping, but more cabins than actual tents. And I would love to work on a sustainable resort that is in a beautiful location like in the mountains or on Cape Cod, but really create a resort that brings families together in a way that’s super indoor, outdoor and also accessible to people who live on an income level similar to ours. We’re so fortunate to get to work on some really high-end projects. I mean, not that we have a ton of luxury work, but I mean we’re working on a few restaurants with Four Seasons, which has been really fun. But to get to work on projects that designers could afford to stay in and do a really good job and create. Sorry, I’m not saying this very elegantly, but essentially an eco resort that feels higher design than just what you would expect with a crunchy granola eco resort. That would be my dream project. Sabri, what about you?

SF: I can get behind that. I can get behind that vision.

SSR: And then the other question too, is your house constantly being redesigned and tinkered? I feel like you two coming home moving, are you looking at it differently?

CF: Yeah. Our house is tiny and we built it about four years ago, and we love it and it’s so clean and simple that there really isn’t much we have to change. I’m sitting in our bedroom, and there is just not much you could do. It’s like the size of a New York apartment. So although you would think we would constantly change stuff, we actually have not changed gnarly anything since moving in. But I think maybe the major problem is that we’re always thinking about, okay, well what’s our next house going to be? Where can we build it? But New Orleans has so few lots that I think it squashes our dreams pretty quickly.

SSR: So I hate to end the conversation, but we always end the podcast with the question that is the title of our podcast. So what has been your greatest lesson or lessons learned along the way? I know Sabri, you mentioned one from your other past life, but maybe one that you’ve learned while in the past 10 years.

CF: I think my greatest takeaway is that the joy of designing has just as much to do with the people that you’re working with. It’s not just about the work, the project that you’re creating, but it’s just as much about who you’re working with on the owner, the operator side. Had you asked me 10 years ago, probably should have answered your question a little differently when you asked what’s our dream project, it really has just as much to do with working with kind, ambitious, exciting people as it does the actual project parameters and program. So that would definitely be my biggest lesson. Sabri, what about you?

SF: I would say it’s similar in the theme of it’s not about technical stuff that I’ve learned, but it’s about the people, which is that it is such a collaboration. And I like to remind ourselves that it’s important to be the artists that needs to get what they want for the sake of design, but it’s also important to compromise and to listen and that just as much as you feel like you have ownership over the project, so does the brand or so does the developer. And yeah, so we really just all have to work together. And that’s I think, where the real joy comes from.

SSR: Thank you. And hope to see you both in real life soon.

CF: Thanks so much, Stacy.

The post Caroline + Sabri Farouki appeared first on Hospitality Design.

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi. I am here with Suchi Reddy. Suchi, thanks so much for joining us today. How are you?

Suchi Reddy: I am great. Thank you, Stacy. It’s such a pleasure to be here with you.

SSR: Great. Can’t wait. Okay, so we always start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

SR: I grew up in a city that is now called Chennai in South India. It used to be called Madras after the very famous textile that’s named after that title, but that’s where I grew up until I was 18.

SSR: Ah, and what were you like as a kid? Were you creative?

SR: That’s an interesting question. I don’t get asked that a lot. I was actually, I’m the youngest of four, and much younger than my siblings. And for the longest time my mother had this running joke, because I loved going to the fish market with her, that she picked me up from the fish market. And I really thought that was true. Because I was so different than my siblings. I literally used to sit with my nose in a book. I think I read every book that I could put my hands on, so you would constantly find me with my nose buried in a book. That was really my childhood. Or the fact that I grew up in a house that was surrounded by gardens, which was really beautiful. I’d be out of the garden making things, like sticking flowers onto leaves and weird patterns and playing with nature. But that was the kind of child I was, a little unusual.

SSR: I love that. Were either of your parents in the creative field or?

SR: No, no. My father was the first to be educated in his family, became a lawyer and he was a philosopher too. And I grew up learning all of that from him. My mother ran away when they tried to take her to school, but she ended up speaking six languages and being a very great creative force in the design of our home. And I think I get all of my design chops from her. She was probably also a very difficult client, I must acknowledge.

Suchi Reddy’s AI-powered “me+you” installation at Michigan Central in Detroit; photo courtesy of Reddymade

SSR: Your first difficult client. I’m just kidding.

SR: Yeah. No, but I grew up surrounded by her thoughts on, she made up this terrazzo floor in our house. And I don’t even know where she had seen it, because it didn’t really exist, but giant pieces of marble that she was thinking of sustainability, I think. She would pick up things and use them. And I grew up in a house that had a scenic wallpaper of a forest. And this is like, I’m very old, so this was decades ago. And really she was ahead of her time. I don’t don’t know how and where she picked up these things. And I was lucky enough to be raised in this house that was actually designed by an architect. And he was quite influenced by Japanese design. He was the only architect in all of Chennai who had a bonsai garden. And so, I think I just absorbed all of this endemically. And I really thought this must, as a child you think everyone looks like you. And when I was about 10, I literally had my first epiphany that my house was actually making me the person I would be.

Because I could see that my friends were different and their houses were different as people. Not better or worse, just different. Our sensitivity to things is different and shaped by our environments. And that was my early kind of love of architecture comes from that house.

SSR: I love that. Did you end up going to school for architecture?

SR: I did. I’m a registered architect in I think six states in the U.S. Working all over the world with projects that span now from Sydney to Chennai to Paris to all over this country.

SSR: That’s crazy. Yeah. You started your own firm Reddymade in 2002?

SR: I did.

SSR: Was that right after school? Did you have things before you did that?

SR: Oh, no, no, no. This is when I say I’m really old. No, I had been working for a while when I started my own firm in 2002, and it really was an accident. The firm that I was working for, I was doing a lot of retail, and they had to downsize very suddenly. And somebody called me the same day and said, “Would you design a house?” That I didn’t know. And I said yes, and that’s how I started my practice. It wasn’t even sort of a plan. I didn’t quite think I needed to have my own practice. But life leads you around. Really, life, I think leads you down some amazing adventures and beautiful paths, so here I am.

SSR: Here you are. And where were you at the time, because you went to … Now actually I remember, you went to school in Detroit for architecture?

SR: I did. I started in India and then I finished my schooling in Detroit, which I have a huge fondness for. Detroit’s an amazing place. I learned so much. It was my introduction to driving to jazz, to so many things that were the lifeblood of America. I really learned about America and in an incredibly interesting city that I think is one of the most historic in this country. And so, it was really beautiful to be there and get an education there. And then I traveled around the country. I worked for architects, I worked for large firms doing big projects. Everything spanning from large office buildings to museums to cultural buildings. And then I started working in retail design, and in a firm that specializes in retail design. And then I started my own firm. And now decades later it’s become a practice that does a bit of everything.

SSR: So, it all wrapped up?

SR: It does. It does. Things have a way of coming together. That’s the beauty I think.

SSR: What drew you to Detroit from India?

SR: Oh, personal. I was married. Life leads you down certain path, right? My husband at the time actually was, he was a doctor. He was doing his residency there. And so I went to Detroit and then I decided I was going to go to school in Detroit. And I just wouldn’t trade it for the world. I actually got a great education.

SSR: Awesome. Okay. I know you said Reddymade, your firm, was an accident, but now-

SR: When you phrase it like that it sounds-

SSR: I mean, it wasn’t a master plan, let’s just say. You decided to do it. I mean, taking that leap of faith, sometimes you have to be pushed to do it. And 23 years later you’re doing well, so it was a good thing. But it’s a good accident. But once you started, what did you want? And you now said that you guys do a bunch of different types of work. But what did you want it to be? Or because you … Or did you even know when you started what you were hoping to create?

SR: Well, when I started, because it wasn’t the master plan, it really just began kind of organically. With my first project, in fact, that it was an office project that I got built. And that was right on Park Avenue and it was in Gordon Bunshaft’s Lever House, which was an incredible building. And there was me doing two floors in the middle and there were giant firms like Gensler and SOM on either side of me. And there was me. This was my first built project. Which was an incredible, it remains one of my favorite projects, because my client was so appreciative and understanding of new ideas and new thoughts. And we delivered something really beautiful, including that very thin at that time, really radical, five eighths inch thick walls of bonded onyx and glass, through which you could see and get light into the space. And it was just so beautiful. And for me just such a wonderful experience in materiality building doing something in a historic building like that even.

I started with projects like that. And it evolved into my fascination around what the lasting aspects of the space are. The fact that people want to linger somewhere, that they want to be there, that they feel good in it, this was really what was driving me in every project I did. Whether it’s residential, whether it’s retail, whether it’s commercial, whether it’s an office space, I want to create spaces that people feel great in and keeps them coming back. And so, then I really kept thinking about this idea and I was like, this is when I came up with the idea that my mantra really is form follows feeling. Because we actually, we look at function, and function is something we have to do. We have to make spaces safe for people. And we have to make sure that everything works on a budget and a timeline. But really the thing we should be doing is designing for how people feel in space.

And that’s where I wanted to go with my practice. That actually has now even expanded the technologies that we work in, like art installations and teaching and all these kinds of things that have to do with really learning about this whole thing that we call human experience.

SSR: I love that. And also, neuroaesthetics are very important to you as well. Can you talk a little bit about that, and how you prioritize them?

SR: Sure. As I said, I came out of school, and I have to confess, I was a little disenchanted. Because I looked around everywhere and all I could see were like, what’s the next trend or what’s the next style or what’s the style of your age? I graduated in the ’90s. And I was not convinced that this was really the way to think about things. And so I really was interested in this idea of feeling. And my focus on neuroaesthetics actually came about, because I used to think about the body as being this kind of democratic space that belongs to all of us. We all understand this space, aside from socioeconomic differences and cultural differences, we all know what something feels like, and it feels the same to pretty much everybody.

And so I was really interested in trying to understand how design affects us. Going back to that first epiphany I had when I was 10 years old and really feeling that viscerally. And one day I was in a cab and I think it was passing Madison Square Park, I remember this so exactly. And I heard about this intersection of neuroscience and architecture and I couldn’t wait to get home and learn about it. And I got really interested in this field, which was then a very new field called neuroaesthetics that looks at how our brains and bodies are actually processing what we call experience in space, right? Aesthetics, experience, basically anything. And I really wanted to learn more about that in order to be able to use that in the work. Because I felt like maybe that would give me the basis for really understanding how to design beautifully, to do great work that people feel really comfortable included and happy in.

But not to do it in a way that comes from, here’s a style that it has to aspire to or a look that it needs to have. Because those things I think are derivative more of how the space feels than the other way around. And I always felt like the cart was driving the horse and I wanted to put the in front of the cart, so that was my interest in neuroaesthetics.

Suchi Reddy’s AI-powered “me+you” installation at Michigan Central in Detroit; photo courtesy of Reddymade

SSR: And how does that affect your approach? Because I know you layer in a lot of different elements, like technology, neuroaesthetics, form and feeling, all the things that we just talked about. How does that inform your approach or affect it, I guess? Or what is your design process look like?

SR: I’m sort of by nature a knowledge-hungry creature. I’m always looking at, what are the influences that have really changed design? In the last 50 years the biggest advances in science have been in the field of neuroscience. And I’m like, “Well, why aren’t we looking at that?” Design and architecture have always looked to innovate, based on the newest technologies, now we’re all afraid of AI or running after it, one of the two. But these are things that as designers, I really think we are uniquely suited to look at all of this information, synthesize it in the way that it makes it a very digestible and beautiful thing that everybody gets to enjoy. Because space is a place where all of that comes together. Science, art, experience, knowledge, psychology, all of this comes together in space, nothing happens outside the space.

To really think about the quality of that space and how it’s being affected by all of these things was something that I really wanted to come to from a design perspective and understand that. And like I said, I’m just a creature that loves knowledge and loves beauty. Two things, knowledge and beauty. If I can give all of those things into space, I know I can solve a problem.

SSR: I like that. Is that what you love the most is solving that problem?

SR: I do. I love solving a problem with knowledge and beauty, I have to say. And I also love seeing people’s reactions to things we make. Like my residential clients will say, “We have a party and nobody wants to leave.” Or my commercial clients will say, “Oh, I have to give up this lease or I have to move somewhere. And we really loved this space.” It also helped us grow in all these ways. Because it accommodated us in certain ways. It made people feel comfortable in certain ways, I hear that. Over the pandemic I got so many letters from my clients that were like, “I didn’t get any work.” I got a lot of letters saying, “We’re so happy, we’re spending so much more time in the spaces you made for us, and we’re really enjoying this.” Which was the biggest satisfaction, honestly, I love that. And with the art installations it’s also incredible to watch people’s reactions. Because one of the things I think is super, I would say essential in space and in life, is the sense of wonder and discovery.

And I think retail, hospitality, these are places where you can really offer that. And for me, the beautiful thing about that is it’s like a leveler. It levels people’s expectations depending on their age. Kids and old people can feel the same kind of wonder and discovery in a place. Beauty does that to people. Being heard does that to people. There’s so many beautiful things. And that’s why I think hospitality is such an interesting genre for me. That’s why I’m so excited by what you guys do and what you write about, because I really love that this idea of hospitality. But first of all, I come from a very hospitable culture being Indian. That’s all guests and God are very close and truly that’s how we’re raised. And we have to treat our guests like God. And being raised with that mantra, but also really thinking about how do you really make people feel great? You want to give them this kind of wonderful and discoverable space.

You want them to feel a sense of awe. You want to feel a sense of comfort. And having this wide range of experience in residential, in retail, in art, in commercial work really allows me to blend all of that when I think about hospitality, that gets me super excited.

SSR: Is there one project that you’ve recently done or one that’s on the boards that you’re really excited about?

SR: That is always the toughest question to answer. It’s like asking, what’s your favorite child?

SSR: I can do that.

SR: You can do that.

SSR: Well, today I can.

SR: Today you can. I don’t know that I could say. I’m extremely excited about really all the projects. But today, as we speak, I’m working on an installation of an artwork at a university in upstate New York. And it’s a textile that was woven at the digital loom, I’m super excited by it. And I’m setting that up, so that’s today’s excitement. It’s looking really beautiful, and it’s about ideas and bias and belonging in places where people feel both of those feelings. And they’re usually place-based feelings. It’s really also really interesting to think about how spaces make people not feel bias and have them feel like they belong somewhere, which is also really, really important. I’ve been thinking about that. We are working on a range of showrooms around the world for one of our clients, Humanscale. And the sustainability aspect of that has been incredible to work with their incredibly sustainable company. They were thinking about it before than anyone else was really.

And we’re also on the boards have a cultural project, which is some residences and a gallery and artist spaces that are all being designed around commissioned artworks so that the whole thing feels like a sculpture park. And I’m very excited about that.

SSR: That’s very cool. And you’re an artist as well. I mean, you do a lot of your own pieces and a lot of this installation is a lot of you, right?

SR: Yes. It comes out, I mean, it came out as a natural outgrowth of the architectural work and started with a product I did in Prospect Park in Brooklyn where I was working on creating something for some people that wanted to create an event to commemorate this … To create a commemorative event for the park turning 150. And they wanted to know how people around the park felt. And it was a very diverse population around the edges of the park. And I usually go to all my childhood fascinations. And I made till two acres with 7,000 pinwheels. And then watching people smile as they came up on that was a huge learning for me. To see the kind of joy that this could really offer and to know that that’s possible.

We really know that that’s possible and to see what people did with it. And from that I’ve gone on to do work in various museums and Times Square and Smithsonian. And I bring aspects of that work to our commercial work with clients like Google or in the healthcare space where we’ve looked at designing things for hospitals. That same idea comes into everything. Because it’s really this, how do we make people feel great? Lots of secret sauce to that. That’s usually a lot of ingredients.

SSR: Yeah, many layers. But I think that’s interesting that you, looking at that, especially for hospitals. Because patient care is so informed or patient well-being is so informed by the spaces that they’re around, especially for those needing longer care. Is that some of the stuff that you’re looking at?

SR: It is. It’s also we’ve done projects where we look at reducing the stress of healthcare workers. During COVID we were looking at that, which was huge, right? For Johns Hopkins, we look at a hospital in Baltimore that looked mostly to take care of kids who had neurological, they’re called disorders of consciousness, but they’re really … Sorry, they’re called disorders of consciousness and they’re usually in comas and things. But it was amazing to think about the stress of the caregiver. Because a lot of times in hospitals and particularly in … It’s so interesting that the word hospital and hospitality are related. Because this idea of taking care, I think is at the center of that, both of those things. And separating the stress of the caregiver and the stress of the patient, which actually affect each other. And there’s data that shows that they affect each other and they should be mitigated both.

And really looking at that has been something that we’re looking at very carefully. But you’re looking at some wellness spaces for a couple of clinics, et cetera. That not just take care of the patients, but people who are either looking for preventative care, or for the families that are at the hospital taking care of people that are in critical condition.

A gravity-defying metal line twists its way through Google’s first retail store in New York from Reddymade; photo courtesy of Reddymade

SSR: Yeah, I mean, it’s a whole holistic ethos, so they all feed off of each other. You mentioned it briefly, but AI, how are you all embracing it? Are you using it? Are you afraid of it? Are you jumping into it?

SR: In the studio, I always say to everybody, if it can do something better than you, then it’s a good marker to check yourself against. We don’t really use it in the studio. We actually just did a competition with an international group, where for the first time we actually generated some images using AI. But that was because the organizers said they would accept that. And we thought, “Oh, everyone in the world is going to be sending you some automatically generated image.” But the idea of AI doesn’t scare me. I’ve never been someone who’s afraid of technology. I think it’s all in our attitude towards technology. It’s about human self-awareness, really. My first sculpture that I did at the Smithsonian that was about humans and technology, I was asking people to give me one word to their future and then interpreting the emotion in their voices using AI and ML. And this was in an RD like five years ago, I think four years ago, two years. I don’t know, I lose track of time.

SSR: It’s a couple of years ago.

SR: Yeah, it’s a few years ago. And AI’s grown a lot since then. But really the moment of that, the important part of that artwork was the second that people stop to think when you ask them to give you one word for their future, and they stop to think. I’m like, that’s exactly what we need with technology. You need that stop to think. You don’t just go, “This makes it easy and convenient. I’m just going to give it everything I can to let it do whatever it wants with it.” No, you got to think for a second. And that’s all it takes. If you really understand to keep rewriting the compass, most of what I do is really kind of seeing that the compass is just pointing the wrong direction, just keeps needing recalibrating, like shift the magnetic poles. Make it go to the right direction. How are people feeling? Okay, let’s do it for that. Let’s do it to make people feel great.

SSR: I think that’s a really interesting question too. Just one word, right?

SR: Yeah. For me, I think that it’s also, because space is about agency. You have to give people agency within the space. And I think a lot of times we tend to think of people who use our spaces in our buildings as somebody who needs to be hit over the head with a message. But people actually enjoy things a lot more when there’s just enough to intrigue them. And then they’re asked to actually modify, to have agency around them. To understand either how they discover it. If you were doing a hotel, you’d be like, there’s a path that’s winding, and it gives them a choice. It makes them engage better. And there are scientific markers for how all of this retains engagement. We look at all of those kinds of things, because I’m interested in that kind of stuff. I’m not just making a windy path, I’m making a windy path because using X amount of dollars more to do that is going to get you this. And then this kind of result.

But no one’s going to know. They’re going to walk in there and they’re going to feel like they’re vested in this space for a lot of reasons of how they engage with it. And I think that’s the key, really thinking about the quality of engagement very carefully, because in the end, that doesn’t lead to more sustainable, less expensive design over time, if you look at it longitudinally.

SSR: Yeah. What’s that thoughtful care, that thoughtful creation, really taking a step back?

SR: And not at all to downplay the skill and the talent that we have to have as designers and architects. I mean, we have to bring all of that to the table on top of all of these other things. Being thoughtful, being caring, understanding what actually is going to be the right, and it takes years of experience and honing, hence my old age is helpful.

SSR: Tell us a little bit about your firm. How does it work, and how would you describe yourself as a leader to get this thoughtfulness and thought process going with your team?

SR: My team is, I owe everything to my team. They are amazing people who are creative, who are smart, who are passionate, and who are dedicated. And no good work can be done if you don’t have a good team, to be really honest. And that team includes the client, it includes people on the client side, everyone’s on the team. And one thing I’ll say about our team and our studio is that we’re very good collaborators. To do work all around the world, like we do, we collaborate with everybody. And we’re a small team. We’re a boutique team, and I like to keep it that way. Because I like to think about things and pay attention to the detail in the way in which it needs to be paid attention to. From the overall kind of synthesis of everything that needs to be layered in order to come up with a concept that’s actually bringing all of that together. But then down to the micro details.

And to do that, you have to be a generalist, but you also have to be able to scale in and scale out of thinking. And that by definition requires collaborators who are great. Our consultant teams are really amazing. And we really rely on people’s expertise in different areas. But I am very focused on synthesizing all of that information together with a very tight creative team. We’re very nimble.

Everyone at any time is working on at least three things and different scales and different types of projects. And I like it that way, because I think it also keeps everyone very creative and active. We’re never stamping out things in the studio, even when we do an office space, which you might think is the typology that everyone’s just stamping out, we don’t do that.

SSR: Oh, good. How is office changing? How have you been rethinking that?

SR: Well, I think COVID actually, I think we’re still feeling the after effects of COVID. And I think it has had a very lasting effect on the American workforce. I will say I’m not seeing that internationally. It’s quite different in different countries. How people are reacting to it in India is very different. In Europe it’s also very different. In our studio we’ve landed on technically a four-day work week. Where we do 40 hours in four days, and then we get three days in the studio and one day at home. And we ideally have three days off. Of course, I never get that. And the rest of the world doesn’t operate on a four-day work week yet. We have to stay active on Fridays, and we have to keep our eyes out for things that clients might need or consultants might need that we need to get out. But aside from that, that’s really the lasting effect of it, that I see in my practice. Is that that’s kind of changed the balance of time that we spend with each other and without. And we’re so efficient because we are together, we’re like boom, boom, boom. Going from this to that, learning the lessons from one thing into the next thing, all of that creative stuff that can happen in the same space. When we are all together as a team, which is amazing, so we treasure that to work together.

I do think it’s changed people’s attitudes in general, but I wouldn’t say necessarily all in a bad way. People should think about what suits them and how they want to live their lives the best way possible. The difficulty there is when the burden is on the employer to generate the kind of system that supports that balance. When it’s all based the employer and it’s not coming from the state in any way to allow everyone to have this kind of thing. And it also does create this, I think, serious imbalance between blue collar and white collar work, which isn’t great. And that’s reflected in bigger political divisions. You know what I mean? It’s like, okay, all of a sudden everyone should be home in their pajamas, in their athletic wear to work. But there have been people who have never had that opportunity.

People who deliver, people who work in jobs that don’t allow that flexibility. I think it just requires respecting what everyone does in a team and really being … And that team being the larger team, not just what we do, but what happens in our neighborhood? And who’s supplying the things we want when we want them. And how do we bring that all together with fairness for everyone? Yeah.

SSR: That’s a very good point. And what do you think is the biggest challenge of running your own firm and or the biggest opportunity?

SR: The biggest challenge I would say is just maintaining a steady flow of projects both in terms of schedule and timing and budgets and things like that. That’s the biggest challenge, because things tend to, we all know that we have anticipated timelines. But they all save a shift for various reasons outside of our control. That I think is the biggest challenge of doing that. The biggest opportunity, wow, that’s like an endless horizon. So many things could happen. And particularly from my practice, it’s being able to bring all of the ideas of the things that we’re interested in together to make amazing spaces. And that can happen physically, that can happen digitally, that can happen in so many ways. Maybe even a hybrid of those two, which we tend to do a bit, both in the artworks and in physical spaces. I don’t know, I just think opportunity is just a … Yeah, it’s a horizon.

SSR: Yeah. Is there a dream project, or not even dream, but a project you haven’t done or haven’t touched that you’d love to get your hands on?

SR: I actually would love to do a boutique hotel.

SSR: There you go.

SR: I really would love to do a boutique hotel. And I spoke actually for design hotels last year about aesthetics. And it’s been so interesting to see how individual hotel owners who have this kind of ethos towards their patrons think about all the things that I think about. Awe and wonder and discovery and delight and comfort and joy and pleasure and those kinds of things that we want to create in space, yeah.

SSR: Got it. Well, it’s out there. No, hopefully. How do you stay inspired and how do you keep your team inspired?

SR: I think my team inspires me. I’m inspired mostly by things outside of the realms that I’m trained in essentially. I’m inspired by ideas that are out there in the world. I’m inspired by nature a lot. I still think, I keep flowers around me all the time. Because I really think, I look at a flower and I’m like, “Oh, nature’s still kicking my ass. I haven’t done anything that good yet.” It’s that, I get impressed by that in a serious way.

Designed in collaboration with Reddymade and artist Ai Weiwei, this Salt Point, New York home was conceived as a hexagonal extrusion; photo courtesy of Reddymade

SSR: Has there been one project, and again, I know it’s hard to pick your favorite, but sometimes we have to. One project that’s been your most challenging or that you learned the most from? I know you learned something from every project that you do, but maybe it was your first installation or your first whatever, but has there been something that really sticks with you?

SR: I think my very, very first build project, which was this office space for a company, for a venture capital firm on Park Avenue. And I learned a lot from that. I learned to honor my instinct and not to be afraid to show that to my clients. And to know that this kind of instinct for design and for what actually works in space for people is a very special skill and talent and ability that I’m lucky and humbled to have. And that it can actually make a difference in people’s lives. After 9/11, actually, I really took a break. I was like, “It’s the best thing I could do, be an architect and a designer. It’s the best thing I could do with my life in the world.” Watching the towers come down it really was the thought that I had. And I came around to thinking that I actually have a skill and an ability that can make a difference. And this is why I want to continue doing it. And that’s when I started my practice. It all happened. One thought following the other.

SSR: Yeah. Well, that seemed to work, so. I hate to stop the conversation, but we always end the podcast with the title that is the podcast. So, what has been your greatest lesson or lessons learned along the way?

SR: There’s a quote that I’ve written on the walls of my studio as you come up to it. And it’s a quote from Dieter Rams, he’s a designer I love. And he says, “Indifference towards people and the reality in which they live is actually the one and only cardinal sin in design.” And I truly think that’s what I’ve learned. You have to pay attention to people and what they need.

SSR: Yep, I love that. I always say, after COVID you started looking at people individually instead of as a team, just because you got glimpses into their lives. And it’s a good reminder that every person has a different story.

SR: Yes. And we’re such a beautiful concatenation of incredible stories. That’s what everyone is. And we have to find ways to celebrate that. And I think designer architecture are great places to do.

SSR: Well, thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your extraordinary thoughts, and can’t wait to see all those upcoming projects that you couldn’t pick one, so all three of them I’m very excited for.

SR: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it.

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