Fiona Thompson, Richmond International

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I’m here with Fiona Thompson. Fiona, thanks so much for joining us today.

FT: Thank you, Stacy.

SSR: How are you doing amidst these crazy times? Where are you? How has it been for you and Richmond International?

FT: Yeah. I’m in London with Richmond. I’m working from home, as we all are still, and have been since middle of March, I guess. It’s difficult, I would have to say. I think IT wise, it’s lucky, I guess, in one way, that it’s happened in this day and age because it has been a pretty seamless transition from the studio to working from home. In terms of the ability to be able to carry on working, everything, that has worked really well. We’ve all been doing teams and Zoom constantly and using platforms that I’ve never actually used before to be honest. They’ve now become a commonplace, both in personal life and work life. But I have to say it is getting to the point now where I have had enough of staring at a computer screen and talking to people online. It’s not the same as being in the studio. It has done its job, and it’s still working really well and we’re able to continue on all our projects, but you don’t have that same collaboration, and design is all about that.

I think the other thing we’ve noticed is when we’re in a meeting in the studio, even with outside consultants, you might be looking at drawings or looking at stuff, and there’s a silence. You can have that silence where people are thinking, and on these Zoom calls, and everything else, you have this need to fill in the gap. Everyone carries on talking, so you sort of lose that time of thinking about what you’re doing and looking at, and all those sorts of stuff. It works, but it’s not the same as being back in the studio working as we normally would as a team. Hopefully, in the next couple of weeks we may be able to start doing that.

SSR: Right. How has it been for projects for you all? I mean, have a lot more been put on hold? Does it still seem like things are moving forward? What are you seeing?

FT: I think things are still moving forward. We haven’t had a lot of projects put on hold, luckily, but things are definitely slower, I guess. Sites have been shut down during the epidemic. They are starting to slowly reopen. Things are just slower for all sorts of reasons. Heritage bodies aren’t working. They can’t visit sites. It’s just a whole sequence of things that occur on a project that are just being prevented, I guess, because of the situation. Things have just slowed up. They haven’t stopped, but yeah, we have certainly noticed that it’s just different, and you’re just having to be more patient and wait for information, and just work around it, I guess.

I think everyone’s in the same boat, so it’s just one of those things that you’ve got to somehow find ways around. The nice thing is that everyone is actually working from home, so people who you might not be able to contact normally for a couple of weeks while they’re traveling, you can, so it’s been quite good for that. Having those conversations and talking to operators and owners that you might not normally be able to do every day or let’s have a chat tomorrow because they’d be somewhere else in the world. There are benefits; there are goods and bads to it.

SSR: Right. There’s always a silver lining, thankfully. I’ve talked to some others and they’re like, yes, so if everyone’s grounded and not actually traveling, the amount of time you get back by not traveling in a cab to the airport, boarding a plane, the time you can’t be on wifi, you actually get a lot of time back from not traveling.

FT: I think you do. I think you get into that crazy habit of constantly traveling and going from one place to the next. I have to say not doing that, you do realize that sometimes what you’re doing is a bit crazy and a bit mad and actually having time to stop, that has been nice, not being traveling, and having time to stop and think, and just work at a slightly different pace has been actually really nice. I think it’s going to change things, definitely, moving forward. People will think twice before just traveling for meetings and things when you realize you can actually do a hell of a lot over on the internet.

SSR: No, I totally agree. Let’s dive into you. Did you always know you wanted to be a designer? Was this something from an early age? Or was this something you found along the way?

FT: No, I didn’t want to be a designer from an early age. I have to say, I don’t think I knew what I wanted to be—probably the usual things that you want to be: airline pilots or astronauts or show jumpers or something silly when you’re young. No, I’d say, not really. As I’m still at school, obviously, I started to evolve, and I really loved art. I really like the mathematical and physics sides. Those were my subjects, I guess, at school. You end up doing something that encompasses those things. My brother-in-law was an architect, so I was very familiar with architecture and what it was all about. I think it’s something that I grew into really. I studied architecture, but I didn’t even know then that I necessarily wanted to be an architect as such. I just saw it as a great design degree, and it combined all the things I was interested in. You do lots of other things at college as well at the same time. It just seemed to be a really good design basis and grounding, I guess, for doing other things, which is why I chose it.

SSR: Where did you grow up? Did your parents or your family have any influence in the arts and the math that you started to take interest in?

FT: I was born in the UK, but we traveled a lot when I was young. That definitely has had an influence in my nomadic lifestyle and travel, and experiencing different places. We lived in Holland from when I was about seven and then moved to Australia when I was 10. We used to travel back and forth to the UK, and take six weeks each way. We traveled in a lot of places when I was young as I was growing up. I think that certainly influenced my desire to just experience different cultures and places, and the enjoyment of travel and hotels. We used to stay in Fiji on little islands and all sorts, so I think that certainly has a huge influence on what I’ve ended up doing for sure. Yeah, a big impact.

SSR: Is there one travel or trip that really sticks in your mind, something that has stayed with you, or an experience that has stayed with you?

FT: I think, obviously, living overseas, culturally, it’s very different. I think just traveling into the more remote parts of the world, we went, as I say to Fiji. We went to Bali when there was only one hotel in Bali. It was experiencing places before they became developed and really traveling quite rough, I suppose, if you like and getting into the inner underbelly of places. That still is something that I love doing for sure, and I’ve done that with my family, dragged them up jungles and all sorts. That seems to be somehow parts of what I do and who I’m about, but I think it just gives you a completely different experience, especially when you’re younger. That has certainly stayed with me.

SSR: Where did you end up going to college?

FT: I went to college here in the UK. I went to architecture school down in Canterbury, back here in the UK, just outside London.

SSR: Once you got your degree, where did you go? What was your first job or internship, or whatnot after school?

FT: Yeah, I worked for a lot of tutors as an internship, and then I wanted to go into interior design, and I got a job with a company who had one London office at the time, an American design office called Dale Keller, who were probably one of the first big hospitality design companies. They were New York based, Hong Kong, and then they had a small office in London as well. That’s how, I guess, first got into interior design and then also got into the hospitality world as well. They were great. It was about 12 of us, so I learned huge amounts from the team. It was great.

SSR: What kind of projects did you work on?

FT: We were working on hotel projects at the time, in places like Doha. We were also working on the Sultan’s palace out in Brunei when they first built that. Dale Keller were doing the palace, the parliament building, and everything that surrounded that. Super high-end luxury [residential] as well, I guess, his hotels.

SSR: Is that when you think you got more of a hospitality bug or [the love of it was] engrained in you?

FT: Yeah. I don’t even think it was ingrained, but I think that’s when I started to really think about wanting to go into hospitality, and I have worked in retail and things like that, but my first love is definitely hospitality. and has been for many years, I’ve worked in hospitality for a number of years. It’s a very different kind of discipline, and one that I still really enjoy doing now.

SSR: What do you do next? What’s your next [move]?

FT: From there, I went from Keller to Richmond. Somebody who’d been at Dale Keller left when they were starting to close up the office in London, went to Richmond and asked me if I’d like to join Richmond, which I did as a young designer. I stayed there for a few years. I guess, again, all doing just hotel work then, and most of it, at that time, was probably lots of work in England and Europe. It wasn’t really much further afield than that. Most of the work tended to be Europe-centric, and a lot of it was restoration of old buildings or repurposing old buildings during the start of it in the mid ‘80s. From there, I then left and went back to an architectural practice called Rock Townsend and set up an interior design division there to do retail. It was a new thing to them. I worked there for a while. I tried a couple other companies. Then back in ’92, I then was invited to go back to Richmond, which I did. I’ve been there ever since.

SSR: That’s amazing.

FT: That’s a long time, I know.

SSR: Quick math. You’ve been there almost 30 years.

FT: I know, yeah. That’s a hell of a time, isn’t it? Gosh, yeah, it’s a long time. It sounds ridiculous, but it has gone quite quickly, to be honest, if you think of that in those terms.

SSR: What brought you back to Richmond? Well, first, what did you like about retail and how do you think that has influenced some of your work now, if at all?

FT: Retail is very different. It’s much faster. I think it’s much more a stage set, theatrical design and the rollout work, when you’re doing stores, it’s a lot quicker than doing a hotel project. I think it’s great, as a young designer, until you get to site, until you get to see projects completed, and so you get a very fast track learning curve, if you like, of working with contractors and clients and on site. It was good for that, but it certainly doesn’t have the same depth of design thinking or the use of the language and everything that you do in hotels. I think now it has changed with the super high-end stores. I think there’s a lot more crossover, perhaps, but back then it was probably a bit more throwaway, stage set. It was all about the new thing, creating environments for people to shop in. That was quite a new thing at the time, but different to what I now do completely.

SSR: So why did you end up going back to Richmond? What was it about the firm that enticed you?

FT: I think, it was a time in London where design companies became—I suppose, the word design, it was when they first became mainstream. People’s households and things like that had designer this and designer that, and designer shops and all the rest of it. Richmond, during the ’80s, had grown from being interior design and they had become a bit more of a multidisciplinary firm. They had graphics and architecture, interiors, and that had been the case for a lot of the bigger practices in London at the time. They stopped being that individual discipline, I guess. The city fell in love with design at that time in London.

A lot of them were being bought by city institutions, turned PLC. Design and finance aren’t obvious bedfellows, and I think it was a short love affair, to be honest. It went up and then it went down very, very quickly. They bought lots of companies out, Richmond was one of them, and then they were resold back into private ownership. It was during the late ’80s, early ’90s when the financial markets crashed. A lot of the companies would then fall back into private ownership. Richmond had been privately owned. The people who started it, who I originally worked for, had sold it, and they then retired, and it was then sold back into private ownership. It was just an opportunity, I guess, to be in the beginning of a new form of Richmond, a new second chapter in its history. That just appealed [to me] in the work that they’d always done. It was an opportunity to be part of that starting the next chapter of the brand, I guess.

SSR: Right. It’s now celebrating 50 years, correct, the firm?

FT: We have before, yeah, a few years back.

SSR: Okay. I mean, it must be lovely, too, to be leading a firm that has such history and has had such a mark in the industry?

FT: I think it’s great that it has got that longevity and just that depth of understanding of the hospitality world. There’s all that to draw back on. Some of the properties we’re working on now, we still have relationships with them from a long time, but you’re doing it the second time around or with different owners, whatever that might be. There’s always that connection with the past, which is nice, but the industry has changed obviously, hugely in in the last 10 years, 20 years, completely different to what it was when the company first started.

SSR: What do you think are those major changes, looking back?

FT: I think when I first started at Richmond, I was about 22 or 23, or something, and my first week I was sent to Paris to go on a project, and I had no idea what I was doing. I just had a ticket and, ‘Go to this hotel and there’ll be a side door into the site office.’ I was thinking, ‘Site office?’ I guess because I’d traveled, it didn’t both me, the actual going on and doing all that stuff on my own, but you do think back. You really didn’t know what on earth I was doing at the time, but how’s it changed?

As I said, I think initially when we were there, it was mainly European, maybe mainly refurbishment, mainly traditional historic hotels. I think back even late ‘80s, early ‘90s, luxury hotels were that grand, traditional, classical type of building, which was regarded, I suppose, as a luxury hotel. I think resorts have always been different, but certainly in a urban setting, and I think during the ‘90s that changed quite dramatically. Different players came into the market in terms of operators, and it just completely turned on its head. In locations that they previously weren’t, it became a lot of new builds, then a lot of mixed use. We do a lot with residential and retail office, whatever it might be, combinations of all of those things now.

I think there’s very few new-build projects where it hasn’t got a residential component these days, service or branded, or all sorts of permutations of that as well. There’s not that singular design language. I suppose it was early ‘90s, Ritz Carltons, Four Seasons, they were all a bit interchangeable. They didn’t really have their own brand identity. It was a classical, lovely, beautiful hotel. I think that’s changed a lot, obviously. Now, the way people travel and what they want, and what they think of is luxury is completely different now to what it was back then. Even in the last five years, I think there’s a big shift in what people are looking for. It’s not about a set cookie cutter type of building. It’s about experience. We all know the words. It’s all about experiential travel and all that stuff.

I remember, even in back in the day where Hilton had the idea that they’d have a Hilton guestroom, and they’d roll the same room out in all their locations. I mean, how alien does that sound now? It would be a crazy notion for them to be doing that. I didn’t know what it was, a home from home or it felt safe, but I didn’t know what the logic back then was. I can’t remember, but that’s so different to what people want these days and how they want to travel.

SSR: Right, which must make your job so much more exciting. Or maybe it’s just different.

FT: Yeah, it’s much more interesting. As a company, we’re quite small. We never wanted to be those big 500-plus staff all over the world. We purposely kept quite small, so we can choose what projects. We do spend a lot of time working on projects, so we don’t have to churn work through the studio. We don’t have a fixed house style. We’ve always tried to approach every project with newer, fresh eyes and a whole new approach. I think that’s just become more and more part of the DNA really, as times gone on. As you say, that every project is now so different. It’s become a much more exciting place than it was perhaps 20 years ago.

SSR: When you say small, tell us a little bit about the firm, the culture.

FT: We’re about 45, 48 staff in the studio, a whole mixture of, obviously, design staff. We have people from different walks of life. They may be interiors, architects, textile designers, but they all make up the team, if you like. We have got a structure, but we’re actually quite even, if you like, so from the most junior to the most senior designers, people involved in the projects right from the beginning to the very end. The way younger people get better is to do stuff, learn stuff, go to site, experience it. We really do try to generate that mindset. You’re always nurturing, and they have great ideas as well. It’s not just the senior members. They have a whole different approach.

Even doing Instagram. I don’t use Instagram on five times a day; our young staff do it constantly, so involving them in all sorts of different things, they have such a fresh outlook. The studio is about that size. We have three directors, associates, and then obviously, senior designers. We have a lot of staff that have been there a long time. We have a lot of people who’ve been there 10 years or more. One of our associate staff is the librarian, so she’s going to work to serve up. We see it very much as a family. People know each other really well, get on really well. I think when you have that kind of relationship, you can fall out, you can argue about projects and all those things that are actually good things—to create those tensions, especially when we’re working on new things, but everyone gets on very well on a personal level. You can park that and still move past that. It makes for a good way working.

SSR: It’s easier said than done, though, to breed that culture. It’s a lot of right personalities and the right mix of people, and so from a leadership standpoint, has that been one of the challenges yet one of the opportunities that you wanted to create. Talk about creating that team and how you continue to foster that?

FT: We try and find people who have different strengths. Design is a great thing where people think that everyone can do concepts, everyone can do production, and actually, nobody can do everything really well. I guess we just try and find teams that have different strengths, bring different things to the table, and then each project team is created around the people that are going to work on it. It just makes it a broader, if you like—depth of knowledge, and interests, and aspirations, and things like that. I think, as a team, we’ve tried to have quite a wide cross section of people, huge number of different cultures and nationalities, and London is so multicultural. That is part of London, anyway. We have staff from all over the place and that also brings a whole different aspect and knowledge base to the studio as well.

We always bring in juniors every year, and really try and mentor and nurture them and bring them on as well. We have a lot of people that have started as the junior and are still in the company having worked their way up. Yeah, it’s a nice unit we’ve got. It’s got a really nice atmosphere. Not everyone gets on well all the time, but everyone does get on. I mean, there’s certain personalities you’re never going to put together on a project. You just know. They might have like each other socially but work wise. You just work around those things, and you have to accept people’s personalities. You’re not going to change that. You just work around that and make the best of it.

SSR: Yeah, that’s very, very true. How involved are you still in projects? A lot of these conversations that we have, people want to be designers and want to be involved, but then there’s the whole other business element. Balancing that, plus life and travel and getting business and everything. How involved are you still in the design of the projects?

FT: I came in as the studio director, creative director, and then into management. I’m not a manager. I’m a designer by nature, and so we run the company from that perspective, I guess. Yeah, I do still get involved in all the projects. I think everything that goes out in the studio and what we’re doing, and how we’re doing it. I work in the studio. We’ve got two floors of building, but we’ve got the business side of it with meeting rooms and admin, and then we’ve got my studio, so I’m actually up in the main studio the whole time. I don’t have an office in the admin area. It’s different now because we’re all at home, but I’m still very much part of the process and how we’re doing it, and what we’re doing, trying to focus in at the beginning of the project on what we’re doing, and so guiding the team and how that then pans out. One of our directors is just business focused. She looks after all of the fees and contracts, which again, I’m somewhat involved in. As I say, we all have our own specialties, but I wouldn’t want to give up design. It was why I do it in the first place though. I’d hate to become removed so that you wonder what you’re doing anymore.

SSR: Right. What do you think was a project early on, that really defined your career or defined the way Richmond was pivoting away from what you said, the old build firm to the new firm?

FT: Yeah, I think there’s always those key projects along the way that you sometimes realize at the time, sometimes don’t. There’s been, obviously, loads over the years. I think when we did the Four Seasons in Budapest. There are those few buildings that you walk into, even when they’re completely derelict, and it was completely derelict, and there’s something about it. There’s a real soul to the building. You just think that it’s one of those buildings that you think you’re lucky to have had the opportunity to really get involved in. It was a seven-year project, so it’s a long time. Some of these things are that long. It was a bit of a labor of love, and I think it we spent a huge amount of time, and effort and energy on it, but we’ve spent 10 times the fee that we have had on it.

We won lots of design awards, but again, it’s those projects that people see, and we’ve ended up winning lots of projects off the back of that. We did it the time, for sure. It’s a time and a place that happens sometimes. It was when Budapest was first coming out of communism. It was one of the first hotels that was being done. It was demolished, most of the building when we worked on it, but it had been such an iconic building.

All the local crafts people and artists of which there is a huge culture of that within the city, wanted to be part of the project. We had lots of little makers who were doing bits and pieces in their garages. The bars were made in people’s literally backyards and things. The chandeliers were made by a father and daughter team who’d made jewelry and all sorts of things. It’s just that nice thing that is part of what people talk about now, but at the time, it just happened. It was just one of those things that that’s the way the sort of project turns. It was a lovely project to work on.

I think things, at Langham in Chicago, which to get to work on a Mies Van Der Rohe building, how many times do you get to see that in your life? You don’t. Again, it’s just those buildings that you think you’re lucky to have had the opportunity to be involved in, to be worked on. For sure, that was another great one.

SSR: Has there been one project, because we always hear talk about how you learn more from your mistakes, then your successes, has there been one project that maybe it wasn’t a mistake, but a challenge or a lesson learned along the way?

FT: I don’t know if there’s one project. You make mistakes on every project. However long you carry on doing it for, we still make mistakes on every project, of course. You look back and you think, ‘How on earth … why did you do that?’ It’s tricky. Every project you learn such a lot, and they are such big projects. We work with big teams, with architects and engineers and numerous numbers of other consultants. I’ve made mistakes when I was younger, where you can’t—even silly things—where the projects are finished and you can’t get the chairs through the guestroom doors, and things like that. You’re there thinking, ‘My god.’ You’re a young designer, obviously, and you’re thinking, ‘My god, what am I going to do.’ You just learn as you go. There’s always a way around. Whatever goes wrong, there’s always a solution. Everyone’s got to just calm down and find the solution. We had a situation last week on a project where something’s been delivered and the owners kicking off. He said it’s broke, and you just have to calm down. Let’s all get on a call, talk it through, find out what the actual problem is, and then we’ll work out what we’re going to do about it. There’s always a way around it.

I think you just learn when you’re older—you know that, and you don’t panic. I think when you’re younger, sometimes you’re thinking, ‘My god, how am I going to tell them I’ve done that?’ In the industry, so many tales on every project, they are quite extraordinary, and the people you work with, and things that happen, places you go to … I’ve been in all corners of the world with traveling to places, and sometimes you wonder what you’re doing there, but you’re there and you just carry on.

SSR: I think what Richmond does beyond well is redefining what luxury is. How do you help your team figure that out for each project? What’s that process like? How do you dive into what this building should be, versus this, and how travelers are adapting? Who knows moving forward, but before COVID?

FT: Yeah, hopefully. No, before COVID. Actually, post COVID, I think, is going to give opportunity. It makes people rethink things a bit. The COVID thing will just make people question what we do is the norm, what’s become norm in hotels. Even such things like the check in process, there’s great resistance to going down the airline route in luxury, where you can enter a hotel and you’ve already got your room number, and you open the door. There’s always been that resistance to things like that. Is it seen as not personal? I think COVID will change some things like that, maybe for the better, so you can do either way. I think that might open up opportunities.

SSR: We were talking the other day about how travel might have more meaning, too, right?

FT: I think it was changing to be more meaningful, and I think now people will stop to think before, especially living in Europe. You can jump on a plane to Barcelona for such a low amount of money and stay somewhere, and you do that multiple times a year. I think people now will be, obviously, more cautious, but people will just stop and think about it, and maybe travel less, but more purposefully. You’ll actually plan to go somewhere for a reason rather than, ‘hey, it’s nice in Barcelona. Let’s just go there and do what you do.’ A lot of the time, you end up almost doing what you do at home. You go to nice bars and restaurants and go to the beach, but actually, it’s not much different. I think people will think a bit more before they do that, whether things become more expensive because of flights that might automatically make people do that more.

I think people want to know more about where they’re going and why they’re going. The environmental issue before this happened was the main topic of conversation, especially for us in the studio, it became a really hot topic about what we’re doing about it and how we were going to respond to it—really making a difference rather than everyone talking about it. You worry that suddenly everyone reverts back to the little plastic bottles in your bathroom and things like that, and I think it’s just stopping to think before people do that. Hopefully, that’s a short-term thing that the whole wellbeing of will actually become prevalent again. That’s a really important driver.

We are really starting to try and measure how we do things, and what projects we do and make that a key focus. For so many years—we’ve all done it, and we’ve all worked on it—you work on projects and you’ll design a bespoke piece of furniture and lighting, whatever, and then it ends up getting bought out of China because it’s cheaper to do that and ship halfway around the world. We’re really not going to do that. We don’t do that anymore. We’ve set up our own procurement team, so we can control that whole process from design right the way through, so we can hopefully be a bit more responsible for who we go to, who manufactures it. Then we don’t do it on every project, but it’s something we offer, and we’re trying to do it more and more. There is that continuity of thought and process, so you have more of a say in how it pans out in reality.

SSR: In terms of your clients, or even just having this time, which I know it’s been probably busier than ever. I always look at people that have started gardens or picked up painting, and I’m like, ‘Wait, who has time for this?’

FT: I know. My garden is worse than it’s ever been. I went outside Last night and was thinking, ‘Good god, it’s terrible,’ but yeah, it’s worse, I think, than it is when I’m working all the time.

SSR: Exactly.

FT: Well, now I see it.

SSR: Has your team had time or have you worked with the team to rethink some of these things, taking a step back through this?

FT: Yeah, we have. We are all together, if you like, I know we’re scattered, but we are all in London and we’re on the same time zone. It has given us time where everybody’s available to really chat through things like that. Yes, it has. The environment, sustainability, new products—all sorts of things we’ve been able to have a look at, which sometimes gets lost in the melee of people traveling and working hard, and all that stuff. We’ve been doing non-project specific work as well. It’s more of an approach to how we’re doing things rather than just stuck inside doing the projects we do.

SSR: I guess I was curious about process, and how do you start one and how are you constantly rethinking and relooking at things and pushing the envelope?

FT: I think there’s two things. There’s interest in design generally. That’s just being very aware and going to see stuff, and you’re going to the Venice Biennale, and going to Art Basel and all those things that again, are not particularly for a project, but just makes you think in a slightly different way when you go to events like that. We do that, and the team does that, because we do go to a lot of things internationally that are—I wouldn’t say they’re necessarily trade shows—but it’s part of the design world or art world. We do a lot of that.

Then, in terms of specific projects, before we start thinking about design, we really just—I mean, I know it’s called a narrative, whatever you might want to call it—but we really just try and explore the location, what the building is, if there is a building of some sort there or not and really try to make a concerted effort not to start thinking about the design of the building or the design of the project specifically until we’ve really understood the environment that we’re dealing with and the people, and the culture and the client, and the other team, the architects and things like that. We’re working at the moment on a Brutalist project. Because we’re familiar with the architects in London, you have these preconceived ideas, but it’s very different, depending where you are in the world—and the whole resonance behind it and why it was first built, and all those things are very important.

We really try and do a lot of research and just understand what it should all be about before we start. I think that it gives you a bit of breathing space, as well, at the beginning of a project. If you do that really well, it’s something we find that we refer back to constantly, we put together words and images, and scrappy bits of paper and all sorts of stuff that we collect, and we keep. It is a really useful thing to be then, as you’re working through stuff, as things move forward that you every so often dip back into it to see if we are actually true to what we were trying to do originally. When you get a new project, there’s always a client, as soon as you’re appointed, it’s like, ‘When can we start seeing things?’ It’s like, ‘Hang on a minute. We just need a bit of time before we start that bit.’

SSR: Yeah. Well, I think maybe, too, that another silver lining of all this is that they do understand that, like, take a breath, right? Because instead of just getting things done, checking things off, it’s good to have a minute to think.

FT: Yeah, and I think everyone’s found that, actually. Not just in the design world, but as you say, clients, I think it has just gotten everyone to just slow down a bit. You realize how crazy sometimes what you were doing was. You do sometimes think, ‘Why was I doing that?’ You have flown here, come back to London, zoom straight off somewhere else. Why did I do that? It’s because you sort of get swept up in it somehow.

SSR: Or you want to be back or you have something else to do. It’s like, ‘I can fit all this in perfectly,’ but what you’re not realizing is what it’s doing to you physically, holistically, wellness wise.

FT: You don’t feel as exhausted as you used to, for sure these days.

SSR: In terms of clients, I know you have a lot of repeat clients, which speaks immensely for you as a firm and in terms of your process. What do you think is the secret to success with collaborators, with clients, with making sure that the entire process is a success overall, quote unquote, however you want to define that?

FT: As you say, it is such a collaborative process, and I think it’s really getting to know people and understand what they’re trying to do. It’s not my building. I think it is sometimes. I think a lot of the time, when people come in, you think, hmm. It’s quite an emotional thing to give up a project at the end of it, when it It’s open and it’s been yours for so long. It’s quite difficult sometimes, but I think it is really working with people and working with the team, and really listening to people, understanding what they’re trying to do, and working in a way that gets the best out of a project. Nobody has all the answers. As you go along, you discover things, whether it’s about the building or what you can do, and other things along the way. I think it’s just being really open to do that and wanting to work with other people. I love working with other architects and with engineers, because they know lots of things I don’t know. Everyone comes with such a lot of knowledge, and you learn such a lot from listening to other people and working with them, and hopefully, vice versa. The best projects are always the ones that there’s quite blurred boundaries between the inside, the outside, the architecture, the landscape, the interiors. When all of those boundaries become a bit more blurred, I think that’s where you get the best projects, so that there’s no, ‘This is mine. You’re not touching it.’ It’s a much nicer way to work more fluidly, I think. I think you get the best out of the project and out of people as well, and clients.

SSR: What projects are you excited about that you all are working on right now? Anything in the pipeline?

FT: We’re doing a great project in Prague, in a great old ‘60s Brutalist building right on the river, which is working with a local architect, which is a really nice project. It’s just a whole different kind of building and the clients are really keen to strip it back to the true essence of what it’s all about.

SSR: Love Prague. Prague is such an amazing city.

FT: It’s got so much history and culture, and so many lovely makers and artisans, and artists that work there. The way the building was first designed was that it was a whole group of people, architects, artists who originally did the building. We’re trying to set up a manifesto for the same process, if you like, reimagining and bringing the building back to life. We’re working on another quite extraordinary spa in Tuscany, which has got these amazing thermal caves existing as part of their landscape and the hotel was built up years ago both as a medical and hotel facility, and we’re bringing that back to a true luxury hotel and the whole interconnection with wellness, and those caves, and all of the beautiful aspects of the natural environment are there and really utilizing that as part of the design story of the project.

SSR: I think it’s an exciting time for hospitality.

FT: I think it is. Yeah, everyone’s nervous because nobody really knows, but people love to travel, peoples will want to travel again. It’s become so much part of people’s DNA and experiencing different things that whole social aspect as well. I think it will come back to again. It’ll be slightly different, I guess. And maybe better.

SSR: You’ve traveled a lot of places. Is there somewhere you’re dying to go back to, or a place that you absolutely love and why?

FT: Yeah, so many places. I love it. I do like traveling. I mean, sometimes I think, ‘My god, where am I? Heathrow Airport again.’ I haven’t been to Australia for a long time, so I will definitely go back there soon, once we can start to travel again, just because it was such a part of my upbringing. Going back there is really important every so often, so I will do that again. Then once you’re there, obviously, you have the opportunity travel through the Pacific, which is a long way to go from here. South America, we’ve worked in South America. Flying into Rio is one of those amazing experiences which you just don’t forget. It’s those things that just re-energize you.

There’s certain places you go that you just get a boost from, and it really gets the blood flowing through the veins, so places like that again. I have traveled to Asia a lot with family, which I feel just very calming and very restful. I just like going anywhere, really, all over the place. I think everywhere you go is just very different. Even traveling here in the UK, there’s such a variety of places around the countryside. I think just seeing different places, staying in different places, you just learn a lot about people and how people use space, and how they react to their environment. I think everywhere you go has an impact. There are millions places I’ve been I’d like to travel to.

SSR: Are you one of those people, when you travel, do you flip things over and look who made it?

FT: Absolutely, yeah. I drive my family mad, yeah. We always have to go and see this place and that place, and there. Yeah, absolutely. Work-life is the same thing, really. It’s not a job you do, and then you have a different life. It’s so much part of what you do and who you are, so absolutely, yes. There are no boundaries at all, or it’s all blurred, and all mixed up, I have to say.

SSR: What are your major challenges right now? Either because of COVID or just your day to day in your role, what are the biggest challenges, and what might be some of those opportunities coming off of those challenges?

FT: Yeah, I think the COVID thing is challenging just because we were being forced to work in a certain way. The only thing is that everybody is. Everyone’s much more understanding. If it had happened in one place in the world or whatever, I think, it would have been different. But because it’s global, everyone has been forced into the same situation. I think people are much more accepting of how we’re working and why we’re doing things. I think communication is such a key thing. I mean, we’re constantly talking to the studio.

The project teams just keep their Teams open all day, so they’re chatting with each other as though they’re in the studio still. We’re constantly communicating with everybody. I think that’s such a key, just to make sure that work is being done right, but also that everybody is also okay emotionally and physically, because I think has been hard on people, especially if they’re living alone or isolated, and everyone takes it very differently. Again, I think people become more caring of other people, a bit more considerate, and thinking of how things are and how other people are affected by stuff. That’s a change, I think, for the good, for sure.

SSR: I know we’ve talked about a lot, but what has been your greatest lesson learned throughout your career, that maybe it’s been built into a philosophy of yours, or just something that you keep in mind along the way?

FT: I think, from right in the early days, I suppose, it’s just being open to learn and to understand what other people have to contribute. I always say to our young designers, it’s not about what you know, you just want to soak up knowledge and information, and it’s how you take that on board, and things that you’ve learned that you don’t even know you’ve learned then are useful in later life, or projects, whatever it might be. I think it is just that soaking up of information, which is so important, and being open to learn lots of stuff on projects all the time. Every project is different, whether you’re working on an island, and it’s all that creating tide beaches on it with the tides.

There’s so much that hotels encompass, I guess, and the world, whether it’s the environment, whether it’s spa, wellness, food and beverage, and different types of approaches to things. It’s just learning and wanting to learn. That’s how, I think, it makes you a good designer, I guess. Just knowledge, all that knowledge base, and then how you assimilate that and send it back out there in some way or other. I think it’s just being open to stuff. Not being fixed in ideas, not thinking you know what you’re doing. Even now, I think, I sometimes have no idea what we’re really doing.

SSR: No, I think that’s so true. Isn’t there a saying, once you stop learning, you stop living? Well, I love that, and I think that’s a perfect place to stop. Thank you so much for doing this. I really enjoyed chatting with you, and I hopefully we can see each other in real life sometime soon.

FT: Yeah, definitely.