Sean Knibb

Sean Knibb is one of the most exciting designers on the global hospitality scene today. A visionary with a bold and, some might say, radically experimental approach to conceptualizing spaces, he brings the great green outdoors in, creating “urban meadows” of exceptional originality.

Knibb started as a “flower boy” in his native Jamaica – that is, he would spend time with his grandmother, a florist, who was instrumental in shaping both his sense of aesthetics and his guiding design principle: “creative, human, experience”.

Knibb went on to become a landscape designer in Los Angeles but his fiercely contemporary and non-conformist style attracted commissions for furniture and eventually interior, restaurant and hotel projects.

“We want to feel natural, we want to feel purposeful, we want to feel comfortable and we want to feel that we’re not destroying the environment – that we’re mindful as much as we possibly can be… we want to remember that the earth is our home, and reach for the innovative, the remarkable, and the astonishing at the same time. Elevate the unexpected – imagine the new.

The beauty of the garden or space is not in the cost of any one material, but in the use and relationship of one to another. We’re always trying to find the balance between things that feel fresh yet have a sense of history. We design with stories in mind, and intention behind each choice. We create and give vision to the discarded and sometimes forgotten urban structures and spaces.”

THE LINE HOTEL AUSTIN “How many designers envision torn canvas as a ceiling covering? It starts in the lobby, with its blush plaster walls and trio of fireplaces paying homage to Carlo Scarpa, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Rudolph Schindler, and extends to the bar of the signature restaurant Arlo Grey. Though its finish resembles the charred Japanese treatment shou sugi ban, the bar by local artist Michael Wilson is actually stained ash. No matter, its inky black is a mysterious draw. The restaurant proper lightens up with pale pink walls and booth seating overlooked by cerulean glass pendants.”

THE LINE HOTELS The Line hotels, in Los Angeles and Austin, TX, are design destinations in their own right where themed rooms and greenhouse dining spaces have become Knibb’s signature.

The Line Los Angeles “Since its opening in 2013, the LINE LA has been at the forefront of a renaissance as this 3 sq mile section of LA has become a destination for urban explorers and creatives. A striking wall sculpture in the intimate reception area complements what looks like an assemblage of carved wooden tribal masks but is actually composed of forms cut from plastic water jugs and rendered ebony with layers of paint. In the foreground is the reception desk itself, fronted with aluminium panels anodized a deep burgundy. By tucking the reception away to the side, Knibb has left the immense lobby free. Clearly, it needed breaking down and re-finishing. New concretefilled travertine chimes in with the building’s brutalist vibe. Camouflaging what would otherwise have been a plain drywall soffit, meanwhile, is a highly unusual treatment derived from his landscape design. “I had been making stools by compressing T-shirts in a baling machine,” he explains. Here, they’re dyed cobalt, indigo, or pale blue-grey and arranged in overlapping layers.

Below the soffit, azure-stained plywood banquettes zigzag between structural columns. The angles create nooks that are great for groups – and equally fine for semi-privacy if a guest working alone craves an alternative to a lonely room. Single seats are iterations of the classic wing chair, covered in burlap with orange piping.”

THE LINE HOTEL

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“How do I express my point of view at this point in time in my designs? What’s the fabric of today? What can I pick up on?”

THE CASA NOVA The Casa Nova tables break a new frontier and transcend the space between design and art.

The series of white Carrara marble tables, with their incredibly precise details of crumpled t-shirts and jean shorts, are concepted in Knibb’s studio in Venice Beach and carefully etched and sculpted into the marble surface by Italian artisans. The entire process takes 700 hours. At first glance, you believe you are looking at white cotton t-shirts and jean shorts, until you notice the veins of the marble and feel the cold, hard surface. Down to the ribbing of the collar and the fringe on the jean shorts – all the minute details are there. Knibb challenges traditional design notions all the while unlocking the natural beauty of Carrera marble. “I’ve been looking at and studying—whether it’s Bernini or Canova—the canon of art history of Europe. Great artists’ works are a representation/interpretation of the things and people around them – at the time.

How do I express my point of view at this point in time in my designs? What’s the fabric of today? What can I pick up on? For me, the whole idea of, “What do jeans mean?”—torn, cut-off jeans, girls in jeans, and guys in jeans. Then t-shirts and how we’ve morphed into $150 t-shirts or $200 t-shirts. We still have $5 t-shirts. What is this particular object? How do you go from 5 bucks all the way to 200 bucks when it’s still just a t-shirt? There’s the idea to play with the symbolism of it and to carve it into marble. That, for me, really personifies the ability to take a simple thing and turn it into an extravagant thing, to take these shapes that we really take for granted and to apply those in the marble or in the space.” 