SURFACES FOR life

EYE 12 THE GOODS While chromatically different, paint year share a theme of nature and wellbeing. 15 SEEN Highlights and insights from Cersaie 2022 in Bologna. 34 GOOD READS The life of Walter Gropius and a look at ECAL’s teaching methodology get the Phaidon treatment. 38 OVER & OUT revitalization project offers peace and respite.

Remembering Jack

Clients and Sustainable Living

Wayne Turett on how design professionals can encourage clients to make environmentally positive design choices.

Business During the Day, Party at Night: Supernat

MRDK designs Supernat, a cafe by day and wine bar by night in Montréal’s Hochelaga-Maisonneuve neighbourhood.

When Tradition Meets Modernity: Iru Izakaya

Designed by Cléo Katcho Design Architectural, the concept was inspired by post-WWII Japanese alleyways where izakayas emerged.

Visit

Episode

21 Robotics in Design w/ David Correa

and Gropius in review ExclusivetoourDIGITALEDITION

Good Reads

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People are on the move again. Bags are being packed, tickets bought, itineraries planned. “Travel came roaring back in the third quarter,” said analysts in the Colliers Hotels 2022 Q3 INNvestment report. “While the recovery has not been even for all asset classes and markets, pent-up demand, largely fuelled by domestic travel, drove a sharp rebound.” And thank God for that, because as we all know the hospitality sector was hit hard by COVID-19, with restaurants, hotels, casinos, and sporting venues forced to shutter their doors for months.

There is certainly an exuberance being felt, but what is interesting to hear when discussing many of the new projects that came on-line during the summer and autumn months is how, for their designers, the pandemic did not really have the course-altering effect as may have been expected. More than one designer has pointed out to me that the projects were begun before the pandemic hit, and despite lockdown closures the final designs did not deviate much from the original vision.

It will take a while for the ripple effects of the pandemic to reach the built environment, but designers who focus mainly on hospitality projects would be wise to make it their business to know what those clients are paying attention to – which is, how the pandemic and global lockdown has dramatically affected consumer behaviour and spending patterns. Hospitality organizations find themselves in a very different business environment, and while it is not an interior designer’s job to focus on improving clients’ operational agility and financial resilience, helping them understand consumers’ behaviours and responding effectively will be critical to enabling all the related businesses to recover in a post-pandemic economy.

For example, to rebuild the trust that is so necessary in persuading consumers to return, hospitality operators are urgently trying to signal a clean, safe experience beyond just staff walking around spraying surfaces with disinfectant. Substituting paper menus with QR code stickers on tables, smartphone-based hotel check-ins and replacing surfaces with ones that are both easier to clean and perceived as clean (read: luxury vinyl flooring instead of carpeting) may irk designers, but operators are asking for it. To avoid ill-thought “solutions” like those plexiglass screens between diners that we all hated, designers need to help hospitality organizations see this as an opportunity to innovate both programmatically and technologically to keep from sliding into old habits.

Erratum In the 2022 Best of Canada issue, the Club Cossette project was in fact designed by Signature design communication and LAAB Collective in joint venture. We apologize for mistakenly omitting Signature design communication in the firm credit.

Peter Sobchak psobchak @canadianinteriors.com

Pulled Up by the Roots

Continuing to experiment with the street-front volume of their building, Mason Studio has built an art installation which, according to co-founder and creative director Stanley Sun, explores “the impact of our interior surroundings and how they may contribute to the lasting power of memories.”

Titled Refuge in the Sky, the installation forces visitors to literally view nature from the bottom up: an island of flora floats seven feet above the floor, placing the root structure right at eye level. “This contrast between our familiarity with nature and the unfamiliarity of the perspective is the novelty that we expect to create long-term memory formation,” says Sun.

Reservation for Two

For more than a year, the concrete skeleton of Hôtel Mile End has been part of Montréal’s urban landscape. Now thanks to artist Nancy Guilmette, passersby are doing a double-take at a normally ubiquitous piece of cityscape. Called Room 202 after the space it occupies, Guilmette has implanted a host of lush greenery in the under-construction building to expose and explore “the encounter between the stark architecture of the building’s concrete frame and the vitality of nature,” says the artist.

“For a moment, the landscape is changed completely, and then later returns to its previous state when the work is removed without a trace.”