Lyndon Neri had a hard time getting used to the mainland, but now he's reveling in the challenges.
October 2009, Prestige, Hong Kong
Though passion is imperative in any good designer, it can be taken too far. This is something Lyndon Neri learned on the day he accidentally collapsed his own lungs. “I wasn’t well and I hadn’t slept for three days straight. So I spent two days in hospital then went straight back into studying again,” chuckles the designer of his breakdown at Harvard. “It probably wasn’t the best approach.”
Love is in the wear
Architecture with a lived-in touch is winning hearts
April 24, 2009, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
When architect Bill Bensley was asked to design a hotel in Phuket not long after the tsunami, he found himself wanting to give it a deeper layer of meaning. That layer was found by his team of Thai and Indonesian designers at salvage auctions in the area, where they bought driftwood and other bits of wreckage wrought by the giant wave, and incorporated them into the hotel, Indigo Pearl. “We picked up a whole lot of materials and in various innovative ways reused them, in the structure, in sculptures,” he recalls. The hotel, which also uses a lot of old tin in tribute to the area’s tin mining history, has received rave reviews for its vision and its sensitivity.
Basic Instincts
Keeping it simple is the order of the day as people seek comfort in uncertain times
March 27, 2009, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
The opening of high-end serviced apartments in Sheung Wan last month saw a rare aesthetic for Hong Kong: the Yin’s 42 studios offer glimpses of brickwork, flashes of exposed piping, and baths carved out of stone blocks. This kind of warehouse-hip has been run-of-the-mill in other cities for years, yet in Hong Kong it has always struggled, and usually drowned, under heaps of suede, crystal and polished wood. Still, Philip Liao of design firm Liao and Partners thought that now might be the time to give it a go – albeit with a sanitized and slightly Zen-like twist. “I just read in a fashion magazine that power pin stripes and opulence are a little out,” he laughs. “This raw, more honest kind of living is not timed for this ‘tsunami’ but tastes are changing. Even very well paid young execs don’t necessarily want to live in a palace any more”
Cabin Fever
January 2009, Hospitality Architecture + Design, Hong Kong
Smooth, streamlined forms and an almost ‘pod’ aesthetic define the latest hotel in Dusit’s hip ‘D2’ boutique line in Pattaya, Thailand. Known as an international hotel mainstay among business travellers, the Dusit kicked off its D2 range in Chiang Mai in 2007, with a view to snagging a new footloose generation of executive travellers. Like its predecessor, D2 Pattaya Baraquda Hotel strikes a high end balance between contemporary and retro that teeters on kitsch.
Built to Last
Tadao Ando has 40 years of genre-defining architecture under his belt, but don’t assume he’s ready to retire. December 12, 2008, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
As a veteran architect in high demand, Tadao Ando knows how he likes his press meetings to run. “Give me three or four questions and I’ll answer them in a row,” he instructs through his interpreter, before delivering a series of diplomatic clichés and being whisked off to his next gig. But Ando can hardly be blamed for being perfunctory; he is just part of the way through a 24-hour publicity spree that includes a Hong Kong architecture tour, a speech at a business lunch, a series of interviews and an evening lecture at Hong Kong University to an arena of slack-jawed students. Despite the jaunty bowl cut and the kindly eyes, the 67-year-old is tired.
Minding their Business
Asia’s designers find a silver lining in the credit crunch
December 5, 2008, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
Speakers at Hong Kong’s Business of Design Week have long pushed design as a money-making tool, but this year audiences will probably be listening to the advice more closely than usual. With big business in trouble, the question on everyone’s lips at the event, December 8 to 13, will likely be, how are we going to weather the storm? Developer Morgan Parker thinks designers are in for a leaner time.
Mad World
Young and radical, Ma Yansong is pioneering a new, ideological path for Chinese architects
June 2008, South China Morning Post Style Magazine, Hong Kong
Having your business name linked with madness might not seem a savvy move, but it has served Ma Yansong remarkably well. During the past few years both his name, and that of his small architecture studio, MAD – which stands for Ma Design – has built an enviable reputation. Ma has buildings under way in countries from Canada to Costa Rica and is the first Chinese architect to win an international competition outside of China. For a guy not too long out of his master’s degree, and with only one thing actually built, he certainly knows how to create a buzz.
To the Manor Born
Along the Aegean coast an intriguing new boutique hotel seeks to celebrate and reinvigorate traditional Anatolian-style architecture with a contemporary twist and a healthy injection of Turkish art
December 2008, Perspective Magazine, Hong Kong
When the world "homey" is used to describe a hotel it rarely applies to anything bigger than a few thousand square metres; very few people, after all, can call a manor house home. But for the non-mansion dwellers among us there are hotels like Casa Dell'Arte on the Aegean coast.
Wicker Man
Dutch designer Danny Fang is leading a charge to bring beauty to the bulk business of Chinese furniture
April 4, 2008, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
Danny Fang wouldn’t call himself a design crusader exactly, or even a “knight” as he terms it, tongue in cheek. But there is something of the missionary in his manifesto. With each toothbrush holder or picnic bench that he creates here the Dutch designer is striving to bring a little Western finesse to Southern China’s frenzy.
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Object Lessons
Tom Dixon’s head may have broken cloud cover, but he’s keeping his feet on the ground.
February 1, 2008, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
“I think I could lend a bit to the international space station. Maybe it would be better in pink.” So muses Sir Tom Dixon, the man who has personally winched British industrial design up a good many style notches over the past few decades. And his flippancy comes as a relief. Though knighted now and sat at the head of a multi-brand design firm, Dixon is not always comfortable with the media machine; he seems more at home among Zambian craftsmen or Indian brass workers than fans with champagne. Yet one could say that it is this lack of polish, plus a healthy dose of humour, that has put him where he is now: talking interplanetary design in Asia.
Curves with Attitude
November 2007, Hinge Magazine, Hong Kong
If Hotel Cram could be personified it would make a good sultry brunette: sleek, sexy, unapproachable. For this reason the new Barcelona boutique hotel has been praised by many, and yet has also withstood some valid criticism. Those that love it adore its moody interiors, bold colour palette, innovative shapes and interesting design details. Those that go for comfort over glamour however, may walk into the lobby and wonder whether they should have worn nicer shoes.
Terminal Creativity
September 17 2008, Architecture Week, USA
The Chinese have long been good at big gestures, and one of Beijing's latest — courtesy of London's Foster + Partners — is lifting spirits in the capital at a rate of thousands per day. As the world's largest airport terminal, Beijing Capital International Airport's Terminal 3 is a striking combination of British finesse with China's brute power and bureaucratic will.
Happy Families
October 4, 2007, Time Magazine
Sequestered on a hill about a 40-minute drive from Chiang Mai, Proud Phu Fah doesn't attract young urbanites so much as families and others looking for a quiet puff of Thai mountain air. Yet that's not to say that the hotel lacks contemporary style.
New Architects of China
September 19, 2007, Architecture Week, USA
As China's share of the global limelight grows brighter, it's little surprise that architecture has become one of the country's greatest public relations tools. Signature buildings thrust up all over the place, brash new developments blanket the countryside, and developers' appetites for innovation are hitting extremes. China has always been very much about "face," and with both the Beijing 2008 Olympics and the Shanghai 2010 World Expo on the way, that face is getting a lot of attention.
An American in Bangkok
August, 2006, Hospitality Design, USA
Bill Bensley looks and sounds American, his architecture credentials are from Harvard, and when he met the King of Malaysia, they high-fived. But talk design, and he’ll tell you that the US has done little for his personal aesthetic. Based out of Bangkok, his multidisciplinary atelier, Bensley Design Studios, has brought its fresh, hip reworking of Asian themes to over a hundred and fifty hotels and residential buildings from Mumbai to Mauritius. “I really think of myself as being more Asian than Western,” he explains. “Everyone I work with is Thai or Balinese, and most of us have been together for over fifteen years.”
Designer hang outs
Local architects are transforming the city's youth centres into bright welcoming spaces
November 2, 2007, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
In Sau Mau Ping, Kwun Tong, architect Laurence Liauw stands in an entrance lobby, appraising the state of the pilot scheme he co-designed more than six years ago for Hong Kong’s Boys and Girls Club Association (BGCA). Light floods through large windows, glancing off computer screen monitors and cheerful modular wall displays. “It’s held up well,” he says, with satisfaction, glancing around.
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Cambodian Cool
April, 2006, Hospitality Design, USA
As a recent addition to the city of Siem Reap and Cambodia’s growing collection of high endproperties, the Hotel de la Paix stands out for both its modern sense of glamour, and
its fashionable yet careful appraisal of local Khmer culture.