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| Chris Parker |
Chris Parker
Design Director, PriestmanGoode Agency |
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| Michel Gicquel |
| Président – Global Concept, Artistic Director – Innovations and Design, Accor Group |
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| Making the Most of Any Space |
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| PriestmanGoode Applies New Ideas to Guestroom Design for the Etap Hotel Brand |
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Chris Parker, Design Director from PriestmanGoode Agency introduced his agency’s recent projects during Cleverdis’ first “teatime” with Michel Gicquel.
Having worked on a major project for Swiss airlines, Mr. Parker gave an overview of how spaces are evolving and how some elements in a hotel have become completely obsolete. For example, in their recent hotel developments, they have eliminated the bathroom space completely and incorporated clothes storage into hotel walls and other furniture. |
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In a nutshell, the background of Priestmangoode?
Chris Parker: We started 25 years ago in London and it was started by Paul Priestman and Nigel Goode. We were traditionally a product design consultancy and we moved into a broad range of projects, from transport interiors, hotel interiors, and also continued in traditional product design as well.
What’s the biggest difference between hotel and other fields?
For us, it’s not such a big difference. Obviously you are dealing with different materials and slightly different environments. But at the end of the day, what you do in an interior of an aircraft applies equally into a hotel setting. So it’s the same kind of process and similar attention to detail.
So design concepts today are based on the changing way people are living?
Yes, I think so. In the hotel industry, there are trends where rooms are becoming smaller, people are looking at spaces that can be available on a tighter budget. With the Etap Hotel project was that we had a specific budget and size to work with, but in terms of the way we approached it, was to reconfigure that room and make it more spacious, open, and that was achieved by moving the traditional bathroom and opening up the space. We also developed a device called the totem, which has all the electrics and plumbing going into one prefabricated module, which incorporates the basin, mirror, and all the technology in the room. It’s kind of a clever way of bringing all those things into a room into one unit/device. So it makes it very simple to produce.
What is changing in the way of hotel room usage?
I think one of the things that we felt was that sometimes hotel rooms had unnecessary components, such as storage space for example. It’s about only putting the essentials in the hotel room.
In terms of design in general, what are the big trends?
Everything we’re doing is pushing towards simple, contemporary design. Even for the room that we did for Motel 6, it was a very simple European design that had a good reception. I think people are receptive to that. People look to Europe for contemporary design and the sectors we’ve been working, the more budget/compact spectrum, it’s the case that people are looking for simple European design. regards to their application for classification. |
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| The Etap Hotel Brief - Michel Gicquel |
“It started with the perception I had in 2006, from the fact that the ‘Etape room’, that had a great deal of success, had to, within two or three years, evolve. So I preferred to anticipate this evolution. Following this, I heard about the work being done by PriestmanGoode in the fields of aeronautics, railway and yachting, and I thought the idea of having a new vision of what to do in small, confined spaces, extremely dense in new technologies and materials, these people had a superior vision, and could bring some solutions to the table. I met with Paul Priestman in September 2006, and I showed him the photos I had of the Etape room, and I explained the preoccupation I had, and the concept of a room with separate spaces … the bathroom in one place, the entrance, the dressing area and so on… very fragmented… to a new kind of space, which for me represents the 21st century: a modular space. I wanted to find that via very clear functions, and to respond to very fundamental demands, which were the bed - number one, the shower – number two, and number three, the technology via the TV screen and the connectivity panel. The bed was 140 x 190 cm, and I wanted, with regard to the morphological evolution, affecting everyone, whether in economic hotels or luxury hotels, for the bed to be 2 metres long… and for the bed to be wider as well. So now we have a bed that’s 150 x 200 cm, which is considerable in the economic sector, and I believe they are the biggest in the field.
The second point is that the shower is a ‘fundamental resourcing event’, and therefore it must have dimensions that correspond to our morphological evolution. The shower recess was 80 x 80 cm was no longer realistic. Now the shower is about 110 x 85 cm: the biggest that exists in the economic market. Then there’s the introduction of the flat screen and the interface that allows consumers, often equipped with ‘nomadic’ equipment to run their images and music and so on.
Once we had rethought the fundamental demands, we realised that 12.5 m2 was not necessarily so small!
We kept the toilet separate, because despite making the space modular, you have to retain the intimacy, so of course, the WC remains independent.
I gave Paul Priestman the idea of having a ‘technical totem’ between the shower and the sink, with prefab elements… and this is what he designed for me.
Statistics showed that while we needed a place to ‘put’ things, it was more important to have a ‘majestic bed’ on which people not only sleep, but also play, eat and work. So the importance of the bed took advantage over the desk. But while we wanted to give an extra dimension to the bed, we still needed to have a desk. So the idea was to have a multi-purpose surface, with the sink on one side and the desk on the other with the connectivity panel associated. All this would be delivered assembled and ready to install.
Those were the main criteria for Paul. Based on this, he created the models we now find in the hotels. " |
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