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Book
Design and Dialogue
HOTEL CHIC&BASIC BORN
(China)

CHIC & BASIC BORN

1. “Crossover” is very popular in different design areas nowadays. And what is your view towards this and is there such design elements in your works?
We work always without prejudices. We have a strategy, we have a process, but we are wide open to shocking surprises. We work for people, we provide answers, and in fact we have no style. Crossover has been always there, with different names… like curiosity, culture. It’s the idea of staying prepared to listen to anything that happens around you. Different situations demand different solutions, and you need to be prepared to pick any sort of clue from any field.

2. Environmentally friendly and advanced materials are very popular today. Are these materials largely applied in the interior design? What is the common idea of most people towards this?
Environmentally friendly is a concept, it is loaded with abstraction. Interior design is about glamour, senses, materials, loaded with dreams, but physical. That is to say, if a material is environmentally friendly then has an added value, but not necessarily on the interior design side. Once say that, we definitely have to be more conscious about our planet and especially about what people think about our planet. We envision the future using materials that you can recover, not in the sense of recycling, but in the sense that nature is able to provide them regularly, have you heard about wood?

3. Would you please talk about the fashionable elements applied in the interior design? And how do you use these to express your creative design ideas?
The fashionable elements are important but are the weak side of interior design. It’s like speaking just one language, once the last speaker dies the messages create with it become unintelligible. But on the other side, fashion has to do with current times and the manners and ways people like to follow. At the end of the day we work for people, and it is clear that people wants to have a distinctive or peculiar way of living, their own way. This is a race without end, always changing to keep different.

4. Detailed design usually determine the overall effect, and what is your attitude towards this?
It is said that God is in the details, but also that the devil is in them. Details are necessary for the overall effect but they have to be completely aimed to it. They do not say anything by themselves. You have to be aware of the materiality of things and this goes down to craftsmanship and skill. Works executed with skill will be always welcome.

5. How can you balance the practical and artistic feature of the interior space?
We do not need to think practical and artistic as opposed, they are two qualities both needed. Anything we do as interior designers has to be useful, and useful means for our body and for our mind. Because we eat and breath but also dream and love. But at the same time our aim is to provide interesting experiences to people. Make their lives more exciting and build and environment for their senses to enjoy. Something transcendental, difficult if not impossible to transmit by any ways, something to be experienced with an active attitude.

6. How can you deal with the different opinions between your design and client’s demand?
We work for people, and that means that our designs are aimed to answer questions or needs that someone has placed to us. If the questions are properly placed, the proposed design and the client’s demand won’t be too far. But the key issue is the placing of the question, there, at the very beginning, is where a successful path has to be traced.

7. As a successful designer, in your opinion, what professional quality is a must?
The attitude. And for attitude we mean the enthusiasm of a doer, someone without prejudices and not worried about failing many times. Try, do, and if you fail, try again. And, of course, do not forget that you work for people; they are not just your clients but also your duty. It is like having a mission.

8. What do you think is your most satisfying work among your recent creations? What aspects have you paid more attention to?
The most satisfying work among our recently finished interiors is the Chic&Basic hotel in Barcelona. In that project through a light mechanism operated by the costumer, we encourage interaction between roommates and the other host staying in the hotel, but also with the passersby. Also a little and ephemeral piece, Cerámica en Movimiento, which was the attempt to do the impossible: put clay on the move.
But we do not forget our most challenging project to date, the interior design for a space hotel being developed by Galactic Suite.

Chic&Basic Born Hotel

The new structure will keep the regimented classroom layout while aiming to create little idyllic oasis which give the sensation of belonging to a wide-open space. In each room, the shower, wash basin and toilet will be housed in a well-defined nucleus around which a distinctive design for each individual room is based. The walls to each of the rooms will be built in accordance with the new design while respecting features from the original structure, but without actually adhering to the same layout. Cornice strips and wall festoons will cross the new divisions, sweeping in and out of rooms, evoking their origins in more generously spaced quarters. The upper third of the rooms will be covered with mirrors. As the mirrors face one other, the scrolls, frames, cornices and parts of former walls are multiplied into infinity. The trick is in trying to create the sensation of a larger space, a stronghold of intimacy in an illusory greater living space which is now reduced from the superstructure of a distant past. The neutrality of the semi-prefabricated nucleus and the informal design of the walls and curtains allow such echoes from the past to endure in its adornments and the illusion of a stately room.
Just like the silly idea of playing a princess from the past, even though she never actually succeeded to the throne.