New Zealand Commercial Design Trends Series NZ Commercial Design Trends Vol. 34/02C | Page 96

comes back to the ergonomics. So people are not
having to re-learn a hotel each time they check in.
Then creating something that’s different and
unique comes back to that sense of place. There’s
nothing worse than getting on a plane and travelling
for 12 hours and then checking into a hotel that
looks exactly the same as the one in the city you’ve
just left.
So creating a sense of place is one of the things
we really focus on – understanding culture, under-
standing the arts, understanding the location in
which the hotel is being placed.
For M Social, I knew this hotel building from my
search | save | share at
growing up here in Auckland, so it was about trying
to create a reference back to the 1970s, to the
house I grew up in. The selection of the woods, for
example, some of the chairs and furniture – that’s
one part of it.
Also the fact that it’s on the waterfront meant
there had to be a nautical aspect to it, there had to
be a reference to the City of Sails.
And then there are certain elements in the design,
that depending how you look at them, can look like
little kiwi feet or they can look like the masts and
the rigging you see around here. We leave that up
to the guest to interpret what they see.
Above:Even more traditional
five star hotels such as The
Langham, Shenzhen are
re-thinking the way guest rooms
are planned. As business and
leisure travel merges, there’s no
longer a need for a dedicated
work desk – a dining table with
handy power points can easily
double as a workstation too.