Boutique Design - December 2013 - 84

tury-old Hotel Maria
Cristina in Argentina,
HBA designers incorporated 19th-century
portraits, rich silk
brocades and elegant
chandeliers to create
an opulent experience.

3 To help guests feel

"cocooned among the
clouds" in The ESPA
in The Ritz-Carlton on
the 116th and 118th
floors of a Hong Kong
skyscraper, HBA
created spaces with
rounded edges and
curved walls.

WHAT FIRST ATTRACTED YOU TO
INTERIOR DESIGN?

I've always loved design and actually
started out wanting to create spaceships. I would spend hours building
them and then trying to make them
fly-but they all crashed. I also loved
imagining room sets for my dolls;
my bedroom had one of those
modular white plastic wall-to-wall
bookshelf systems, so each shelf
became "a room" for me to design
with miniature pieces of furniture I
had made. This hobby was much
more successful, so I opted for interiors from a very early age.
I was also constantly redoing my
mom's house. She was a great sport!
In the bathroom, she let me lay vinyl
flooring that I'd cut into black and
white shapes, and she let me refinish
the entry hall with a fake marbleeffect wallcovering.
WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO FUSE
THE IDEA OF INTERIORS AS
ARTISTIC EXPRESSION AS WELL
AS TOOLS TO PROMOTE CULTURAL
SUSTAINABILITY?

How we live and what surrounds us
has a huge influence upon our mindsets. Growing up in South Africa
during the apartheid years, having
a family that was totally opposed to
racial discrimination, and then living
through the amazing change postapartheid opened my mind to embracing all cultures and learning from
them. It also made me question
things and not blindly accept the
opinions of the majority.
When apartheid was still in place,
no imported goods were available due
to all the boycotts, so if you wanted
something, you made it yourself. I also
had a wonderful grandfather who
could design and build anything-he
created a waterwheel so that our family's farm could be powered by hydro84

boutiquedesign.com december 2013

electricity. We were always inventing
and crafting things. On top of that,
we had lots of space and light and
were surrounded by wonderful African
crafts and textures.
I chose to start my design career
at a museum that was all about
exploring differences, and I worked
on displays of cultural history,
fashion, photography, geology and
transport. This exposed me to many
different fields and opened my
mind further.
WHAT WERE SOME OF THE
OTHER UPSIDES AND CHALLENGES
ASSOCIATED WITH WORKING ON
THAT MUSEUM?

It was an experience that formed
the foundation for my entire career.

I worked with historians and photographers, went into shanty townships
where we bought shacks from families
to put up in the museum, and built
displays that were not just static but
used technology and sensors so that
sounds would go off when you entered. For example, we incorporated
lots of African music into a display
about Sophiatown, a celebrated
melting pot and cultural mecca
of Johannesburg that had been
destroyed under apartheid.
We were a young design team that
had to make it work, and we learned
so much. After the opening of the
museum, the initial funding had been
used up so I also discovered how to
design exhibitions and displays for
very little money, creating a huge

W I L L P R YC E ( H O T E L M A R I A C R I S T I N A ) ; J A S O N L A N G ( E S PA )

2 In restoring the cen-

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