wave of the future julie frank Global Director of Design Le Méridien Hotels New York I grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa. When I was younger, my parents paved our driveway and my friend Hayley Eber (who worked at Diller & Scofidio and is now a founding partner of EFGH in New York) and I took the remaining bricks and built a 'house' with four-course-high soldier bond walls. We turned that into four rooms with a central place for a firepit, where we tried (not so successfully) to roast marshmallows. As child, I would always make my mom take me to the toilets at restaurants. My dad was convinced that I was researching a book on 'toilets of the world.' For some reason, I loved to see the intricacies of the design and layout. I think toilet intrigue is a latent seed of an architect. In South Africa, there are no general undergraduates, so essentially you go straight into your professional degree. The first thing I did was architecture school at the University of Witwatersrand, 1 082 Julie.indd 82 June 2014 hospitalitydesign.com 6/9/14 11:04 AMhttp://www.hospitalitydesign.com