In 1998, when Allen Chan, Matt Davis, and Anwar Mekhayech started DesignAgency and submitted a bid (which they won) to design a restaurant on the University of Toronto’s campus, they could never have assumed they’d be a highly sought-after global firm called upon to create a distinct language for new brands (Generator, Zoëtry) or redefine iconic, familiar ones (Momofuku, Hilton, Hyde).
Davis knew Chan from college where they studied landscape architecture together; they met Mekhayech at his family’s restaurant, Kensington Kitchen, where Davis waited tables. Mekhayech, “consistently entrepreneurial and design savvy,” says Chan, was the catalyst for the early beginnings of the firm. Since SpaHa launched at the University of Toronto, the trio has steadily become a “design studio that functions at the crossroads of various disciplines,” adds Davis. Their diverse backgrounds in architecture, landscape architecture, and engineering, as well as their passion for travel, food, art, graphic design, and music, has enabled the studio “to see and be inspired by different things,” explains Chan.
The goal set almost two decades ago remains the same for the firm today: “to create a fun, cool, and experienced studio with a variety of styles and clients,” says Mekhayech. It has always been about the people (the client, the consumer, their own team members), which has helped them push “beyond conventions and limits to find the best design solution,” Davis adds. The Soho House Toronto, for example, gave the firm a chance to restore a classic building in a contemporary style; Canada’s flagship Momofuku location brought the brand to new heights as a stylish landmark in Toronto with the recent Las Vegas outpost offering subdued glamour; and Generator catapulted the firm into the global hospitality market.
In fact, the budget-friendly Generator brand is notable for how it changed consumer and industry perceptions by infusing the hostel concept with authentic and thoughtful design. Working alongside former Patron Capital senior advisor and partner Josh Wyatt, DesignAgency “really became immersed in this opportunity, particularly the chance to explore what good budget design could be,” says Mekhayech. “We were pioneers at the time in this sector, but we found a lot of inspiration in aspects of hospitality that we admired around the globe.” Generator’s nearly a dozen international properties are defined by design risks that combine bold patterns and vibrant colors with local charm.
What started out as a three-person firm has grown to a staff of 40 that populates studios in Toronto, Barcelona, and Los Angeles, with projects that include the Fairmont’s Mont Tremblant, Toronto’s Broadview Hotel and the expansion of the city’s Drake property, and the luxury Zoëtry Wellness & Spa Resorts in Costa Rica, which “will open another new segment for us,” says Davis.
The firm recently reinvented the executive tower of the Hilton Portland, repositioning the property as a boutique concept for the brand, with a new name, the Duniway, and an upscale design—a mix of local and industrial—that takes the brand’s standards in a different direction.
Looking ahead, DesignAgency is working with sbe to evolve the Hyde nightclub brand into a 4-Star hotel that will be a “bold, fun, and iconic concept that captures the energy and magic of the original brand,” says Mekhayech. Guests will feel as if they’re entering a secret hideaway, and “you need to be in the know to get in.” In other words, it’s an “opportunity to change the game yet again,” he says.
