Jacu Strauss

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi. I am here with Jacu Strauss. Thanks so much for joining me today. How are you?

Jacu Strauss: I’m very good. Thank you very much for having me.

SSR: Yeah, I’m excited, And we’re doing this in person, so this is even more fun.

JS: Finally.

SSR: I know. Finally. All right, so we always start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

JS: So I grew up in South Africa in the Kalahari Desert and I had a wonderful childhood, but that’s where I grew up and when I turned 18 I moved to London and I guess the rest is history.

SSR: Ah, interesting. All right, so let’s go back to childhood. Why was it so wonderful and how did that influence or how do you think that influenced you today?

JS: Well, on paper it almost seems a bit sad. We were very rural, there was nothing really around. But for me, I had to create my own world and I had to create my own entertainment and I think that’s what really kickstarted my love of just being creative and kind of finding solutions for problems. So if I wanted something I had to make it.

SSR: Yeah. Was there anything that you remember making that was your favorite or most interesting?

JS: With whatever I could find, I always had a real interest in architecture and urban design, actually. I used to make streetscapes in the dirt and then I would take whatever I can to make buildings and I even made my sister’s Barbie dollhouses for her out of old wine boxes or cases.

SSR: Oh really? That’s amazing.

JS: That was it. So, little things like that, but for me it was an amazing creative outlet and I was really encouraged to do so as well, which was also very nice.

SSR: But you’re in the desert, so how did you get these ideas of these streetscapes? Did you guys travel or did you go in the cities?

JS: We traveled a little bit, but I mean again, it was before internet, before TV really. But I think it was perhaps in my early teens or maybe a bit earlier that it was sort of American TV for example, that kind of just showed me the world. So I saw the world through film and TV and magazines and books, but that was as much as I had to work with. So I had to really work with that. We had a library, I think they’re sort of now going out sadly, but I was a regular at my library. Can you believe it? It had very limited books but it had encyclopedias and I think that was something that I found creativity in everything. So even learning about the animal nature, there was something there that inspired me.

SSR: Of course. And what were your parents like? Were they creative? Did they infuse any of that into you?

JS: My mom thinks she’s very, very creative and she says that I got my creativity from her. They’ve always been very enthusiastic. I don’t think we necessarily always have the same interests at heart, but my parents both worked very hard and like I said before, they really encouraged me to do whatever I wanted to do, which was kind of unusual a little bit for a young boy to be pursuing creative directions rather than the typical ones like doing sport, which I’m terrible at. So yeah, it was just that encouragement that I think was really very valuable from them and that gave me some good criticism as well. So I think I needed that. Sometimes something could have been done better and they told me so in a very nice way.

SSR: Very politely.

JS: Very politely.

SSR: Okay. So then you moved to London when you were 18. Why London, and what did you move there for?

JS: So when you finish high school you travel or you go to university or you start a job, or do nothing if you have that luxury, I don’t. And I wanted to see the world and I always wanted to be in a big city and the UK is like the mothership, so it was always like a reverse gap year. So I went to London for a year. I was only supposed to be there for one year. Ended up staying for two years and then I moved to New Zealand and then moved back to London. So I never went back. My mom was mortified but she loves it now.

SSR: Okay, because she can come visit.

JS: Absolutely. And she was with me recently and she loves being in England.

SSR: Oh good. So how did you get into the design world officially? What was your first gig? Did you do that during the gap year or did you eventually kind of fall into it?

JS: Well my gap year, you won’t believe this, I actually worked at a bank for two years. So I was a banker.

SSR: How was that?

JS: It was very different and I actually hated it in the beginning, but it was an amazing job for someone who’s just turned 18, didn’t really have any qualifications or any work experience. And somehow I got it right and after three months I said, Look, I’m going to do something else. I want to do something a bit more creative. I’m in London for god’s sake. And I said, we’ll give you some more money if you stay for another three months. So I stayed for a little bit longer, but I had to make it work because the money was amazing and I was able to travel and see things and experience things that I wouldn’t otherwise have had the access to.

So, two years at the bank, I learned to find creativity in that as well, by the way. So again, it taught me a lot of life lessons that was really, it’s really still valuable to this day. But then when I moved to New Zealand, I had to sort of make a decision, I need to start studying, I need to go to university and I started studying architecture. I did my first degree in New Zealand, I loved it there. I lived there for five and a half years. Amazing design scene. And then moved back to London to do the subsequent two degrees in architecture.

SSR: Did all the degrees just cement your love for it or did it…?

JS: Yes it did. I mean it was very intense. Studying architecture is no joke. It takes about seven years and I think I still have a few nightmares occasionally waking up thinking that I’ve forgotten to hand in something or I failed a crit. It’s really quite scary, but it really teaches you how to deal with criticism. So I think that’s the biggest thing you learn from architecture school. But I’ve always loved architecture so it was just the one thing I wanted to do. And I think it really, for me, architecture touched loads of other disciplines as well. My real love is interior design. So for me, all of these things are connected and an architectural qualification kind of gives you that bigger, bigger parachute.

SSR: Right. And now too, it also helps you create the building and the interior so you can marry the two function and form.

JS: Yeah, for me that’s very important. That’s something I’ve learned sort of a little bit later on. It might be controversial and I don’t mind really saying it, but I think sometimes architects can’t really do interiors and vice versa. And I think I like to think that I, with my training and education and work experience that I’ve found that middle ground of really appreciating how both are equally as important to one another and they need to be connected.

SSR: Yeah, it’s almost like your right and left brain.

JS: Absolutely. Absolutely. Sometimes one works more than the other, but yeah.

SSR: So after university was your first job with Tom Dixon or was there somebody before that?

JS: So I finished my second degree, which is kind of the most important one in architecture. And then you have to work for about two years before you can do your final part, which is your licensing part. The part where they tell you’re going to get sued and die poor and traumatized. But the second part is the-

SSR: It sound like a great career.

JS: It’s wonderful, I recommend it to anyone. But the second part is the most important one because that kind of really sets you up for your direction and your interest in architecture and design as a whole. I qualified from that one in 2008, which was a really odd time to… I say odd, that’s the wrong word to use, but I’m sugarcoating it. It was a pretty awful time to graduate from university and then needing to find work because the crash happened and there was not really much there, but I used that as an opportunity to branch out a little bit further and work with someone I really admired who was not necessarily an architect, and that was Tom Dixon. And I met with him a couple of times and they didn’t quite have a role for me. And then one came up and I started working there and the projects we were working on just got bigger and bigger until we landed a hotel project in London.

So that all really changed my life and that was not working for an architect. I was working for someone who had this incredibly creative approach to life as a whole but also some great sensibilities as well. So I learned so much from Tom. Almost as much as I learned at architecture school to be honest with you, if not more.

SSR: That’s amazing. Is there one thing that sticks with you from all the lessons?

JS: Yeah, it’s a bit of a swear word now. Everyone uses it now, but back then, whatever we did, everything had to have meaning and everything had to have a story. So storytelling kind of came into it and he was absolutely right because everything that we tackled, we had a story in place and that really fascinated people. And I think that’s also what led us to win loads of pitches all over the world because we went with a story that really inspired people and made them really excited about this project. And that story was also the foundation to carry it all the way through to the end of each project. So that was a very valuable lesson. It seems really small but it’s actually a massive thing.

SSR: And was hospitality even on your radar, was that something you had any interest in doing or just because of Tom and the hotel, that we’ll get to, landed on your desk? Is that how you ended up in this lovely realm that we all live in?

JS: Well I’m very lucky where I’m now, but no. I mean I always loved hotels and my grandfather had a small hotel when we grew up and I always remember kind of redecorating and styling a few things, not quite to the same degree as what I do now, but not really any immediate aspirations to work in hospitality. But always loved hotels, loved the world of hospitality. And I could also start sensing that it was changing as well and getting a bit more exciting. So we just pitched for this project now called Sea Containers and we went in with a really confident pitch but it was a really beautiful pitch as well. And again there was a lot of storytelling involved and we put our hearts and soul into it and I think that’s what really worked for us and that’s how we got that pitch. So that’s how we got into hospitality. Tom always wanted to do hotels as well. I think everyone wants to do a hotel, really.

SSR: Secretly, everyone does.

JS: Secretly, I think everyone does. But so yeah, that was our first stepping stone into it and I honestly never anticipated that I would be where I am now from that one moment of winning that pitch.

SSR: Yeah. So going back quickly before we go forward, getting a job at Tom Dixon isn’t easy, right? Especially in 2008 and 2009. So what do you think? Was it your persistence? Was it just the right opportunity opened up or just…?

JS: Gosh, I would love to ask him that one day. Maybe I won’t like the honest answer. I think he attracts so many beautiful people and really interesting people. He’s very nurturing and so I felt completely out of place because I knew there were so many other amazing people who would want the same job. But I think it was all about how I connected with everyone and how they connected with me. And I think we just really got on from the start. And I think that was the thing that probably sparked a little bit of that career and that job. But I don’t know, I was also a very hard worker. I was really determined to make things work. I mean talking about working at the bank, I wanted to make it work. Whatever I do, I want to make success of it. And I think I always had that ambition and that enthusiasm for things. And I think that’s quite contagious. I don’t necessarily do it on purpose, but I think it’s something that I…

SSR: Just in your DNA.

JS: It’s there and I think it should be in everyone’s DNA. I think it is. Just has to come out.

SSR: Right, you got to find it. Okay, so let’s go back to Sea Containers. So that was a pretty ambitious project for London and the building. Can you talk a little bit about it and what you took away from it?

JS: Honestly, looking back, I have no idea how we did it. That building is massive. It’s sort of unofficially, officially the biggest building on the tames, it’s the massive T shape. And it was an existing building designed by Warren Platner, very famous American architect. And it was originally designed to be a hotel. And halfway through construction, the beginning of the ’80s, that company went bankrupt. So then halfway through construction they decided to turn into offices. So when we returned it to being a hotel, technology and needs and requirements have changed so much. So that building had loads of challenges because it’s so big, but there were loads of surprises as well.

So it was really baptism by fire for us going into this massive project, 356 rooms, it’s massive. And for someone who’d never done a hotel before, it was a real challenge. It was like a city, that whole building. So looking back at it now, sometimes, I don’t know how we did it, but I think again it was sheer perseverance and enthusiasm and just wanting to see something through right to the end. I think the thing that makes designers so valuable is that we really care about what we do. So we want to make sure that it’s fantastic all the way through to the end and beyond. And I think that was our goal with that hotel, was to make a success of it. The owners responded to that because they were also just so enthusiastic and they gave us all this freedom to do some really bizarre design things that really paid off.

SSR: Like what?

JS: So I think it was all about taking a few risks and in that case it really paid off. And that’s what makes design really exciting is when you have to take a few risks.

SSR: Was there one risk that…?

JS: Yes. One? I mean one million, perhaps. Working with an existing building. We had a few limitations and one thing that was really restrictive was the connection between the lobby and the main restaurant. It was connected by a very narrow corridor. So what did we do? We decided why don’t we propose a massive… Because the theme of the hotel is sort of going on a transatlantic voyage. It’s all about ships and it’s about how can we connect these two spaces quite smoothly. So we thought let’s do a massive copper ship’s hull made from 80,000 copper nails. It’s huge And it even sweeps to the outside as well and that kind of connects those spaces really well. But that was a later suggestion that obviously had to be paid for as well on top of everything else. But it was something that’s still so beautiful 11 years later. And it’s timeless and so it was definitely worth doing that. But that was pushing it because that was a lot of money for something that, “Is it going to work? How are we going to make it? We don’t know. We’ll have to work it out.”

SSR: Yeah and maybe even before Instagram moments and all that.

JS: Absolutely. That’s a big features now. But before that it was not really the intention, it was just to create a solution and we also built the reception desk into it. So again it had some practical things. But yeah, we had to, a lot of people said, “We don’t know how to make this,” and we kind of love that because then we’ll find a way and we’ll find someone who can do it. And we did and we loved working for them and with them as well. So yeah, it all paid off.

SSR: I love it. Okay, so how long were you at Tom and then how did you end up at Lore Group where you are now?

JS: So I was with Tom for about four and a half years. Four and a half amazing years. And then I was approached to design a hotel in Amsterdam called the Pulitzer. And I was really not looking at moving on, but I went to Amsterdam to have a look at the property and I realized this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to do this particular hotel. It’s 25 grand Dutch canal houses from the golden ages all interconnected. I mean a real, it’s a wonderland in itself. And so I had to make this tough decision, it was really difficult for me, to move on and do that hotel under my own name, but I am not looking back and it was the right move for me to have made.

SSR: Do you consider that your big break, that moment?

JS: I think so, yeah. And I knew that from the moment I saw that property that this only happens once.

SSR: Right. And who approached you? Was it the ownership group of the…?

JS: It was the ownership group who had also worked on with Sea Containers, so they already knew me. And I think they saw my hands-on approach to design was probably going to be very beneficial to this project. Because the Pulitzer in Amsterdam, when we bought it, it was 230 rooms, it’s now 225 because we created a few suites but give or take five rooms. But none of them are exactly the same. And because of the nature of the buildings, 25 of them, it’s a real labyrinth of corridors going in. And I could see the potential in making this fun rather than a problem. But it really needed a hands-on approach. I needed to know exactly what each room looked like. And there was a time where I could remember every single room, he gave me a room number and I can tell you exactly what that room looked like. I’ve forgotten some of it now, so don’t test me.

SSR: I’m like, room 10.

JS: And I’m a bad liar. I wouldn’t even be able to make up a bad lie for you.

SSR: So I mean if you thought Sea Containers was a big project, or challenging project I should say, I mean how did you approach this and what did you want to create?

JS: Well they’re very different properties with very different challenges, different eras. But it was a real, again, it’s testament to how design is half art, half science, there is a structure to design. So again, the same thing. With the Pulitzer, what’s the story here? What’s the story we want to tell and what’s the story we want to live on forever and how are we going to capture that and manifest it in the building itself and through the other things, service as well. All of those things need to come together.

So it was the same approach, very different building, but it’s about deciding at the beginning what we want to do and why are we doing this? Because we kept referring back to that same charter that we said at the beginning of that project, make this fun, celebrate the eccentricities and the quirks and the fact that nothing’s perfect, make that something to celebrate. So we set that in our charter. I call it a charter, it’s like a thing at the beginning, but that really helps you with decision making all throughout a project. And that one would’ve been impossible to do without that. Because you could get stuck around every corner like, What do we do here? What do we do there?

It was like, but maybe this is something that’s quite beautiful, it’s not really a problem. And that’s how we managed to do that project. But it was three years of hard work. I moved to Amsterdam to do that hotel. Of course there’s no complaints there. I love Amsterdam so much. Again, it all worked for me. But it was hard work, I was there all the time, but luckily I think my job was my hobby. So I don’t mind it when it comes to beautiful buildings like that. And it’s just something so amazing seeing it all come together. It’s something, it’s a feeling that’s hard to describe and impossible to beat.

SSR: And probably the best one.

JS: It’s the best one.

SSR: Yeah. And you used a lot of color and layers, I mean, was that where you kind of really found your style too. Not that you didn’t have it before, but I feel like sometimes when you work at a different firm you kind of allow yourself to be immersed in that firm and that firm’s vision but coming out on your own, was this a time to figure out your point of view?

JS: That’s a very good question. You’re absolutely right. I mean I think, again, Tom is amazing. He’s very flexible. I mean he likes to experiment. I always say that I’m a collector, Tom is an adventurer. He loves to try out different things but he has a certain very unique side that he’s famous for the use of real metal shapes and forms. And for me, I had to sort of wean myself off that a little bit when I did the Pulitzer. So I really had to start from scratch and decide what’s the right thing to do here. And I also didn’t bring my own taste or styles in there and I never do really, I wanted to see what would give this building its personality and character back and that’s how I started.

And that’s kind of a metaphorical layering of then just putting things next to one another and seeing how it all comes together. My personal approach to everything that I really love to do is I like to experiment. So I’m a little bit of a scientist. I like to mix rough and smooth and big and small. It’s all of these things and see how they kind of come together. And the Pulitzer was the perfect example of that because I was able to combine modern and old and really give it life because I didn’t want to recreate a museum. That was the big risk with working with 400 year old UNESCO buildings is I don’t want to recreate a museum otherwise it becomes… I don’t think a hotel operates very well in that respect because the guest becomes removed from the experience because you’re just viewing it rather than being part of it.

So I had to be very careful to make sure that that hotel still felt very welcoming even though we celebrate all these historic parts of it.

SSR: Yeah, well, a fun challenge.

JS: Yeah, a fun challenge and one that I loved and actually I learned a lot from that but I don’t think we’ll find a hotel like that again.

SSR: No, like you said, it was a once in a lifetime project and you knew that. Okay, so the hotel opens, what’s next?

JS: So the Pulitzer was a really interesting thing because I was also for the first time part of the bigger picture of the start of a hotel group. So I really learned so much more even about operations and service, food and beverage, all of those things. And I can really now, or even then, I appreciated how equal they are to design. I fight my corner but there are more things that need to work on an equal level for something to be successful, especially a hotel. And so learning from that, and that was also the first hotel where we went independent.

So we were designing it, operating it, running it, all of that ourselves. Again, another risk factor. But that was a massive success and that gave us ambition to then maybe look for more hotels and potentially create a hotel group. At the beginning of the Pulitzer, there wasn’t really that much of a desire to just really start doing a lot more hotels. But the Pulitzer was the one that really catapulted us into that direction. And that’s when we started to look for more hotels or sometimes I say hotels found us.

So after that, the next hotel was in Washington DC So that was our first American hotel and it was called Riggs. And again a very different property, a very different city, different continent, different country. And was this very grand, golden age bank building. And we were not the first hotel group to convert a hotel, grand bank building into a hotel. But this one was particularly unique to us and we just fell in love with it and that’s what we had to do. So after that, we did more hotels and then we also created Lore Group that just started to tie some of our hotels together into a small group. We have seven now. So not a very big group, but it’s a very special one.

SSR: Is there a meaning behind Lore?

JS: It’s from folklore. So again, it’s storytelling. So that’s something that we want to have in all of our properties. Doesn’t matter what it looks like or what the story of that is, each one has a story. What’s really nice about storytelling rather than dictating the design, ethos or description is that people remember stories so much better and people embellish it a little bit or they make it their own. And I think that’s great for me from a guest perspective as well as a staff perspective, that it shouldn’t be scary, design, it shouldn’t be too precious. It like there’s something that it’s malleable and you can sort of make it your own and you can really be part of it. So the hotel group lore, folklore, and that’s kind of the essence of what we do and the meaning behind the name.

SSR: Yeah. Well, it makes a lot of sense when you say it. So you did the Riggs and then also Lyle was next in DC, so you actually did a couple in DC kind of back to back, right?

JS: Yeah, pretty much. It’s like Amsterdam, I moved to DC for three years and I loved it to do the two hotels. I mean originally it was only going to be the one, but then we found Lyle and fell in love with that hotel and it was also around the corner from where I lived in DC in a very residential part. So Riggs is in Penn quarter, so it’s near all the museums. Great location. Lyle is completely different, completely different building again and in a very different neighborhood. So again, we started from scratch with what we wanted to do there. So we had these two very, very unique and different hotels in the same city. So again, I love doing that. Otherwise, I’d get too bored if I had to just do a cookie cutter, which wouldn’t work anyway. So yeah, Lyle was the second hotel in DC and I’m very proud of that one as well.

SSR: Yeah. If you had to sum them up in like a sentence, what would the Riggs be versus the Lyle

JS: Riggs is much grander. It’s all about showing off. It’s all about beautiful Richardsonian Romanesque architecture. It’s about the location. You walk in there and you just see all these beautiful columns and 22 foot-high ceilings. I did a flower display case in there that’s two stories high with these giant flowers. So again, it was this whole play on scale. So there’s a bit of wow factor. Lyle reflects the neighborhood and it’s in an extra apartment building, an art deco apartment building. So it’s a lot more intimate, a lot smaller. So there’s a lot more emphasis on comfort and feeling a little bit more residential. It’s never a home away from home. I don’t believe hotel should ever be a home away from home. Hotel should be more special than that. So Lyle has these touches. So I always say it’s like staying in a very stylish aunt’s house.

And even the restaurant feels really intimate and I put these white banquets in there, which you never really would do in a restaurant, but I engineered with the right fabric and the fact that the cupboards could be removed. But immediately, you walk into the restaurant, it actually just doesn’t feel like your bulk standard hotel restaurant. So it’s all of these little touch points that we had to engineer and invent in some places.

SSR: Yeah. And F&B is really important to your hotels. Obviously it’s very important across the board for the industry. But talk about your approach to F&B and how, especially for the Riggs and the Lyle, you wanted to kind of set that tone.

JS: Well everything has to feel, authentic is a word that again, is been used too much, but something needs to feel like it’s the right thing in the right place. So food is very important, right? And drink. It’s part of the census. I think that’s the things you probably enjoy most about a hotel. Or I think a very comfortable bed. But having some room service, I mean to me it’s a real treat.

SSR: It’s my favorite part of traveling, is room service.

JS: It’s amazing. But it’s the ritual of it all. I mean, and again, it’s such a beautiful touch point and again that’s why I say hotel station should never be a home away from home. It should be that elevated treat and it should delight you. So again, these are the things that affect your senses. Food, very important to our senses and I think that really is part of a space. I’ve been to places where it’s designed so beautifully but the food is completely mismatched, then it completely feels false and you can’t underestimate that people, whether they can describe it or not, but people will sense it and that’s when something fails.

So you have to make sure that all of those things are aligned. Again, Lyle, the menu reflects a much more residential environment and they have curly fries on the menu, which I really fought for because to me it’s just so nostalgic and it sometimes feels, it was questioned about this is not smart enough. And that’s exactly the point. And it’s a massive hit. Everyone has a weakness for curly fries.

SSR: Right here.

JS: There we go.

SSR: Curly fries and tater tots.

JS: “Oh, don’t give me any curly fries.” Okay then. Its one of those things where I’ll just have a little bit and then go have the whole thing.

SSR: Yeah, exactly. Okay, so you said you had several hotels. So you had the Pulitzer, the Riggs, the Lyle, where did you guys go from there?

JS: So we own another branded hotel in Amsterdam and I needed a half refurbishment on that. It’s called the Kimpton De Witt, also a very, very special hotel.

SSR: That was beautiful.

JS: And then we have one in East London called One Hundred Shoreditch. And that was at the [former] Ace Hotel.

SSR: Oh, that’s right. What was that like converting…? Because that hotel helped redefine what Shoreditch was. And so that was kind of iconic for the industry at some point.

JS: Massively. And that also became… We were really sensitive about how we were going to rebrand this hotel and refurbish it because what Ace did to that building and that location, they became a real cornerstone for the whole Shoreditch community. So it was a massive thing. And again that was magic that we’d never wanted to lose. We were very careful about that. I mean the fact that it was really used by people to work during the day. And again, this is pre-Covid, where now, it’s much more common to see people work remotely. But that was the kind of people went there to sit in the lobby and work and that gave the lobby an amazing energy and a buzz and that really captured that shortage energy and brought it into the hotel.

When we did the refurbishment, we wanted to make sure that we could hold onto it. And I tell you, after the refurbishment when we opened the doors, people were lining up with their laptops ready to come back in and it immediately has brought the lobby to life. So some of these important things, especially with that hotel, you couldn’t put on a spreadsheet. It’s like, what is this energy and how do you nurture it and contain it and cherish it? So that was the challenge with One Hundred Shoreditch, we had to make it a little bit more adult as well. So we wanted to make the rooms a little bit more comfortable. So it was a natural evolution for that building. But we’ve managed to keep that essence of that Shoreditch spirit in the hotel and that’s still there to this day.

SSR: Yeah, and it’s a great location right on the street.

JS: Absolutely. It’s a fantastic loc- it’s a big hotel as well. We humanize the facade a little bit, so it almost looks like four different buildings now. So it’s not so big and imposing. And again, it humanizes the whole experience a little bit. But that project was done through the pandemic and that’s definitely something I don’t want to do again. That was…

SSR: I love how you say humanize. And is that a lot of what you try to do? I know authentic is a buzzword that we all need to figure something out, figure out something else to say besides that word. But I really think spaces that are  thoughtful really help create that feeling that you’re going after.

JS: Well I think humanize should be the new buzzword really, because design ultimately is not about things, it’s about people. And so an atmosphere, everything, it comes down to how people interact with it and how they enjoy it. The greatest feeling for me when a project’s finished is not getting praise or getting all of that stuff. And that’s all very welcome by the way. But seeing someone just walk into the space and their face light up is the most wonderful feeling and that’s all I need to know. It’s just, if I’ve done something to delight someone, honestly, it’s made my day, my year, whatever.

That is what design is about. And we need to humanize it because it’s not about things. It really is about putting something out there that someone can respond to and enjoy. And I do think the world is kind of splitting design wise into two directions where one really embraces that. And with that also comes diversity. People try different things because there are different ways of delighting different people. And I think the other half is kind moving down the mundane route where probably that kind of, they’re trying to dehumanize the whole experience and then things just look like really mausoleum-like office lobbies. That is happening. I don’t think that’s definitely something that we should be encouraging. But I do see examples of that popping up still to this day. And I just don’t know how long that’s going to last because no one can really connect with it or respond to it. It’s a shame. It’s always a missed opportunity.

SSR: Yep, totally agree. And now you’re also putting your touch on a hotel in New York, right?

JS: Yep. So it’s our seventh hotel and it’s on Park Avenue South, so we’re calling it Hotel Park Ave. And it’s an existing hotel, so we just upgrading a lot of interior and the way that we can operate the hotel. And it’s done in stages so it won’t have one formal opening, but it’s open right now. And we’ve launched 50% of the upgraded rooms and the new lobby. And I’ve designed this rather special reception desk, which we kind of trying out a different way of checking in. It’s sort of a little bit more personal but also a little… Well, it’s almost like a self check in or checkout kind of system. But it’s still manned, you have someone there, but it’s a lot more personal. So we’re trying out something different. Why not?

SSR: Yeah. I love it.

JS: And we were able to design this beautiful sculpture that’s sort of two stories high in this lobby as well, made from wood that we work with, a guy called Jan Hensel in London and he does these amazing woodwork sculptures and pieces of furniture, absolutely amazing. And it even smells nice when you walk in there. So we were able to bring in a little bit of that to this hotel. But it’s ongoing. So now we’re working on the other 50% of the rooms. And then at some stage, there will be food and beverage as well. That will probably be someone else doing that because the building’s quite big. But yeah, it’s a work in progress. So that’s my work cut out for me for the next few months.

SSR: Love that. Does that mean you’re moving to New York?

JS: Oh, yes, please. If you’d have me. I mean I’m so lucky that I come to New York so often that I get my New York fix. I obviously love London as well. I love living in London and the English countryside I absolutely adore. So no, I get my New York fix once a month pretty much coming here. So it’s good. I just don’t want that to stop. So yeah, if that stops then I’ll have to move here probably.

SSR: Is this your first big New York project, then? Or have you done others?

JS: I’ve been part of loads of other projects in York. This is our first hotel project here. But the company I work for also did, they have a brand called Anagram and one of they residential buildings and one is on Columbus Circle, which is one that opened about a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago. And I helped out on that. I even did the paintings in the lobby, some huge paintings, which I love doing. But when I was with Tom, my first really big overseas project was doing the headquarters from McCann Erickson in Midtown.

And not very far from where the hotel is that I’m doing right now. And I loved that project. That was amazing. But that was going back to 2010, 2011. So I’ve done a few things in New York. We have our own headquarters on Broadway, it’s called the Nomad Tower. And I also worked on the refurbishment of that. So we have a lot of commercial real estate as well. So beside the hotel things, it’s my bread and butter, I’m also involved with the commercial real estate side of the business.

Which I find really exciting, by the way, because it’s amazing to bring some hospitality spirit into where people work. And I don’t see why not. I think this definitely needs to change. I know it is, but how we work and how we live that needs to be reevaluated and that’s what we’re doing with our buildings. We want to create something that’s really wonderful to work in, not just to go to work in. You know what I mean.

SSR: No. And especially today when so many people are used to working from home, how do we encourage people to come back into the office space and what are we offering for that?

JS: I think many people would sort of use the pandemic as an example, but I think it started even before that. Just the way we work now. I mean, going back to where I worked at the bank, when I turned up, my work was on my desk and when I left the office it was gone.

SSR: It was on your desk. I do miss those days.

JS: I think we have to rebalance that a little bit because we have to find that balance again. I think we’ve kind of swung too far the other way. But my phones are over there. I’ve got two phones, they my desks now and they’re with me all the time. So it’s about how do we go back? Because I think it’s very important socially to be back in a work environment. I think normally people talk about the social element of being with people and I think we can sort of see that being completely isolated and remote is not really good for the human spirit. It’s not natural for us. We pack animals.

So just all of those things. But how do we bring people back to an office where you’re not just sitting in a soulless box? What can you do to make work part of your living? So design is obviously one way of doing it. It’s not the only thing. But I find that really fascinating.

I find it fascinating, like I said earlier, how hospitality can actually touch other things. If you bring the essence and the principles of hospitality and what makes that work into something else, even residential, what is it that we love about hotels and what can we borrow from that and bring it into other sectors to bring that up to date?

SSR: Well yeah, we always say the hospitality effect here, right? How does hospitality influence other industries, which we’ve seen for last five, eight, almost 10 years. But it’s exciting because retail now, brick and mortar looks at what hospitality does and they’re adding cafes or look at all the coworking and members clubs that have popped up and they all have an element of hospitality. So it’s really exciting to see the importance of how hospitality affects others and also how they even look at hospitals that are really looking at hospitality to have an influence on patient care. Because it actually shows that people feel better in more beautiful spaces, right?

JS: Let’s put hospitality back in hospitals, right? I completely agree. But I think we have to. But it’s amazing that all of these different disciplines are communicating with one another now, in some way or another. There was a time where things were very, very much separate. And I don’t really want to see us go back to that. I think we live in a time where we have so much more freedom to kind of experiment a little bit and we should run with it.

SSR: Okay. So what is your favorite part of the process?

JS: It’s the beginning. It’s my favorite, but it’s also the hardest because I think often people underestimate how much time and effort you have to spend on that first step. You need to make sure that you’ve experimented and you’ve explored all the different options. And this is what you’ve decided is the brief that you want to do. That’s the nice thing about hotel design, by the way. We make our own rules, right? So we set our own brief, but it’s not easy. But it’s so important to have that set in stone so that every decision you have to make all the way through to the end, all the way to Z, you refer back to the beginning.

So it makes your life easier. I’ve seen other projects where they failed because they just skipped that first step. It doesn’t always seem like it’s very necessary. We can sort it, we can figure out it later. It’s not at all the case. So really put emphasis on that. And then it’s also, so the feeling is amazing when you’ve done the brief and you’ve done your concepts and everyone’s agreed to it. That’s the best feeling of the project in my opinion. Because that’s a massive high. You’ve done all of this and now you’re ready to go. And then the rollercoaster ride happens and then you have the ups and downs and before you know it, you’re burnt out towards the end. But it’s the end of that first part where you’ve set out the ambitions and the dreams and now it has become a reality. There’s that little moment there that’s a spark.

SSR: Yeah. Do you ever go and watch people use your spaces?

JS: I actually love people watching anyway, but not in a creepy way, but maybe, I don’t know. Because again, design’s about people, like I said earlier, so I get inspiration from people, not from things. So I love watching people, but seeing people enjoy my space, it’s great. It’s very entertaining because people have different responses and some people, I don’t know, their reactions are quite comical sometimes. And I find it very entertaining. So it’s like watching a little show.

But it doesn’t even have to be your own hotel. I mean, hotels are very, it’s an interesting melting pot of people. So you always see people from different backgrounds coming together in the same space. So yeah, it’s good for people, watching hotels. But hotels, traditionally that’s what it’s all about. It’s about to be seen and to see. It’s about this kind of how humanity comes together, like I said, people from different backgrounds and from different countries, from different whatever. And it’s that melting pot in a hotel. There’s some sort of unspoken law about being in a hotel. It’s very democratic.

SSR: What is one thing people might not know about you?

JS: I’m a pretty open book. I’m just worried that it’s not much there, much left that no one knows. I think the one thing that people don’t know about me is that I love painting. It’s a real passion of mine and I’ve been incorporating it into a lot of our properties and our hotels. It ticks a lot of boxes, but I absolutely love doing it. And I had to teach myself. Part of my upbringing I had no training in that, so I had to teach myself. And it’s something that I absolutely love doing. So I like to work out new techniques and things like that. So it’s very therapeutic. It’s my equivalent of cooking. It’s my therapy and I recommend it to absolutely everyone. Everyone can do it.

SSR: Amazing. I love it. Is there one medium you use more than others?

JS: Well, I would love to paint with oil, but normally it takes too long to dry. So I paint with acrylic. But I like heavy-bodied paint, so I really like to build on a texture. So I do multiple layers. So yeah. But I get it all over myself. I mean, I’m sitting here in front of you. I’ve got paint all over my jeans.

SSR: I can’t even see the paint.

JS: Oh, look at that.

SSR: Oh. It’s like one little spot just for everyone listening. Very dapper. It looks great. I guess that’s an interesting question. What is your personal style? What’s your home like? And do you infuse some of what you do in your hotels into your own life?

JS: Yeah, it’s impossible not to. I mean, I’m always, like I said earlier, I’m a collector. So-

SSR: Do you collect one thing or multiple things?

JS: Oh. Everything. I’m very lucky-

SSR: So, is that a hoarder or is that a collector?

JS: Yeah, no, it’s just another nice way of saying hoarder. But I think you’re absolutely right there. I mean, my storage unit will definitely confirm what you just said, but I don’t really, I avoid having a personal style. And I know that sometimes it’s not really recommended because I think people want to remember before a certain thing. But I just can’t work like that. I’ll get bored too quickly. I really think style is about personality and character and charm. That’s what it’s about.

But what I love doing is, I guess I’m a little bit more eclectic in the sense that, well, for one, I collect various things. I find something, I’m like a magpie, I see something that’s unusual and I have to have it. But I love mixing things and playing. It creates a bit of drama. It’s a bit of theater, right? If you have the contrasting things coming together, because opposites attract sometimes, it’s like a relationship. So I love that kind of experimentation of seeing what concoction you can sort of come up with by pouring a little bit of this and a bit of that in there. But I love, my favorite thing is repurposing things. I love that element of sustainability to try and reuse something somewhere. Again, that’s my storage unit full of stuff that I’ll use one day.

But I love combining old and new. And I think that’s kind of an approach rather than a style. But I really love the combining things. I don’t really like anything that’s too purist. It becomes, again, it dehumanizes the feeling. Something can have personality. You can have something that you bought from a thrift shop. And I love thrift shopping. In a really modern interior, having something that’s antique, it’s just such a beautiful thing. It compliments both sides.

One thing… I could mention this if it’s not too late, is you asked me about my home. My home in London is exactly that. It’s a real combination of old and new. But I also recently bought an old 1850, it was built in 1850, a Victorian school. It looks like a church and I converted that into a home. It was really partly converted, but I refurbished it and redid it all. And again, that’s really a testament to my style because it has a bit of old and a bit of new, and it has a few bits and pieces from almost every hotel that I’ve collected as well, as kind of a thing that… So it’s a real representation of all of my work so far. But it done in a very curated way. It’s not too cluttered. It’s actually quite organized for once, which is really nice.

SSR: I love that.

JS: But that’s been a project for the last year. And so I think, I have to ask other people if they can see me in my work sometimes when it’s my own work. And so far so good. So I think I did something right.

SSR: Is that in London proper? Is that…?

JS: So I live in London. That’s home for me. But the place in the countryside is in Worcestershire. In this beautiful town, Georgian town called Bewdley. It’s on the river. And I have a very good friend who lives there, and I’ve known about this town for a long time. I’ve been visiting it for the last 20 years regularly. So this just kind of happened in the last year and a half. And I’m very happy. And that’s where my mom stayed when she came over. And she’s very happy about that. I got it done the day before she arrived. It took me a year. So it was just out in time.

SSR: There’s a good deadline.

JS: There’s a deadline for you. There’s always a deadline.

SSR: Is there a dream project or a project you would love to do that you haven’t done yet? Like a type of project?

JS: Oh, yes. Gosh, I’ve got a few that come to mind. But I would love to do a resort. I would love to do something with a pool, because you can see that I tend to move wherever I do a hotel. So maybe I could just have a little beach hotel for a while. You know what, I would love to do something to do with a ship. It’ll be something completely different because I think mentally and your approach is completely different from designing a building. So that could be a different kind of challenge. I don’t know if I’ll be very good at it, but why not?

SSR: It’s worth a shot.

JS: A ship. Why not?

SSR: I feel like you can do that. What would be a piece of advice you would give, either your younger self or somebody starting out in this career?

JS: That’s a very good question. I have thought about this before. It’s embrace making mistakes.

SSR: Yeah. You learn the most from them.

JS: It’s really, well, it’s kind of twofold. I think really be brave and just make mistakes. Absolutely become fearless. We really should stop becoming so afraid of things. Absolutely make mistakes. But there’s this other side to that coin is, I always say it’s really a mistake if you make it twice. So it’s okay to make mistake. But don’t make the same mistake too many times. So again, it’s finding that balance. But yeah, just go for it. I mean, it’s so much fun to take risks with the world of design. Go for it.

SSR: Yeah. Okay. And then we always end the podcast, the question that is the title of the podcast. So what has been your greatest lesson or lessons learned along the way?

JS: The lessons I’ve learned, well, two things come to mind, but it’s ones I’ve kind of learned, no one told me them. I just sort of… But it’s, everything has a place. And I always say that’s going to be in my tombstone as well one day. And I’ll be literally probably there. But everything has a place. It’s important to keep an open mind that something may not make sense in this context, but maybe that’s relevant… That eliminates the pressure of having personal tastes and styles and preferences. Don’t do that. It’s a little bit more scientific than that. And the other thing that I’ve learned is that style is not about taste. Style is about personality. And it’s okay to bring personality into the world of design. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. So it’s those two things. Personality is great and everything has a place.

SSR: Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, especially in person in New York. It’s so great to finally meet you in real life.

JS: Finally. It won’t be the last time.

SSR: Yes. No, it will not be. For sure.