Perkins&Will’s head of hospitality sits down with our editor-in-chief Richard Frost to discuss how designers can help the hotel business successfully transition towards net zero.

Founded by Lawrence B Perkins and Philip Will, Jr in Chicago in 1935, Perkins&Will has grown to become one of the world’s largest architecture and design firms, with approximately 2,500 staff and offices everywhere from Chicago to Copenhagen and São Paulo to Shanghai. Here in an exclusive interview, its London-based head of hospitality Neil Andrew shares insights into his current responsibilities, concerns about carbon offsetting and single-minded focus on the guest experience.

Could you tell me about your role within Perkins&Will?

I’m the head of hospitality at Perkins&Will. Initially, I oversaw interiors and architecture projects for the hospitality sector, but now I’m transitioning slightly more towards interior projects.

Obviously, Perkins&Will is quite a large company, and I was brought in to push the hospitality side of things. I don’t just want to do large chain hotels though, but also much smaller boutique offerings, and we’re looking at doing little bits of F&B – standalone projects – as well.

My remit is EMEA, but it’s actually a global position. So I speak with our guys in the States quite a lot. And I’ve had chats with people in China, though we’re not really looking at hotels so much there. And I’m also having conversations about how we can work more closely with our sister company, Pierre Yves-Rochon. So there’s quite a lot going on.

What upcoming hotel projects are you working on?

I’ve got a couple of projects in the UK and two resorts in the Middle East. I’m also working on a prototype directly with a brand.

Unfortunately, I can’t really go into detail on any of that.

How have you coped with the challenges of the last couple of years?

I started at Perkins&Will on 9 March 2020, but it only really hit me hard when we got into April – that’s when I realised that this wasn’t going away anytime soon. Business did drop off, but luckily we still had the Metropole onsite [Perkins&Will has been helping refurbish Hilton London Metropole, the largest Hilton hotel outside of the US], so I was going there the whole time.

We had to shrink the team a little, though it also gave us the opportunity to take stock and think about what we were actually doing. We designed a Sleep Set room [at Sleep & Eat 2020], and did a lot of thinking about hospitality trends, sustainability and wellness. Now, I feel like we’ve really bounced back.

Where did you work prior to Perkins&Will?

If you want to go right back, I moved to Dubai a year or so after finishing uni, and worked my way up. By the time I was 28, I was at RMJM running a team of about 20 to 25 people, and designing five-star hotels with 726 keys. And I think having that experience very early on in my career has allowed me to work either as a manager or as a designer – you don’t find many people who do both.

When I moved back to the UK, I was at Woods Bagot for a while, and then I moved to Dexter Moren Associates and co-ran the interiors team there. To be honest, I just took the opportunities when I saw them really.

What are you doing to make hotel design more sustainable?

At Perkins&Will, we’ve actually got our own sustainability director, and I’ve been doing a lot of work on net-zero design personally. We’ve got access to a lot of data as a company, and what we’re attempting to do is produce data-driven net-zero design – though I don’t think anyone can claim they’ve actually got there just yet.

It’s going to be a challenge to shift owners’ mindsets however. I think what’s going to happen is there’s going to be more and more pressure from investors asking about their ESG [environmental, social and governance]. As no-one’s going to want to invest in a property that could be stranded – you don’t know what’s going to happen in the future in terms of legislation.

How can hotel designers help create net-zero projects?

Firstly, I’m tackling this mainly from an interior design angle – I wouldn’t claim to be an expert on architectural builds. There’s still too much carbon offsetting from suppliers at the moment. I think a lot of porcelain tile manufacturers will claim to be carbon neutral, for example, but when you look into it, there’s a lot of offsetting involved. And offsetting isn’t necessarily the best thing to do – it’s a bit of an easy way out.

I think there are going to be dramatic changes in future. With regards to porcelain tiles, is the solution to move to say recycled terrazzo instead? Or modular panels that can be taken away and reused elsewhere at a later date?

Unless we drastically change the way we spec projects, we’re not going to get to net zero.

How do you choose which hotel suppliers to specify?

We’ve actually set up a database, Now Database, and suppliers can apply to be included. Suppliers provide their EPDs [Environmental Product Declarations] and these are then assessed by our sustainability director. If they’re approved, we then add the supplier to the database.

Currently, it’s just an internal database, but the idea is that eventually it’ll be open to everybody, as it’s not really the sort of thing you should be keeping to yourself.

It makes life easier for my designers – though I don’t want to restrict their choices – but it also puts a little bit of pressure on suppliers to get their credentials in order. And it’d be nice if those suppliers didn’t just resort to carbon offsetting.

How do you think hotel design will evolve over the coming years?

If you’re introducing a more sustainable approach to design, people’s aesthetic perception is going to change because my belief is that people follow trends, and trends come from socioeconomic situations. So if, for example, we have to start designing to comply with the demands of the circular economy, that’s going to force our hands.

Say you can only use a chair that’s built to last for at least four years. What’s that chair going to look like? It’s not going to be chrome-plated anymore. It’s not going to be faux leather. And I think our perception will slowly change to something that is more robust-looking.

Also, there have to be fewer finishes in-room, as that’s a more sustainable way to design hotels.

Why isn’t net zero a higher priority for today’s hotel projects?

Ultimately, I guess it’s driven by the funder – it depends on what their perception and knowledge is about what people want. I think there’s a massive disconnect between the people at the top of the hospitality world, and the actual millennials and Gen Zs who are going to have most of the spending power moving forwards. If I ever set up a hotel brand, I’d want most of my team to be around 25 years old because they’re going to know what these people actually want.

I also think historically the industry just didn’t really want to move out of the model it had created. We’re only talking about sustainability so seriously now because every year there’s more and more pressure on those who have the money – in terms of legislation and so on – to buy into sustainable projects. And that’s what causes real change.

What would be your advice to the next generation of hotel designers?

Basically, just experience as much as you can. I’m going to sound like an old man here, but when I was in the Middle East in the mid-noughties, there was a lot more fluidity in what you would do in the workplace – you could move around and just do everything. I moved back to the UK and found it quite fragmented in that there were some people who did FF&E and others who did this and that.

I also realised that a lot of the designers I came into contact with here were designing in a similar way. They had a sequential way of designing because I guess they were all taught how to design the same way in university, whereas I learnt on the job.

I just think designers should try to find their own lane. At the same as learning all the technical stuff, they need to learn to think about the bigger picture – what’s the concept here? When most guests leave a hotel, they won’t remember some of the design details, they’ll remember the experience.

You have to think about what memories people are going to take away with them – that’s something I’ve been telling my designers. Don’t just jump immediately to Pinterest.

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