MEETING…YABU PUSHELBERG


and set up together in 1980, creating


interiors for residential and retail. Early success came in designing the cosmetics floor of New York department store Bergdorf Goodman, and a string of high profile projects followed. Although this retail work continues, the majority of the firm’s time is now spent designing hotels. “At one point we were doing a lot more retail work with less hospitality, it was a 70/30 split,” says Pushelberg, “Today I would say it is the reverse of that as we have around 15-20 hotels on the go right now.” Impressive given that the firm completed their first hotel project little more than ten years ago.


Their big break came in 2000 when they


won the contract to design W Times Square, a hotel they revisited in 2009 to refurbish the guestrooms. At around the same time, Yabu


Pushelberg decided to expand from their Toronto base and open an office in New York. “If you want to work on an international scale, then no matter how good a designer you are, if you’re based in a B-grade city like Toronto, Chicago or Atlanta, you’re just not looked at in the same way,” Pushelberg believes. The move has clearly paid off with projects on the boards that include a Luxury Collection hotel in Shanghai, a Viceroy resort in the Maldives, Mandarin Oriental Mumbai, Waldorf Astoria Beijing, Park Hyatt New York, and both a Park Hyatt and W hotel in Guangzhou. The number of contracts the firm has in China – eight hotel projects at the last count – has also led to the opening of an outpost in the People’s Republic, a region they say saved them from the recession. But with a foot in both the Toronto and


046 JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2011 WWW.SLEEPERMAGAZINE.COM


New York studios, Pushelberg is quick to add there are no plans for worldwide domination. “Two’s enough! For us, the ambition is to grow qualitatively and to continue improving our work rather than being in more places on earth,” he says, explaining the complementary roles he and Yabu have carved out over their careers. “I spend more time with the client talking about design strategy and in a sense become their eyes and ears back in the studio,” he explains. “George works on a more detailed approach and spends more time in the studio... It’s a collaboration that works for us.”


Both however, were involved in the decade- long courtship of Ian Schrager, a relationship that looks set to continue. “Thirty years ago we were coming to New York as kids, weaseling our way into Studio 54 and


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