From the archive
Adam Tihany in Seabourn Quest’s The Grill by Thomas Keller, one of the many restaurants he has designed.
In designing for hospitality, that dialogue is first and foremost about the narrative of human experience. “As a profession, we are creating stories, events, experiences. And experiences come in different packages, but I think our common goal is to do something that is memorable to people,” he says. “It could be something that evokes nostalgia, or creates suspense, or surprises you – but whatever it is, in order to be memorable, it has to move you somehow. “There are a lot of buttons of human nature that we can push, but to me it’s all about an experiential location more than anything else – we need to tell stories, to surprise, delight, you name it. The canvas is quite large, and it’s a lot of fun.”
Understanding the space As far as experiential locations go, it is the restaurant that Tihany knows arguably better than anyone. When he designed New York City’s first grand cafe, La Coupole, in 1981 (at a time that anything European was decidedly in vogue, he recalls), Tihany also helped carve out a new niche for his profession: restaurant designer. Since then, he has worked time and again with the world’s leading chefs and restaurateurs, counting Daniel Boulud, Sirio Maccioni and Thomas Keller among his repeat clients. Successful collaboration relies upon a mutual understanding of live and let live. “When we work with celebrity chefs, I think
sometimes the designer has to step back and check his ego and let the ego of the chef shine through,” he says. “I see myself as a portrait artist or a customer’s tailor – it’s not about me, it’s about creating a space for somebody that has to perform, a place they can call their own. “In order to do so, I have to put myself on the outside and look at it in a very critical way. Obviously it is my point of view, but the personality of the chef has to
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come through, and the collaboration in this particular case is to try to convince this person to sit still long enough that you can do his portrait.” It doesn’t hurt that Tihany knows his way around the kitchen, having co-owned Remi, his New York restaurant, for more than two decades. Chefs can treat Tihany as an experienced colleague, skipping the obvious practicalities to head straight to those meaningful details that, combined, make a restaurant. Within hospitality – and specifically the luxury
projects in which he specialises – it is Tihany’s direct experience as a consumer of that world, his enjoyable ‘professional affliction’, that allows him to deliver. Recent projects have included redesigning guest suites at the Breakers Resort, Palm Beach, opened in November 2016, and a major renovation of the Oberoi New Delhi, due to open at the end of 2017. “I’m very critical about what I like and what I need, second only to my wife who is even more critical,” he says. “So I always tell my client that if I can make my wife happy in this room, anybody will be happy. “It starts with a hairdryer and with the height of the
outlets and all kind things that frankly you have to know, because you’re dealing with very discerning customers: people who have incredible homes, wonderful art collections, great cars, designer names.” It’s insight that can be seen in his recent work on the Four Seasons Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). At 106 rooms, it’s a “flea on the camel’s back” of everything else that’s going on in Dubai, Tihany comments; a project refreshing to work on because its owners, whom he describes as young and sophisticated, were not interested in chasing the city’s conventional superlatives of tallest, biggest or glitziest. “We took that philosophy, combined with the
excellence of the Four Seasons’ operational strength, Hotel Management International /
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