Christine: During a recent business trip, I had the opportunity to visit The Cloudland at McLemore – a stunning resort on Lookout Mountain in Rising Fawn, Georgia – and a property you know intimately thanks to your firm’s work on the five-star hotel. From the moment I arrived, I felt immersed by the landscape and the use of natural materials. And almost instantly, relaxed and in awe. What was the design ethos for this space and how did the principles of emotional design contribute to the final execution?
Craig: From the beginning, a key design principle had to do with the viewshed of the property entrance. There is a remarkable elevation difference – 1,000 feet from shelf to valley, with a very defined edge, which makes for a spectacular view. With that came a desire to restrict that view initially, framing it in a very particular fashion so that when a guest first glimpses it, they are taken by surprise and consequently have a truly memorable “aha” moment on the property.
We accomplished this by unveiling that view in a planful arrival sequence. Guests enter what feels like a giant glass box where they’re met by large castle-like doors. Upon opening the doors, there’s another set of doors that are very substantial – they let you know you’re in a place of substance. As guests move through that entrance, they’re not quite sure what they’re going to see, but they’ve unknowingly been positioned to take in this incredible landscape where it’s almost as if the floor drops off beneath them.
We intentionally built this suspense by sequencing the viewshed such that guests go from a very restricted view, and consequently a very curious feeling, to a sudden revelation of the majesty of this cove. As we began to bring that sequence to life during the build process, we visited the final elevation several times to experience the progression of building to that exact view. The day the doors went in and we were able to open them and actually experience the final reveal it was very emotional for our team and for the property owner.
When people arrive at the McLemore for the first time and they move through the opening sequence, I find myself studying their faces because that experience is really something undeniably emotional. Suffice it to say emotional design had a major role in this project and is at the forefront of any hospitality project undertaken by the team at Tinker Ma.
Christine: At the start of the year, we often see an uptick in discussion around design trends as the industry looks to anticipate where tastes will lean in the coming months. At Marvin, we’ve found that design trends can be relatively fleeting – instead, we prefer to study emerging ways of living. What shifts have you seen in how your clients are living in their homes, and are these shifts also a consideration in hospitality design?
Craig: Frequently, we see this conversation move to whether something is a fad or a trend. And fads and trends overlap. There are certainly a lot of fads in hospitality design, and as styles shift, you can occasionally revisit certain types of projects and tell just exactly what year a property was built.
While recognizing trends is helpful, we stay focused on the core architectural principles we’ve been taught. At Tinker Ma, we also dedicate significant time to continuing education, from learning about new construction methods to understanding new products and technologies. We pair that with curiosity, questioning everything. When we’re open to constantly changing our perspective on what’s possible, we find that’s when we’re at our best for our clients and solving for their needs.
Christine: When clients approach you to initiate hospitality projects, when do you discuss and begin to plan for goals around how guests or occupants of a space will feel when visiting? Do clients come to you with thoughts around the emotions they hope to provoke in a space?
Craig: When it comes to how a space will feel, we aim to start narrowing in on that almost immediately. Occasionally, a client approaches our team and they’ve already thought about this and have a really clear direction. But more often, our clients are looking to us to help them solve for this challenge. To do so, we extract insights from them by way of deep conversation and use those data points to create emotional criteria for the project. From there, we formulate an idea, formalize it, and share back with the client, typically iterating on it a few times before reaching consensus that we’ve now accurately captured their intent.
Once we’ve defined the emotive goals, we start thinking about how this feeling will be translated. Our design sensibility begins to get more tailored. In the case of The McLemore, we were literally standing on the edge of a mountain detailing exactly what guests would see and when they would see it. The process itself was emotional. When we’re doing it well, it becomes this really beautiful dance between what we heard you say and how we begin to translate it into a tangible, material thing.
That approach is repeatable across clients and across projects. For example, we did a project called The Edwin, and it has an amazing site at the corner of Main & Main with a view of the iconic Walnut Street Bridge. There’s a majestic quality about this truly special place. We started to imagine what it would be like to experience the view of the bridge from a rooftop bar. So, we got into a lift, raised it to the height we were debating and … that was it. There was no view like it anywhere else.
As was the case with The Edwin, often what happens is a property owner identifies a special characteristic they want to capitalize on, like a view. This is something we can react to, something we can formulate an idea around. In fact, the “ma” in Tinker Ma represents just this. In Japanese culture, “ma” refers to the void or negative space having as much importance as the structures themselves. Or in other words, the value of the view.
In Japanese culture, “ma” refers to the void or negative space having as much importance as the structures themselves. Or in other words, the value of the view.”
Craig Peavy
Christine: From your perspective, what does good emotional design look like? How would someone know they are in a space that has applied emotional design effectively and impactfully?
Craig: As a wine lover, I recently celebrated a milestone birthday in Napa Valley. I stayed in the area for several days, so I had the opportunity to visit many wineries, from mom-and-pop farmhouse wineries to high-end production facilities with the latest in technology and hundreds of employees. Throughout my time in Napa, the wineries that spoke to me were the ones where the architects and designers involved were able to curate the space in such a way where I almost felt like I was on a tour simply by being present in the space. Certain wineries were reminiscent of the experience I would expect to have at a museum, where there is a clear pathway someone is being carried through and a planful story is being told along the way.
The best and most memorable visits were those where someone was thoughtful about all the external requirements a winery needs and were able to combine these in a way where when I was in the space, it was special because of the emotional response it produced for me. I’ve found that as long as we’re thinking about the emotions we want to elicit and we’re thoughtful about our design, the emotional response will follow every time.
Christine: Where do you see the future of hospitality design heading, and what role does emotional design have in its future?
Craig: We’re at a crossroad, and we have a decision to make. One road is to follow the herd and do things that are for profit but contribute to waste and don’t do anything for the community – building things that are merely profit centers.
Or we can go down the other path, creating things that are curated and special, something that speaks to people on an emotional level. I believe people crave something personalized, that’s individualized, and not for the masses. We have a choice to make, and it’s one that is integral to the future of design.
Explore Craig’s work with Tinker Ma at tinkerma.com.
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