Discussing Design with Tim Bowder-Ridger, Conran and Partners

Meet Tim Bowder-Ridger

senior partner, Conran and Partners

Architect and designer Tim Bowder-Ridger, senior partner, Conran and Partners, is passionate about creating authentic experiences centred around cultural spirit and personality. Drawing on his hospitality and residential experience, Tim leads the design direction of the practice as a whole, as well as being responsible for its operations. Recent projects include the conversion of the Brutalist-style Centre Point in London from an unused office tower into residences, and Kita Aoyama, a high-end residential development in Japan.

As senior partner of Conran in Hong Kong, Tim is also responsible for the overall leadership and coordination between the UK and HK subsidiary and has been building the company’s reputation with new work in Japan.

How do your projects embrace the Japanese concept of wabi sabi, the celebration of imperfect, impermanent and incomplete beauty?

Our approach in Japan has been to use authentic materials in their natural forms, for example timber that patinas with age to add further life and spirit. We call that the “honesty” of the material, with every piece being unique compared with artificial printed timber that always looks lifeless compared to the true thing. The Japanese and the British cultures have a similar connection to the landscape and nature, a romantic view about enjoying them. We tend to use a lot of natural materials, but Japan has particularly good techniques for concrete, which is used a lot due to earthquakes. Being a poured material, there are always imperfections, but even these are embraced as beauty.

How is COVID-19, the coronavirus, affecting your work?

We are reducing our long-haul travel a bit, which is probably not a bad thing, and our Hong Kong studio are all working remotely from home at the moment. We have a very good technical team here who’ve set up the computers to work, so there’s not been a hit on our productivity nor our new business development.  But I think it’s a bit too soon to know where it’s going to end up, really, and the commercial knock-on effect of China being shut down. Statistically you’re far more likely to die of flu than coronavirus but the difficulty is whether people have confidence in their various government actions. We just review it on a case-by-case basis – but give it another four weeks and we might have a clearer idea of which way we’re heading. The fear is that so much is made in China that it will have an impact on construction stages. Luckily, at the moment we have a lot of pre-construction work.

How do the lifestyle preferences of Tokyo urbanites compare to those in London, and how did your design approaches for Kito Aoyama and Centre Point vary to accommodate these differences?

Both are world cities but different in the sense that London is more international, more akin to New York than Tokyo.  Tokyo feels distinctly Japanese, which is why we all like going these because it’s such a unique place. However they are both prime residential markets where people are well-to-do and well-travelled, so those individuals probably have more in common than they would otherwise. It’s less nationalistic as people are from the same global tribe. There was a lot of commonality in our approaches, but with Centre Point the apartments react to the existing structure of the 20^th century heritage building, whereas Kito Aoyama is a new build. For all our projects around the world we’re determined to have a sense of place, we try and engage in the context, local culture, all those things. One specific Japanese requirement is the way you pass into an apartment. There’s one entrance, but then doughnut-shaped circulation paths with private family areas in one direction and public reception spaces the other way. In traditional Japanese houses, people step over a threshold – although today they are level. And then there’s a small space to pause and greet one another and, then a separate, and sometimes quite large, room to take off and store your shoes.

There’s a layer of privacy that creates a physical manifestation in the apartment while still trying to enjoy all those different moments and thresholds. It’s like landscape design, a layered approach of being led from a sculpture to a temple to a lake. The difference is that with Japanese apartments, we do it twice, one way for the family and the other for guests. The kitchen and dining spaces are where it all comes together.  Even in Tokyo where space is a premium, they make it work. We’re also working in Hong Kong, and the reason why people eat out so much for entertainment is because their apartments are so small. Even there we try to create a layering of experiences.

What qualities make a product’s design exceptional?

It’s very simple: combining functionality with emotion. You can see that with Apple products or the ultimate cliché, BMW cars. They function very well and are desirable, so therefore sellable. It’s about effectiveness, intelligence in functionality and cost. With architecture and interior design, it’s very complex because it’s just about the world’s most collaborative profession to be in with so many different people involved. The job of the architect is really to distil that into a single point-of-view that balances all these different requirements. If you apply that to running a business, like I do, it’s no different. There are so many different things I need to bear in mind that I am forever designing the business. There’s a lot of crossover between running a business and designing a building, given the complexity and judgement – that’s where the creativity comes in.

How does good design equate to good business?

That depends – is business just about selling things or is it our business, a big part of which is trying to leave the world a bit of a better place than we found it. Terence Conran, our founder, always used to say that good design improves lives and it is absolutely the partner of commerce. When he founded his businesses, what he was doing and what we still try to do is provide ideas people want but might not even know they want until their exposed to it. That’s where we’re adding value. The future of the British economy has to be entirely about providing ideas. The creative industry is the UK’s largest after finance. Our great design schools and artistic heritage have a real worth that feeds creative ventures for their continued growth. Whilst this adds value to the world, it can also benefit business and the economy, which is key in the current post-Brexit climate.

Tim is one of the prestigious experts invited to join the extraordinary jury for the SBID Product Design Awards, alongside other renowned professionals across industrial and interior design, brand development, architecture, educational research and forward-thinking enterprise.

Click here to view the full judging panel.