This book features the design details of the largest and most innovative examples from such cutting-edge firms as Archi-Tectonics, ARO, Escher GuneWardena, and Office dA, among others. Its pages offer ...
New World Order: Michael Bedner talks about the opportunities of a down global economy and how he’s redesigning HBA Hirsch Bedner Associates to capitalize.
After nearly 45 years spent building HBA Hirsch Bedner Associates into the world's largest hospitality design firm (including three decades in tandem with the late Howard Hirsch) and overseeing a thousand commissions, Michael Bedner still carries a red sketching pencil in his pocket. The UCLA-trained designer has weaned himself away from taking on his own projects. He's delegated direct design and concept responsibility to his 450-member global staff. Corporate as well as creative, he's more than doubled the number of HBA offices worldwide since 2000, bringing the total to 13. But five years from now, the only pencil he hopes to be pushing is that red one.
"I'd like to phase out of day-to-day operations," says the 65-year-old Bedner, who sees his future role with HBA more as a consultant. "I want to make my own mistakes without impacting the firm or the client. My goal would be to take an ownership stake in and design hotels that are completely environmentally positive and good-no, outrageously good."
That's for someday. Right now, HBA's co-founder, chairman and ceo is applying his architect's eye to restructuring the process and the business of design. The international grip of "the hardest, deepest recession we've experienced" is doing more than pressuring firms to come up with new solutions for value engineering. It's presenting the opportunity Bedner has long lobbied for: To expand the interior designer's role to that of interior architect.
"Design makes hospitality assets more competitive. But that comes from the planning, not the paint. The designer should be brought in at the same time as the architect. Too many times, the designer's called in at the last minute to put rouge on the lady," he says.
Bedner's been battling the stereotype of designer as decorator since he and Hirsch launched Hirsch Bedner Associates in 1964. Generations of designers had crafted hotel interiors, and many had done it with market savvy that drove up profitability. But Hirsch, the Académie des Beaux-Arts-trained designer, and Bedner, the architect, were the first to market themselves as hospitality designers and integrate a consultative approach into their business platform.