It's All in the Details

By Nadia Mustafa

When Four Seasons asked George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg to design a hotel, the Toronto-based architects confessed they had never worked on a luxury hotel. To their surprise, that's what the resort chain--which was reputed for high-class service but not necessarily high-class design--was looking for. "Going to most hotels is like going to Grandma's bedroom. It's fussy and old-fashioned. They wanted a modern approach," says Pushelberg. "It's all in the details and subtlety, so it can resonate with someone 65 years old but also with someone who's 45."

One way Yabu and Pushelberg created this subtle detail in Four Seasons Tokyo, completed in 2002, was to commission a local artist to build translucent white-onyx slabs framed with metal and finished to look like antique Japanese pewter screens for the lobby and lounge. "So much design is about exaggeration," says Pushelberg. "We're interested in a narrative approach, researching where our clients come from and using forgotten techniques from the past."

Forging ground in the architecture of global luxury hotels is a far cry from designing coffee shops and dry cleaners, which made up the bulk of the Canadians' work after they started their firm in 1980. Now, with a staff of 75 and offices in New York City and Toronto, Yabu and Pushelberg have five more luxury hotels under their belt and a handful of other projects in the works, including a Four Seasons in Marrakech and a Mimo So fine-jewelry store in Los Angeles. Gamal Aziz, president of MGM Grand, for whom Yabu and Pushelberg have designed two restaurants and remodeled a hotel tower, says their work is modern but not trendy: "They make spaces that evoke a great deal of emotional engagement from the customer."

In New York City, the architects are creating a miniature department store for Kate Spade, who is expanding beyond handbags into home furnishings. To weave in the Midwestern, feminine perspective from which her brand is derived, they will sandwich a layer of pink film between two pieces of glass, instead of painting the walls. In Hong Kong, where they are building an 85,000-sq.-ft. store for Lane Crawford, they plan to ditch the traditional formula of clothing racks plus wall fixtures in favor of furniture and shelves that sit on the floor to resemble a mansion rather than a department store. --By Nadia Mustafa