MARIA BRIME & Garrett Robbins

CO-OWNER BRIME ROBBINS

Garrett Robbins is the co-owner of International Design Partnerships Brime Robbins along with Maria Brime. This partnership, based in Madrid, brings together exceptional creative, technical production and project management credentials all in one team. With over 50 years of combine experience across hotels, restaurant, product and residential design every project considers global trends, local materials and culture to deliver the right design aesthetic.

What led you to this career path? When I was little, I drove my mother crazy by constantly rearranging and stylizing my bedroom. Later, when I was a Spanish teacher at a Montessori school, I built a small city inside the classroom each year for students to enact everyday life in the Spanish language. Really, being an “interior designer” was the formal schooling and official career path for what I had been doing with my life all along.

How would you describe your work/design style/ethos? Maria Brime and I share all the design decisions together, and we make a good team – she is extremely talented and we can volley ideas off one another easily. For me personally, I would say that our hotel design tends to be lifestyle-oriented with a heavy focus on concept. If we can get a client to believe in the concept for their hotel, then the rest is really just fine-tuning. And since the heart of our concept is always some type of story-telling, our work is to tell a story that you can fall in love with.

Please describe a highlight of your career to date. I would like to think that the highlight of my career has not yet arrived! I had wonderful and life-changing moments since attending my first Interior Design course, and I think there are still many more to come.

What motivates you? The romantic answer is the next great project, which is very true. The pragmatic answer is paying the bills. At the end of the day, this applied art that we name interior design is a business that needs to grow and prosper.

Where do you find comfort? Keeping a positive attitude tends to be my best comfort.

Has the recent global pandemic changed the way in which you work? 100% yes. While our projects have continued during the quarantine, the interaction with the client, other consultants

and our own team has changed drastically. There are fewer site visits or meetings and more videocalls. Our entire studio has been telecommuting for the past several months, which is a real challenge in this industry, especially when we are used to being able to sketch side-by-side and come up with solutions quickly.

What are your thoughts on the future of design? With COVID-19 affecting so much of the hospitality industry, I would say that the future holds a lot of shifts in the way we work, and how the guest experience is shifting to more sanitary and safe ideologies. That means a re-defining of what travel means to people and what luxury really looks like for the typical hotel guest for the next year or two.

Please tell us your aims for the next twelve months and beyond. Re-opening the studio and understanding how that will work for everyone; activating any of the former projects in our pipeline, and securing new projects, to take us into 2021/2022 with our studio intact; taking good care of the projects we have right now.

What would be your key piece of advice for emerging designers right now? The moment when you get to call the shots and fight for what is yours and own the designs that you create is not a moment you have at the beginning of any job. It comes much later. Be patient. Give it all you’ve got and prove yourself at the start. Let go of the need to be right. Design messy and clean up afterwards. Get to know yourself as a designer, and if you think you already know him or her, then let go of yourself enough to learn from others around you. Remember: your ideas are the greatest contribution that you can give to any project, client or employer – keep bringing them and bringing them no matter how many are cast aside – and one day, there will be an idea that sticks, and it will be the real beginning for you.