Were there specific architects or movements that you have always looked up to?

I love design in general, whether it's architecture, product, cars, fashion, or objects of curiosity. I’ll go back to [Dieter] Rams again, he's always a massive [inspiration] and I try to remember his continued search for essentialism within his design and that design should always be enduring and free from noise. I also love the idea that creativity is informed by proper principles, so basically the idea that real technical knowledge can allow a creative freedom.

And what about your own personal interior style?

Generally, I like things that are architecturally restrained and refined. When I say that, I don't mean necessarily minimal but balanced. I think something can be highly detailed and balanced. If I was to do my own project, it would be a combination of Japanese and Scandinavian influence for the backbone and then modern French design for elements of play and then always English heritage for character. It’s definitely a hotchpotch, but a balanced hotchpotch. Personally, I like the quieter side of luxury and it being a bit of a journey of discovery.

What do you enjoy about that journey and the creative process?

I think it's very important that you're not a passenger throughout a process, you have to be very involved throughout every stage, and fortunately I enjoy most of that process!  I love getting to know the client and building that relationship. I really enjoy finding the thread that I want hook onto that forms the project’s design framework. I don't really enjoy the bit just before pen goes to paper. I think there's always a bit of a feeling of the curse of the blank page. But I weirdly quite like the messy middle bit where you feel like you haven't quite cracked it, because you know you always get there in the end and it makes that moment that the design clicks all the more satisfying.

Do you find that middle period nerve-wracking? How do you hold your nerve when a project is yet to come together?

It is quite stressful. You have to recognize that it's not a binary process. You’re not going through a spreadsheet - some days it happens very easily and naturally on other days you either have to work a little bit harder or you just need to forget it completely and move on to something different until the right thing occurs to you. You do have to rest on the confidence that sometimes finding wrong answers get you to the right place, and that that right place is always there if you work for it.

When you're designing specialist yacht and boat interiors as opposed to a residential project, what are the non-negotiables that you must consider?

The reality is that you have to think about so much more with boats. It is not just aesthetics; technically, it is everything. The tolerances are much tighter and there is far less margin for error. That includes adhering to various codes, making sure things can be maintained properly, and ensuring there is enough storage on board etcetera. All of that needs to be considered in a way that goes far beyond how you would approach a residential project. But for me the non-negotiable is that this does not dilute the design, it can easily but it does not need to. It goes back to having the technical underpinning and the confidence that a constraint doesn’t have to be a limitation and can often be an opportunity to actually create something interesting.

What types of objects work particularly well on a boat and are there things that are an absolute no-go?

Everything needs to be functional and practical and you obviously need to be mindful that you’re on a moving vessel so things that are going to move with it or be difficult to fix down are no-gos. But then you've also got to bear in mind that that you are designing things at the height of luxury, so you cant always play things safe. The staffing element and level of deployable skills are unbelievable in the yacht industry, silverware will get polished every day, replated every year, there's a huge global network of super skilled tradesman that can carry out maintenance on bespoke high-level finishes, and the rest. So you don't have to be sensible all of the time, we just need to be mindful to give the crew a fair amount of headaches!