David Matthews is a renowned interior designer at Fuse, a Manchester and Leeds firm that unites architecture and interior design. With extreme talent in each discipline Fuse removes the boundary between each, offering a unified solution to their clients. Their team create buildings that work at every level utilising floor space and minimising unused space. Working both nationally and internationally, their team have worked in the UK, USA, Austria, Turkey, France, Holland, Estonia, Denmark and Kazakhstan. So we are proud to bring you the Designer Insights of David Matthews.
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1) In your own words describe your unique style and creative aesthetic?
Fuse doesn’t have a unique style and nor should it because a design should be a response to the client’s needs, not a projection of the designer’s personality.
2) When starting a new project, what is your creative process?
At Fuse, we invest a lot of time in understanding the site, its context and the client’s objectives before getting our design team together to develop a detailed brief. Thorough preparation is fundamental to a successful outcome.
3) Out of the creative people you have worked with, who is it that you respect and admire the most?
The craftsmen. I love that interaction with the artisans who are tasked with realising our vision and we have so much to learn from them. Good designers must understand how things are built. I had a day of meetings in Vienna a couple of weeks ago with an amazing team of Italian joiners working on one of our projects out there and I haven’t had so much fun in ages. We worked late into the night without even realising that the day was over.
4) When looking for inspiration is there a particular thing you do to get inspired?
I tend to lock myself in my study and put on some very loud music to shut everything else out so nothing can intrude on my thought process. I also spend a lot of time browsing precedent imagery on the internet.
5) What has brought you to this point in your career? And what is your advice for people looking to follow in your footsteps?
My first project after I qualified as an architect was a luxury hotel refit for Venice-Simplon-Orient Express, working with a brilliant French interior designer called Gérard Gallet. I focussed on interiors from that point. At Fuse, we have the team environment I always craved – a perfect balance of architects and interior designers in equal number. Advice for young designers? Marry a lawyer or a dentist! Their fees are higher.