Studio KO: The Coolest Boys in the Room

TRANSCRIPT

Olivier Marty: The moment you start to think about your image, your Instagram shot, it’s already dead. The only things we’ve been focusing on is the spirit of the place and your deep, deep feelings that what you feel has to exist, never wondering about what people are going to say about it. It’s really to ignore the mood and the amount of information we get, which is why listen, sit down and then something personal will come out of it.

Dan Rubinstein: Hi, I’m Dan Rubinstein, and this is The Grand Tourist. I’ve been a design journalist for more than 20 years, and this is my personalized guided tour of the worlds of fashion, art, architecture, food, and travel, all the elements of a well lived life. In the upper echelons of interior design, it seems that the French had the upper hand. From decorators and galleries to boutique furniture and lighting brands, the country has been ascendant in the culture. I could probably do a deep dive as to why them, why now, but since design culture has been more fashionable than ever, who better than the French to carry the torch? And while there are many ultra senior titans of French design, there is one dynamic duo that stands out.

Currently smack dab in the middle of an incredible career that goes from strength to strength, Olivier Marty and Karl Fournier of architecture and design outfit, Studio KO. Partners in love and life, the two met in school, and never looked back, getting an early boost in their careers from some quite notable clients such as the late Pierre Bergé, the partner of Yves Saint Laurent, the Hermes family, and hotel pioneer, André Balazs. The Times said it best when describing their work “In everything they design, Karl and Olivier strive for a kind of culturally rooted modernism.” Essentially minimal, but formed through a respect for local cultures and environments, not in that Bauhaus way that imposes a particular look no matter where on the planet it was built. Their work in Morocco is legendary. Imagine serene, whisper quiet spaces made from natural materials without a hint of bling anywhere in sight. And the recent YSL museum in Marrakesh has become a temple of gratitude to the fashion designer that called the North African country his second home.

The pair could easily rest on their laurels, but have taken on new and challenging projects in recent years, including product collaborations, their own line of collectible objects, special projects in places like Uzbekistan, exhibitions and more daring hospitality projects. I caught up with Olivier Marty from their studio in Paris to discuss how the two met, how a trip to Morocco changed their lives forever, what they learned or perhaps suffered from the legendary Gae Aulenti, what the so-called KO attitude is and more. 

I’ve read a lot of articles about your studio, and of course they all say, “Oh, the two fell in love at university.” And that’s about it. That’s all we know. And so who wants to begin? Karl, why don’t you begin and tell me when was the first time you met Olivier?

Karl Fournier: Yeah, but I think it’s true. We met at the school. So we were both architecture student and we were at the same school for a few years, but we never saw each other. I don’t know exactly why. Or maybe yes for me, I know because one September after summer break, Olivier arrived and he cut his hair during the summer.

OM: I had long hair.

Okay.

KF: So then the whole face changed, and I saw him for the first time this September that year. So it was really like a new student for me. I never noticed him before. So yeah.

OM: It’s a hair decision that changed everything. So it was not my best hair moment in life, I must say. It was like half long. Like in French you say carré, they were very straight. So it really looked like… And long hair for boys, it’s either too clean and it’s too big. It’s too dirty. It looks greasy, so it was always wrong. So one day I said it’s done. And then this is how I met Karl.

And Olivier, what do you remember of that meeting, how that…

OM: Of that moment?

Yeah.

OM: I remember, yeah, so probably cutting my hair just gave me a wider vision because I hadn’t seen him either. Maybe the hair was in front of my eyes, who knows? And yeah, so I remember one year, there’s a moment when planets align and you see someone you had never seen before and you have a common friend. And he was mysterious and it felt pretty obvious, like something natural happening. Big but natural.

And Karl, I heard that you trained as an actor first and architecture kind of…

KF: Yeah. I tried.

You tried.

KF: No, it’s been good, as I say.

Did you have jobs and were you doing things before?

KF: No, no, no, no. I was only a student, but after that I realized that it was more maybe to fight. I was really shy at this time. And I think that taking theater lessons and try to become an actor was more for me, a way to be more confident and to help myself to be a little bit less shy than I was. So it took me three or four years to realize that and to help me. And then I went back to architecture because it was as well my first. I was hesitating between two, between actor and architecture and theater. But yeah, that’s what I did. But I think it’s still useful for me to have done this, and especially because that’s why I arrived a little bit after Olivier at the school. And I realized as well that it’s because of that, that we met. Otherwise, we would’ve never met.

And Olivier, you were born, I think, outside of Paris. Is that true?

OM: Yup.

And your father was a nuclear scientist or something?

OM: Yep.

And I mean, if we could get in a time machine and travel back and visit you at home when you were 12 years old just hanging out at home or in your room or something, what would you have been doing?

OM: I think I already had a bad hairstyle probably, but different, I guess.

Were you a cool kid if you were experimenting with hairstyles or a cool kid or were you more an artsy kid?

OM: No, I wasn’t a cool kid. I think Karl and I, we have a cool kid because he’s so much into pleasure and joy and he’s one of the cool kids at school. I was kind of the opposite, which is why every time he pushes the limits too far, we say to him, “But do you have any idea, the way we’ve been brought up? Everything was forbidden. I didn’t do a birthday parties before I was 20.” So really everyday life at home was full of love, but pretty strict, definitely not cool. But I was kind of lonely and really focused on drawing, on arts and reading. And I don’t think I was unhappy, but you would’ve found me in my bedroom that had the ugliest wallpaper in tartan, in shit maroon and dark blue and dark brown on the walls, like a square motif on the walls, very dark. And I would spend a lot of time inventing worlds by drawing.

So I would draw cities and architecture. I would invent worlds that had a name and a map like X and Ys and invent the name. And it was a mismatch of reading history and inventing. So on one world there was the baddies, they looked like aliens and they were completely minimal and white and very mean. And then there was a barrack that were having too much fun and all of them were dying, of course. But I was doing this under the angle of architecture. I would draw the houses, their boats, the ships, the everything. It took me a lot of time. And I would bring it to my lovely mom by then who passed away since then recently. But I would really do it for her and I would bring to her those crazy islands I would invent. And so this was a big part of my life when I was 12.

And Karl, you grew up in, I believe in the south near Cannes, correct? Somewhat near Cannes.

KF: No, a little bit more north in Avignon exactly. But I was born in Saint-Raphaël right next to the Mediterranean Sea. And for me it’s a little bit the opposite than Olivier. I had some really good, good memories of my childhood. I was really, really happy. And the thing I remember the most is my summer in Corsica. It was really, really important for me. I used to spend two months here with my cousin and all the young kids of the village I was from, I am from, and I must say that I was really, really happy at that time. And I think that’s something that I try to give to our young son, is to have this place really that can protect him and when he will be older, where he can have some really good memories with playing with other kids with no worries about all the danger that we can have in big towns. So we try to offer him that kind of [foreign language 00:10:44], of really…

OM: Lightness.

KF: Lightness, yeah, that I used to have. And that is really important for the man I became.

And I believe your grandmother was an architect in Indonesia.

KF: Yeah. And what is funny that my grandfather and my grandmother met at the same school as we do, Oli and I.

Oh, wow.

KF: So yeah, just as we do.

You’re a legacy student, as we say in the US.

KF: Yeah, it’s strange. Yeah, yeah. But they met at the Beaux-Arts as well, so it’s really funny. But I never… She died when my father was young, so for sure I never met her, but their legacy… Because she was Corsican, so their legacy is really important for us in the family because all our Corsican roots come from her. So it’s really important.

When the two of you first started collaborating together from a professional point of view, I wanted to know how that happened from just being two students together that were dating to having a first project that you worked on together where you kind of clicked professionally. Because obviously not all couples can do that.

KF: Yeah, you’re right. I think the first one was for the degree, the first real…

OM: Yeah, we started that school, I mean, very little last year we met.

KF: Yeah. We’re still at school.

OM: I think we did it two years. We had that opportunity at the end of the training at school to be different years in the same team. We call it projet long, long project. And from the very beginning we put together our skills. Karl was a little bit, I mean not a little bit, but a bit, very free thinking in the school. He was making triangular buildings and everything was impossible. The crazy angular and the way to print everything was beautiful, was very 1990s, but I mean pretty strong. And I used to be the best student ever. And I arrived at school very super classical and very limited because all of my talent was nothing at architecture. And the first day they asked me at school to invent a house. I just designed my mother’s house without even realizing it. So Karl had an elevation and a freedom that was completely new to me. And I guess Karl that I came with my strength of character and the strength of work, which defines me. So together, Karl’s freedom and the power of work that I have made the projects we did together at school.

That was that first project that you guys decided to work on together.

KF: The real big one was a degree, and it was a hotel for… It was completely Doric, but it was an Aman Hotel, Aman Resort in Corsica. That was our first project.

OM: And then when we left from school, we were not into any networks of clients or anything. And we started little project in the gay community. Each of them were pretty nice, but they were tiny, tiny, tiny projects.

Like what? Like a kitchen or something, like [inaudible 00:14:12]

OM: No. An apartment.

KF: We went to apartments, restaurants, and shops.

OM: Yeah, we were doing a glass shower for Crazy Guy and everybody would say, “Oh, it’s super minimal.” And everyone would say, “Oh, that’s amazing.” And then we made a restaurant in the gay quarter not far. And then so little things, and then we discovered Morocco. And Morocco gave us our first commissions, actually even before we graduated. So we started working before we had the degree kind of overlapped those little things. We had made our company that has a strange name. We called it Kold, like it’s cold. So it was K-O-L-D, which was a strange, stupid. So we just kept the KO. And the day we said it’s going to be called KO. We were afraid. We said, “But KO means knockout. It’s dangerous to use it.” And then someone said, “But fuck, it’s your names, just use that.”

So it took us few years at the end of school, of university to start those things, try the name, get the few little things. And I think, Karl, we discovered Morocco before the degree, because we knew John Well before the degree. And then Morocco, just a combination of chance, meeting the right person. I mean probably, you know, gave us the first commissions.

At what point you had your first trip to Morocco that kind of really influenced your practice?

OM: We met in ’96, and I think the first trip Morocco was probably ’98. Would you confirm this, Karl?

KF: No, I think it was in ’96.

OM: ’97. No, 97. I remember my very first trip with Karl was on my 22nd birthday, which might have been in ’97. April ’97 is the first time I knew Morocco. I knew John Well. I was offered something very special by this very old friend of Morocco. So it was probably 97. Yeah.

And tell us about that trip. How did you find yourself there? How did you get there and what brought you there together originally?

KF: We were supposed to go there with a kind of a band. We were, I don’t know, maybe six or seven to go. And then one by one the whole cancel. And at the end we were only the two of us, so we changed our mind and we were supposed to rent a big house for all of us. And then we decided to find a smaller thing. And we arrive at John Well’s place, and John Well is such a character and we fall in love of his place, of him, of Morocco at the same time. So it was really a decisive trip and decisive moment in our life.

OM: And then the real decisive trip didn’t come in one day. We got in friendship very quickly with him. And he is very extreme like he could offer you everything he owns, if he likes you. He is a bit extreme sentimentally. And I think he fell in love with us as younger friends, as a young couple. And he became my son’s godfather, actually. And so it was a mix of an uncle, the father, all of that. When we met him, he was very protective. And one or two trips after, he proposed that we would look after his house in the month of August, which is a month he would go away to France. And we stayed in the house under evil heat, tried to fix problems with exhausting personnel and crazy heat and nothing working. And very few people living. So the worst conditions you could imagine. And we loved it. And at the end of this month of August, we went back and we said to ourself, “This is so special that maybe one day we could do something there.” And at the airport, we met with Pascale Mussard from the Hermes family.

And you met her at the airport?

KF: Yeah, we know her from Paris. We met her in Marrakesh at the airport. And she was arriving, I think, and we were leaving after this two months in Morocco, in Marrakesh. And we told her that it’ll be a dream to have a project there because we were really happy in Morocco. And she… I don’t know. She put that in a space in her mind. And a few months after she called us back and she said, “You still want to work in Morocco? And we said, “Yes, of course. Why?” And she said, “My uncle is looking for architect, but he wants some really young and easy to…”

OM: Manipulate.

KF: Manipulate.

I was going to say manipulate. Okay.

KF: So I think you might be the good ones, because we were just young architecture, just us.

OM: Because we wanted it.

KF: Yeah, and we wanted it. So we met her uncle, and at that time he was the head of Hermes. And no, it was a really interesting commission. The first one was really special.

OM: And I remember one of the first things he said to you, Karl, he said, “Don’t talk to me about good taste because we invented it at Hermes.”

KF: This is what it started with.

OM: But they were sweet. It was really like family for us, but they were very arrogant as well. And we discovered this entire world, which… I mean our grandparents, they were living like bourgeois. So we had a clue of good manners and not from our parents, but from before. But we had no idea of those people. And we got into it through Morocco. And it was kind of easy for us because we potentially had the education for that and we were not into it so that we didn’t care about them that much because we’re not belonging to that, but we’re belonging to a good milieu, enough not to want to be part of it. And from the very first day, we always had big names and big clients and more and more then Daniel, he said, we always, I think, found a good distance to respect them, to be really comfortable with them without belonging to their same community.

(SPONSOR BREAK)

So about Morocco. What about Morocco? If you had to tell an architecture student “You need to go to Morocco and experience that, the landscape, the culture,” what about it impacted you as designers?

KF: When we arrived, it was a big shock because at that time there was still a way to build that was really traditional. Not maybe in center of the city, but when we go in the mountain or in the countryside, you discover people walking really with hands and making breaks with their own hands and in a way that disappear in Europe. So I think that we learned maybe at school, but we had never practiced, never seen for real. So it was really a shock to see that it was still there, but it was the hand of that. It was really the… And we decided to use those techniques, but in a really contemporary and modern way.

So I think we participate to this new movement now that is really important today to try to save and to respect this local techniques. And I think that the most important, and for example, the first commission we had for her private house, we proposed to the client to build it all in bricks, in hurst and not cooked, sun dry bricks. Adobe, yes. And the client was crazy enough to say, “Yes, let’s go. Let’s do that.” And it was our first real building that we were doing.

OM: The other thing is that Morocco still today actually is a country with a huge number of construction workers. It’s always been a country of workers, of construction labor. And there are many disciplines with a huge skill in Morocco on plaster, gypsum, stonework, brickwork, raw earth, cooked turk, a lot of things, glazing. So there are very few countries in the world now that we’ve been working abroad for so long. The countries where anywhere you go, particularly in Marrakesh and whatever you design within two days can be prototyped and sampled and then you change it. So it’s really like a gigantic lab of working that’s very easy because people are there, they love their work. And there are maybe 3, 4, 5, 6 millions of construction workers in Morocco. They’re not immigrants, they’re not foreigners, they’re Moroccan. And it’s very deep in the culture.

And frankly, after moving so much in the world, I don’t see many other countries in the world where it’s still alive. India has a bit of that. I think Syria before the war and it collapsed, had a bit of that in the craftsmanship. It was really a country of making wood, of making lots of things. But the countries where, for instance, the rest of northern Africa, it’s gone. Algeria, it has disappeared. Tunisia, a little bit of basketry and woodwork, but super little. In Morocco, it’s there.

KF: Maybe in Egypt.

OM: In Egypt, yeah, Egypt a bit. But today, I mean when we discovered Morocco, the rich Moroccan, all of them, they had their their official salon to welcome their important guests and they would hire some Zellige glazed style guys to do it. It would cost them a fortune. It didn’t look really good because colors were super strong. But there’s always been a tradition of hiring the artisans. And who’s your better mallam? It’s a bit like… Japan is the same. They have kept a very strong relationship to the hand, a little detailed. Morocco has that and it’s very, very rare in the world. It was even stronger back then, but it’s still alive today.

KF: No, I think our goal as French architect in Morocco, and we try to do that now in other place where we have to work, is to manage a way to try to create contemporary architecture with local elements, local materials, local techniques, but in a contemporary way. And for them, I think it’s really important to help them to find their way to be modern without being occidental or with something else that international architecture to globalize, but stay themselves. And it’s exactly what Japan, and you mentioned Japan, Olivier. And that’s why I think about that because in my opinion, Japan succeed really well in being deeply himself. And they kept all the tradition and at the same time they’re really modern and it’s really difficult for Arabic country. And they’re more in the imitation of, you can see the city. They lost exactly what is an Arabic city. And they just tried to be New York, but in the desert, it’s just ridiculous.

OM: But now they’re going back to it.

KF: Yeah. I think so. So what we see…

OM: I mean, at least for 10 years, everybody is looking at Marrakesh as an example of… You remember, Karl, a long time ago, we were invited to a forum. Back then we paid a fortune. We felt very important that we’ve been invited by very important Middle East prince, I think today became a much bigger emir or something. And we’ve been invited to a workshop, a charrette, the Americans would call it. It was super organized and we were officially architects of the deserts and okay. So okay.

KF: [inaudible 00:28:52].

OM: And everybody was asking questions about Marrakesh and they were completely in awe about the monochromatic color of Morocco, of Marrakesh. That’s pink and earth. And to them it was a revolution. So Morocco has this and it’s a strong, it’s an old country. I think the French over there has done less bad than elsewhere in the colonial period, at least while Marshal Lyautey was ruling it, they protected a lot, the Moroccan craftsmanship and they made a big thing out of it. And then the Moroccans did the rest. They were very proud of who they were. And the King Hassan II employed thousands, if not millions of workers in the royal palaces to keep alive the craftsmanship. So it’s a long story of craftsmanship and construction that makes it still alive.

And I heard that in some of your early projects you built a relationship with Gae Aulenti. Is that true?

OM: Yeah.

That she kind of mentored you in a sense, or oversaw… Tell me about this story. I want to it from your own words.

OM: I’m not sure about the expression, build a relationship.

KF: I would put it differently.

OM: We maybe suffered a relationship with Gae Aulenti.

Yeah. It’s okay.

KF: It was a really hard time for us and we were not exactly working for her or with her. It’s a little bit more complicated. She was really close to the Agnelli’s family and she always traveled with them, especially for Morocco. So when we begin to work with them, she said to Agnelli, she said, “But who are they? They have done nothing. How can you trust them? So I’m going to check what they’re going to do.”

Right. Okay.

KF: So we had her on the top of our head, looking over her shoulder just to be sure that we were working properly. And it was really good for us because it was difficult. It was a really hard time, but we learned so much with her. And you’re right, we often say that we learned more during this two years with her than the five or six years before at school, because it was a real project. It was not [inaudible 00:31:21]. So we were building it.

OM: But it was tough, huh?

KF: But it was super tough. Yeah.

OM: She was mean. She was smoking filter free Gitanes cigarettes all day long. And first, we…

KF: Whiskey. Drinking whiskey. Just never drink water.

Wow.

OM: Straight whiskey, bam. And with a circle or glasses with primary colors. So I think we’re very happy. We knew her that close. And at the end, after all of that was finished, after being so rude at the end, she was pretty sweet. We have a few Christmas letters from her written on her beautiful little cards. And I think it’s one of the things that makes it very proud that we learned so much from her.

What would you say as architect? So what did you learn from her about how you do things?

OM: I would say methods because she was a super… I mean some of her work is beautiful. She did an apart for Daniel, actually, that was beautiful, but sometimes she was very dogmatic in her language. So when she would approach a project, or the new context, she would be completely off. Like in the Moroccan project, she was trying to put some arches that were meaningless that really meant nothing in the project. She was not always talented, but in design, she’s crazy talented. And so we were a little bit far away from her language a little bit, although we discovered afterward that what she did in interiors is beautiful. But she taught us everything in term of methods. She would say “Everything starts from the plan and comes back to the plan.”

And she would sit in a room with 20 macho guys all around her. She would look at the plan with her big glasses, and within one minute, she would find the flaw and send a guy on the site saying, “There’s a mistake. This is wrong. Go and check.” And everyone were peeing in their pants like “I’m going to go.” And people would come back from the site and wave it to us behind her like, “She’s right. There’s a flaw. What do we do?”

Oh, gosh.

OM: She was a dragon.

KF: Crazy. It was crazy. Right.

OM: Dragon architect.

KF: She was so demanding, so challenging. And that’s why really we did some really enormous progress because of our sense to her.

OM: Yes.

And some people are more familiar with your work at places like the Chiltern Firehouse. Some people know you from your homes in Morocco or in France that might be more rustic or more minimal. Would you have these sort of two parts of your portfolio? And as people understand you, how do you want them, what do you feel is a misconception about your work? Do you feel that people kind of understand Studio KO as a firm and what you represent?

OM: I think that gradually the Chiltern Firehouse and all of that in the long-term history will be something a little bit special and protected. And I remember when we’re working with André Balazs, back then he was saying “Christian Liaigre, after doing the Mercer, he never did any hotel anymore again,” which was something to say, “You’re going to die with this and that’s it.” And today I think we get his point because we had so many demands afterwards to do, and we’re still happy to do interiors because it feeds in the architectural work. When you spend a lot of time defining beautiful textile and detail, it really nourishes the architecture work and it’s completely necessary.

And now we’re mature enough to have huge commissions of legendary hotel groups who want the same firm to do architecture, interiors, FF&E and styling. So we’re among the very few architects in the world who can do that. Not that we’re the best or the biggest, but today a renowned firm that does architecture, interiors, FF&E is very few. And we’re among those ones because we did the Chiltern Firehouse and those minimal houses. So we kind of bring them together. I think gradually, probably because of Karl’s work as well on the objects and the eye of KO. So there’s gradually, the real color flavor of the firm is textured, is rough, is architectural. So gradually there’s a kind of a filter, which I think makes the image of the firm a bit more clear than 10 years ago, I would say.

KF: We still avoid to have a really clear style. And that’s really what we really don’t want to have. And to be defined by only one style and doing always the same project. Whatever is a client, whatever is a climate or the program at the end, you’re finished by having the same thing that the client before. And we try to avoid that. And each project begin by a white page, which is really, really difficult for the team here. And because we have to rebuild a new project each time. And I think that’s what define us more than anything else.

OM: But I think the difference between architecture and interiors personally, more and more, I feel I’m really thrilled by architecture. Because when you go to an architectural site in a piece of nature that’s big, it could be hundreds of hectares and there’s just one building there, and/or it’ll be building next to a historical wall. You are there and everything you had in mind really exists for probably centuries to come. It’s a big responsibility and to me, probably will leave more traces than a lot of things. So personally, I’m so happy that architecture is going the way it goes because it starts to be bigger and very aligned with who we are. It’s not that we’re making skyscrapers in Kuala Lumpur.

So it still resembles us, but in a way that is a different scale than 10 years ago. When it comes to architecture, to interior design, we’re working on a book with Francois La on just interiors. That is very exciting as well. But it’s the anti decoration book. It’s really a book about culture, about history, about Francois’s aesthetic and ours. Then when it comes to architecture, you’ll tell us Interior Stein when you see Monography No. 2, do you think it’s as good, it’s better, it’s less good? I think our readers will say, we have the feeling from inside that we’re still as excited as day one.

(SPONSOR BREAK)

And one of your recent projects is something in Tashkent, in Uzbekistan, which I believe is an artist residency. Sometimes in all these projects in that part of the world, it’s kind of hard to kind of nail down exactly what it’s used for.

OM: At least it’s intriguing for Americans.

It’s super intriguing. We always want to know what is this thing and we read these articles, we can never really figure it out. Tell me about this project because I think it kind of encapsulates a little bit of the soul that you bring into a lot of your projects.

OM: I think it has to be related as well to the CCA, ACA.

KF: Yeah, it’s part of a bigger thing that will come in the few, maybe next year, I don’t know, maybe.

Okay. It’s an ongoing project.

KF: Yeah, exactly. But you’re right. We delivered first the art residency. It’s in Tashkent. It’s in the old neighborhood called Makhallas, which is more or less like Medina for Arabic world. And so it’s an old urban fabric. And we convinced our clients, which is the foundation for art and culture in Uzbekistan, we convinced them to do this art residency inside this old neighborhood and to buy maybe old places. And so they find a place that used to be Madrasah Kohan School from the fifth century. So a really whole building and in a really bad state. And we renovated with the ACA Foundation, under their supervision and as well another place which used to be maybe art and craft workshop. We don’t know exactly.

OM: It was a kindergarten. It was a kindergarten.

KF: Oh yeah, kindergarten. Yeah. But in between it was a kindergarten. You’re right. And so they bought these places and we renovated them during two years, in the last two years.

OM: In a traditional way.

KF: In a really traditional, as much as possible way. And so it’s part of a big program called the CCA, Center for Contemporary Art. And this center will take place in another neighborhood of Tashkent in the more brutalist and more modern part of the city.

OM: Soviet.

KF: Yeah, from the Soviet period.

OM: And it takes place in the former imperial diesel station. So from pre-soviet, it’s 1910s and it’s beautiful long brick building that has beautiful proportions. And we’re making a very contemporary intervention with new build and excavating. And the relationship between the two projects is the day we started working on the Center for Contemporary Art. In the programming there was artists residences. And when we started squeezing in the elements of program, we came back to the client and we said, “There’s no space for artists in residence. It’s too small. What do we do?” It was pushing us to build an ugly thing in the project and we said it should be outside, outsourced.

KF: Outside.

OM: Which is how it came that a client said, “But we have this program of protecting and emphasizing on the Makhallas.” And then we had in Morocco the experience of taking a farm, renovating it, and having artist friends coming. And we said, “This is what you should do.” And then it came through a conversation that started on the CCA.

This sort of dovetails with my question about the YSL museum, which was such a major milestone for you guys. And I was lucky enough to go when I was in Morocco the one time that I was there. What was that brief like to build this museum and how did that come together? What was it originally requested from you guys? Because it’s connected obviously to, there’s the gardens and there’s so much history and so much there already from his life there. How did the museum, what was asked for you about the actual structure?

KF: The first time Pierre Bergé told us about the museum and the idea of building a museum in Marrakesh, he said, “I want it Moroccan. I want it contemporary and with really good level of finishes. And I don’t want it to be a mausoleum.” That’s the main thing.

OM: A tomb.

Like a mausoleum. Yeah.

KF: Yeah, mausoleum. So that was the only maybe brief we had. And he said, “And you are the only one capable to make it.” So yeah, that was the starting point of the conversation. Olivier, do you remember that?

OM: Yeah. He had very little culture in contemporary architecture. Although he had gigantic culture in lyric art, literature, poetry, painting, everything. But when he came to past a certain period, like I would say beyond the 1950s, including art and architecture, to him it was, it kind of sucked everything. So I think when we came in, I think before he gave us the commission, this started to be a little bit of an interest for modern lines and different approach to space because he visited one of our mud houses, Villa K.

KF: I bring them to a work site.

OM: Before the commission.

KF: He had his first shock. And when we were going back to Marrakesh in the car, he said, “You know, Karl, it’s the first time that I understand what you said about contemporary architecture.” So I think it’s in his mind this day something happened.

OM: And gradually came to it. I think frankly when he chose us, he liked us very much like a big brother, father, grandfather. He had commissioned us for a few things just to test if we were okay to work with. We had done some renovations in the garden with beautiful little interior project on [inaudible 00:47:04] painter beige pad or horizontally. I mean, we did some things with him just to check that we were intense enough to work with such a guy and professional and used to this level of… So once this was checked, he could start working with us. And I think he was really focusing on the family character of our relationship. And he wanted this to be a moment of pleasure, of sharing.

And I think he surprised as everyone around him by the strength of architecture. And he knew it after the first month of working together that he started loving it. And he took everyone with him in the group, some people that were saying you should do an international competition. And when we started sharing the idea and then the few renders, he was on a journey, the last journey of his life that was far stronger and more exciting than he would ever think, and including Madison Cox and everyone, it became a much stronger the journey than what everybody thought, including people’s feedback and critic’s feedbacks on the building. It was very strong and he was very proud of that, I think so.

And do you guys still have that house in Corsica? I think it was in Vogue or something a few years ago.

OM: Yes.

KF: Yeah, still.

And it’s a house from the 1800s that I think you guys have updated and you guys have this amazing skill at making something that is maybe from using ancient materials or it’s an older house, make things feel very contemporary and cool, for lack of a better term.

OM: No, we like cool. I mean…

That’s why 20 years of design journalism, I’m just going to say cool because that’s what is.

OM: No, but cool is good.

Cool is good.

OM: I mean we could be happy with this word.

KF: Cool is good.

OM: There are a few designers being cool.

Yeah, exactly. And if you could teach a class to students at University of Architects and say, what is the most important thing to understand how to do that, how to bridge past and present, what would you say is that sort of philosophical thing that people need to understand about making something old cool?

KF: I think the most is important is to be sensitive to the context in a really large scale. Not only the landscape around, but the history people around the way they live and act like a sponge, I would say, stay somewhere like a sponge and see what is coming inside the sponge and try to be fit by what surrounds the project and what surround you and take time. I think one key as well is taking time to think about things, to dream about things. And nowadays, we work under pressure and things has to go fast and faster and faster. It’s never fast enough and we have to fight against that and explain clients that good projects come with a bit of time.

OM: Yeah.

KF: A bit of time. So yeah, I would say for students that if I have to give an advice is to resist.

OM: I would say as well probably that to reach the expectations or whatever success or happiness you have to never think of it. The moment you start to think about your image, your Instagram shot, it’s already dead. And the best way to get there, which will bring everyone aboard and make the most beautiful picture life of your project is that you never thought of it. The only things we’ve been focusing on is exactly what Karl is saying is the spirit of the place and your deep, deep feelings that what you feel has to exist, never wondering about what people are going to say about it. It’s really to ignore the mood and the amount of information we get, which is why listen, sit down, be in the dark and the silence and forget anything else than your own personality and your ability to open your ears, smell and look. And then something personal will come out of it.

And if you really think into yourself in the long distance, this is how it’s going to work. When we open the museum, there was a few American journalists saying, “Did you ever think of an Instagram shot?” And we said, “No.” And for us it was so tacky. But the day we opened, the Instagram shot happened, but so strongly, of course, because of the YSL anyway. And we understood that the best way to do it is never to think about it. And it’s like we have a few clients who sold the houses a few times and they say the best way to sell a house super expensive is never to think I’m going to sell it. And it’s the same thing. So it’s about ignoring the gigantic clouds of informations of superficiality that we have around us and focus on listening and feeling.

And speaking of that signature, Karl, you once told, I think it was Dwell, something that you’d mentioned earlier in the interview that you don’t want there to be a KO style, but a KO attitude. How do you define the KO attitude?

KF: It’s exactly what I said about listen to the context. That’s the main attitude we can describe. I think it’s what we try to do every time we have a new project is not to reply what we have done before and when we delivered the Chiltern, and that when we had so many demand to do exactly the same thing, we were really shocked and we said, “But what is a builder to do, to replicate something that has been done by us and already? So no, if you have a new vision to share, if you have a wish, yes, we can work together, but just to copy something we have already done, there is no point for us.”

OM: I think the attitude as well is there’s nothing we don’t like. I mean, people could say a head beige or a head dark color, or you could see things in the style. For us, there’s nothing we dislike. Anything could be beautiful or super disgusting depending on the way you use it and the context you use. Nothing is wrong. Everything is possible in terms of materials, colors. I mean, frankly, there’s nothing I dislike at all in textile, textures, material. So it’s more the way it comes to you, which is why attitude is more important than content, what you do out of it. And yeah, it’s like a good cook could do amazing meal out of any ingredient. And we’re kind of defining ourself a bit like that.

KF: Yeah, and as well, we believe that doing a house for private residents, for private people, for someone is making his portrait. So we are more painters than architect in that way. And this portrait has to be not a caricature, and we need the client to achieve this portrait. So it’s a conversation. And most of the time, what we see is that the interior designer deliver his vision.

OM: His own portrait.

KF: His own portrait everywhere. So he put his portrait on every houses but it’s not the way we want to practice because it’s boring at the end. You always do the same thing.

OM: What’s starting to appear is a corpus of details of materiality that defines us as well. I mean, the new houses that are coming, they are client’s portrait, but they are us so much that four times bigger than the houses in the first book. But we’re very happy because I think they’re as textured, as contextual. So one of them, because it echoes the feeling we had of the clients, and she was beautiful. We made our temple, a temple for life in the middle of Portugal. It’s very strong for the family, and it’s the portrait and it’s stone and concrete, and it’s them.

In Morocco, we’re doing twin houses for two related families. I mean, they’re friends using bricks and their exact portrait of who they are. One of the family loves prospective architectural lines. They’re a little bit colder and their house is a very strong moment of architecture. With axis, it’s super strong. And the other one is more mysterious with kind of nooks and detailings than the bricks. So it’s the same ingredients on the table. And at the end of the day, each cake tastes completely different. And this is what we’re expressing in the new homes that are much more ambitious than 15 years ago.

And what’s next for you guys? You’re working on this book that you had mentioned?

KF: Yeah.

OM: Yeah. So we’re putting together the interiors with Francois and going to Al to his place to make a very special book. But actually you’re saying, cool, if we make it right, it’s going to be a super refined book of interiors. But that’d be cool. And it’s not just a little [foreign language 00:57:10].

KF: Profitable. One more.

OM: No, a bit more than that.

KF: We hope so.

OM: We hope so. I mean, Karl, maybe you should speak of all your smaller scales project, like a lot of things.

KF: Yeah. We are doing collaboration with some brands. We are launching a new collection of rugs next week, and we’re going to have another rug collection for Beni Rug based in Morocco. And that the launching will be in the Salone in Milano for the next Salone.

OM: We’re using one sketch of our sun, beautiful collaboration with the Canadian based rug company called Elte. And the graphics is beautiful. So these things, they’re really happen in parallel to the rest. And then all of your objects as well, the IFKO.

KF: Yeah, we created this little brand called Lloyd KO which is a creation of objects and collaboration with craftsmen. And so yeah, many, many little things like that, but really exciting that we use in our projects, most of them. And yeah, and big project as well, big project in Paris. Next year we are going to deliver a new hotel. It’s the first time that we built in Paris a new building. It’s called the Bus Palladium. It’s a really iconic stage, iconic club in Paris. And we are doing a hotel above it, so it’s a new building. And in Portugal as well, next year we’re going to open a hotel.

OM: For the first time we are reaching a commission of much bigger scales, hospitality project. In Milton now, it’s not like we’re doing a Ritz-Carlton resorts and golf courses. It’s still very special, although it’s big for us. So we’re going to open next Christmas a very important hospitality project in a natural reserve in Portugal by the sea.

KF: Not next Christmas, but then the next year after.

OM: Yeah.

KF: In one year.

OM: In one year. No, not this Christmas. The one after. And it’s a long-term project we’ve been working on for six or seven years. We did the COVID lockdown working on it, on Zoom. And it’s a long story with clients we have very good relationship with. And it makes us very happy because it’s an ambition of landscape. We’re collaborating with this great Greek landscape designer called Doxiadis, which is just into repairing the wilderness. So they’re making nurseries of tiny lichens and speaking to the birds and the bugs. So it’s very special. And the architecture pushed us to limits we had never gone beyond like we’re doing hexagonal shapes, housings made of brick and concrete in the sand. We designed for the first time a very ambitious wooden structure that we had never done before. That looks like a well skeleton, like very, very, very long. And that exists.

So all of that you’ve been dreaming of exists in a very wide landscape that didn’t ask anything to anyone to have buildings. And it’s beautiful. And the nature around being repaired is going to be very strong. So this to us, architecture wise, it’s each time we go, we say, “Wow, this is something. And here we’re doing architecture, interiors and FF&E.” We are having some very big and important commissions, architecture, interiors as well in some other parts of the world. For the first time, we’re reaching brands we have been dreaming of for 20 years. So it’s big for us. And still we’re trying to keep the very special and niche commission, such as we’re doing a winery in Minorca for a French family who’s making a wine, creating a wine, and planting vines for five years.

And we’re making this crazy little object of stone. Very special, very technical as well. And this is super exciting. We’re starting a place for horses in Andalusia. So again, for an architect, we’re happy to be able to keep the very small things that make you so happy like wine, horses. A friend of ours were saying, “Okay, now you just have to do cemetery and you’re done. You can go to retirement.” It’s those projects that are a dream for an architect.

Thank you to my guests, as well as to everyone at Karla Otto for making this episode happen. The editor of The Grand Tourist is Stan Hall. To keep this going, don’t forget to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter, The Grand Tourist Curator at thegrandtourist.net, and follow me on Instagram @danrubinstein. And don’t forget to follow The Grand Tourist on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen and leave us a rating or comment. Every little bit helps. Til next time!

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