Sometimes It’s Just Skin Deep

Usually one gets the best inspiration by looking over the hedge. It’s not really a new insight and you probably have heard it before: Yacht designers look at car designers. Car designers look at architects. Architects look at product designers. And everybody is looking at nature…

So, here’s something you might not have seen before, but we thought it should be equally interesting and therefore valid: Exterior designers look at interior designers. Well, it actually should be pretty obvious, because quite often, they work close to each other on the same projects! But fact is, all we are (supposedly) know is lacquered steel, lacquered aluminium, lacquered fibreglass and visible carbon fibre. And even when you add teak and some stainless steel to the equation, it’s still a rather boring and uninspired mix!

So, since we at coquine![design] love textures and ‘real’ material character we often take a peek what our colleagues from the other side of the fence do. And because that’s still not enough, we also look what interior designers for residential projects do. And then, suddenly, a whole new world opens: There’s wood, stone, glass, ceramics, exciting veneers, bamboo, coconut, even banana leaf! There’s metal-coated travertine, real stone veneer, 3-dimensional digital printing and translucent concrete. We have smooth surfaces, rough surfaces, soft surfaces, edging, sand-blasting, polishing, water-cutting, mosaic making…

Last month, we went to the London Surface Design Show to learn more. It wasn’t one of those fancy events where the yacht designers like to go, in fact it was a rather odd mix of students, first-time suppliers and the odd demi-god coming from some fancy name architectural practices. In other words, the ideal hunting ground for things you haven’t seen inside (or outside) any yacht. Yet.