Kit Kemp

We featured the Firmdale group’s new Crosby Street Hotel in Volume 9 of our Tablet10 magazine. Here, in an online exclusive, is the full-length interview with Kit Kemp, the co-owner and designer.

Why New York?

It seemed the next logical step to go across to America. We had actually tried in the past to do things in Paris and Milan but it hadn’t quite come off. And we’d been looking at sites in the US for a while, in New York, and this sort of gap between two buildings, that was a parking lot, came up. We thought SoHo was the perfect postcode for this sensibility. We don’t have to do 85 stories.

We were surprised to see that you built a new building.

Well, the Soho Hotel in London was on the site of an NCP car park, and that’s a new build. Actually there are similarities really — we used the same Crittall windows — but the difference is that when we were building in New York we were building to LEED standard, which is this ecological standard.

The interiors here are reminiscent of the Soho Hotel in London. Maybe it really is just the windows.

I try and do the hotels quite individually, so that they stand completely on their own, because I think as a guest, you don’t want to feel that you’re part of a brand. That’s the last thing you want. You want an individual experience, and that’s what we try to make. Each hotel stands on its own.

But your point of view comes across quite strongly.

I think that’s bound to, isn’t it? I mean, if it doesn’t, then there’s something wrong with your design, somehow. If you haven’t got something to say, you shouldn’t really be designing.

There are a lot of New York hotels right now that are sort of blending together. Things are getting kind of gray again.

You know what, they won’t now. I don’t think they will. If we’re the latest thing that’s happening, then they’ll all try and do it. So I can imagine in the next few years, the hotels in New York will be fabulous.

We could use a bit more color.

We’ve never been shy of color.

Was it always SoHo that you had in mind, or was it also about the availability of the site?

It’s always about the availability of sites. Because there’s no point in paying too much for a site, because then you can’t afford to do what you want with it. Everything has to work together.

The answer is, at the end of the day, that we’ve got the hotel that we wanted, and I don’t think we can go in too much to the ins and outs of the building, because nobody’s interested in that. The most interesting thing is that we’ve got a fabulous product, and everybody’s going to find it really user-friendly, and it’s going to be exciting, an adventure, and when you open the door, there’s everything you could want there. The actual process, frankly, is neither here nor there. Always, you’re much more interested in what the clients think than in how you arrive at it. Frankly, the client shouldn’t be in the least bit bothered with that.

Is it too early for you to be thinking about the next thing?

We’re working on a project in London again now, but there is another project in New York. But I don’t know the precise timing on that. I don’t know when that will happen.

We often ask hoteliers whether they feel more invested in the creation or the operation.

I think that they’re all as important as one another. The wonderful thing about hotels is that there isn’t one aspect that can’t work. The whole lot has to work as a team. And actually that could be one of our strengths, because the team that we have together are immensely strong, and they were young — now they’re middle-aged — but what it does mean is that we’ve got everybody at the top of their game.

The standard of service that you guys live up to is astonishing.

Well, it’s always a struggle, and you always hope that it’s going to work, but the people that we’ve got in place, the standards are high. To get everything working to the nth degree and to make the stay absolutely flawless, you’re really putting your head on the line.

In a way it’s something that’s evaluated negatively, by what didn’t go wrong.

But actually it’s very exciting. I get excited about the design, and I know that Craig [Markham] gets excited about his events, and Carrie [Wicks] gets excited about the operations side. And when you get the whole thing working together it’s brilliant.

Are there any other hotels out there that you admire?

These days it’s brilliant because there’s a hotel for everybody. You don’t have to have a sort of homogenized view on life. If you’re a fashionista, there’s a hotel for you. If you’re somebody who loves technology, there’s one for you. Everybody has a different favorite. And you’re spoilt for choice in the end.

Something a little bit original, I quite enjoy. Sometimes it’s not about the full five-star treatment. You could stay in a little hotel in St. Tropez where you have to climb up loads of stairs, and your husband can hardly stand up straight when he gets into the room, but when you look out over the rooftops and see the sea, you feel like a student again. There’s a joy in that.