Beatrix Hollings

Fifteen questions, off-duty.

Role on the line

Materials and textures, interior side. Floors, fabrics, stone, finishes. The reason a render reads as warm before the eye gets to the furniture.

Where I grew up

Seoul, Mapo-gu side. A walk-up apartment where the kitchen floor was always heated and always reflective.

Training

Industrial design diploma at Hongik University, then materials and textiles at Central Saint Martins. Two schools that argued the same point in different accents.

Years on the line

Six. Three at a Mayfair interior practice scanning fabric for design boards, three on planning and marketing CGI.

The blade I bring

Scanning real samples, then teaching the model to forget how new they are.

Architect I would ride out for

Kazuyo Sejima. White, but the kind of white that has weight.

Surfaces that read true on screen

Hand-loom linen, polished oak end-grain, lime-washed plaster, honed Carrara, antique brass that has been touched daily for fifty years.

Software I cannot lose

Substance Painter, paired with a real photo box and a library of physical samples by my desk.

Earliest architectural memory

A wooden temple roof outside Gyeongju, the dak rafters lined up like a song.

The brief I am proudest of

A Chelsea drawing-room retrofit where the brief was "make the new walls look older than the floor". We did.

On the headphones while working

Park Hye Jin in the morning, Ryuichi Sakamoto after lunch, Yiruma when the brief refuses to behave.

London view I never tire of

The Smithfield colonnade at dawn, before the meat trucks. The cast iron is at its best in low light.

Coffee or tea

Yuja-cha in winter, iced filter coffee the rest of the year.

Off the line

Korean bath house in New Malden once a month. No phone, no opinions.

The motto on my desk

"Touch it first, render it second." Tarquin gave me that one.