Crafting Compelling Narratives

Multidisciplinary design studio Farm stresses the importance of good storytelling through design that helps engage today’s restless audience — particularly in the hospitality industry.

- Luo Jingmei

The Great Madras in Little India is housed in a charming art deco building featuring tongue-in-cheek accents and retro furnishing. Lloyd’s Inn is an oasis at the fringe of Singapore’s Orchard Road wrapped in greenery. These two boutique hotels may be quite different from each other conceptually, but both are similar in that they offer alternative experiences to the ubiquitous five-star-hotel model and are rooted in strong narratives.

“Individual travelers are looking for diverse yet particular experiences and there is no [such thing as] one size fits all. We learnt to look for the strength of each project from a perspective of space and place,” says Peter Sim, architect and co-founder of multidisciplinary design studio Farm who designed the hotels. Sim and his three other architecture-trained partners — Selwyn Low, Tiah Nan Chyuan, and Torrance Goh — understand very well how to build connections through telling stories. Since its inception in 2005, it has done this across a range of project types. It has organized national public art competitions and events (NDP 2010), and designed exhibitions within the National Museum of Singapore and Asian Civilisation Museum, art installations, products, graphic identities (for instance, the upcoming Guoco Midtown and Far East Hospitality’s recently opened The Clan Hotel), houses and interiors (Aesop stores and Funan’s lyf Funan co-living space among them). Increasingly, they have added hospitality projects to the mix.