Working with them was an honour for such masters as Michael Graves, Charles Jencks, Jean Nouvel, Richard Hutten, John Maeda, Dominic Perrault and many more. It was them who introduced Zaha Hadid to the world.
Being fashionable is just not enough for them; they want to be one step ahead of time, creating their own expressive language in the world of design and architecture. They’re William Sawaya and Paolo Moroni whose names make up the famous Sawaya&Moroni brand.
Our conversation that took place at the Saint Petersburg ProEstate forum (Paolo Moroni and William Sawaya were invited by the city council) started very unexpectedly. Answering the standard question on how their creative duo appeared, William Sawaya said, leaving me dumbstruck, “When we were young we were very handsome and worked as models…” “Wrong”, Moroni broke in, “I used to be a male prostitute, and he (William Sawaya) rode by in a big car and picked me up.” Puzzled, I asked, “Why not vice versa?” Paolo Moroni excitedly exclaimed, “You really think he looks more like a prostitute? You have a good eye!”
The masters rolled with laughter, then took on a more serious tone.
P.M.: Actually, we got to know each other through some common architect friends. So at first our connection was strictly professional. Then William turned to me for assistance with one of his projects. I helped him and in the end we came to a conclusion that we’re good at working together.
W.S.: It happened 30 years ago.
A.: Many famous designers and architects have worked with your company. Is there still anyone with whom you’d like to cooperate in the future?
W.S.: I want this person to be not a designer or an architect but someone from a totally different sphere. Maybe a writer, or an artist. Someone with an unbiased view and a fresh look on things.
P.M.: We like working with people who have their own original view of the world.
W.S.: And it doesn’t have to be something truly wonderful, but it will by all means be inventive, extraordinary and new. I don’t think that Sawaya&Moroni could ever be blamed with copying someone, because we’re ahead of fashion.
P.M.: It’s like asking a child to give a definition to the word “space”. You can get incredible results. Or, even better, imagine that design is a language. Or multiple languages. What we do is work on creating new languages because same things sound different in different languages. This is how we search for a new vision.
A.: Your design projects are far better known in Russia than architectural ones. Tell us more about the latter.
P.M.: Design projects are our storefront, something for everyone to see. Our architectural projects are very private, especially where interior design is concerned, and especially in Russia. Russian customers do not allow us to publish information on these projects, that’s why they’re pretty much unknown.
A.: Who are your clients? Who do you keep in mind when working on a project?
P.M.: Our customers are knowledgeable people who understand enough about design. More often than not they own several houses. Money-wise they’re usually very well-off.
W.S.: At the same time they have to possess a very strong personality because we’re hard to influence. We have to like what we do. We won’t work on the project that doesn’t appeal to us. We’re not the ones who you can hire for a million bucks and say, “I want to do it like that!” The choosing process should be two-way: we choose our customers just like they choose us. If we have a connection with the client, we’ll take up the project, and if not, then “thank you, we’re too busy at the moment, too many orders, you know…”
P.M.: The customer has to take part in the project, be a part of what’s going to be done. The project should, so to say, come from inside of the client. To achieve that we have to get to know them as closely as possible. Sometimes it takes a couple of months. When the project is born, it’s a very long process that takes lots of effort and emotion. We learn about the client’s wishes and then interpret them in our own way.
We have a clause in our contract saying that, if after 3 months of working on the project we won’t want to go on with it, we have a right to quit. It is because during that time we can find out that the client’s personality doesn’t agree with us.
A.: How do you work with Russian clients?
W.S.: We’re very much into modern trends, but in Russia we’re often asked to create classic interiors. Lots of effort goes into making the clients change their minds! It is especially typical of people who’ve grown rich and now hold power. They want to be surrounded by interiors to match. For instance, one of the Russian customers came to us who wished to see the interior of his mansion in the classic style. We’d tried to convince him for a long time that it’s the third millennium that we’re living in and there are more interesting and modern solutions now. He didn’t bulge. Then we came to an agreement to decorate the mansion in the classic style, but design a modern interior for his penthouse in the Moscow centre. He did like the mansion, but when we finished the apartment he was literally stupefied. All he could do was whine that he hadn’t chosen the same style for the house.
P.M.: The one problem with Russians is that they’re sure they know exactly what they want, and it’s very difficult to make them look at things at another angle.
I’ll give you another example. At the moment a 50-metre yacht that we designed is being built in Italy for a Russian customer (previously we built a house for him). William drew a wonderfully modern yacht, but when it came to interiors the customer wanted them classic. It was the start of a battle: centimeter by centimeter we tried to convince him that this type of yacht simply can’t have such an interior.
Meanwhile, her exterior is really great. When the people from the shipyard saw it they immediately offered to put the yacht into serial production.
A.: Is there a minimal cost of the project that defines whether you’ll take it up or not?
P.M.: No.
W.S.: Sometimes we even agree to pay from our own pockets if we like the project and want to finish it no matter what. Of course we don’t always do that. We need to make a living, too.
P.M.: We can only take a limited number of clients each year, that’s why we have to consider and calculate properly how much time we’re going to spend on each project, how many people are going to be involved, etc. And surely we choose the projects that won’t make us look embarrassed later.
A.: Are there any projects that you’d like to take up in Russia?
P.M.: The offer for the project that we’d really like to take up came 4 years ago: we were offered to redo a former Soviet Air Force cruiser and turn it into a luxury cruise ship. Unfortunately, this project was put on hold because our customer, a very influential man, is going through some trouble at the moment.
W.S.: I’d like to design a project of a big shopping centre, a megamall – not a residence, anyway, because I’m tired of building residential houses.
A.: What you’ve created under the Sawaya&Moroni brand, be it designer items or architectural and interior solutions, belongs to the luxury world. What do you think of luxury, do you own some luxury items?
P.M.: To my mind, luxury is an intentional concept. A glass of water in a desert for a thirsty man is definitely more of a luxury than caviar. In this sense everything is a luxury and it all depends on how you think of it.
W.S.: For me it’s a luxury not to think about luxury, because if it’s always on your mind, you’re a slave of it. There’s no other luxury like being yourself, showing your feelings and not caring about what others think or say about it.
P.M.: What we do is luxury by all means. The furniture we make is luxury because it takes loads of money and creative effort to produce, and consequently, it can’t be cheap by definition. But we never intend to make luxury items. If we get a luxury item in the end, let it be so. But usually, what we do becomes luxury because of the combined effort put into it.
By Ilya Kalinov
Photoreport
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