Design Practice: MKV Design
Location: London
Maria Vafiadis established MKV Design in London in 2000 after an early career which took her from Athens to Milan and Vienna and onto the UK. Since then, she has cultivated a business which has worked in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and is internationally recognised for combining visionary use of space with design that reaches out beyond trends to create commercially astute, innovative and delightfully surprising work. Projects include a multitude of prestigious hotels and resorts, both new-build and heritage, spas, restaurants and golf clubs as well as residences. Celebrated as a practice of distinction, MKV has been garlanded with numerous design awards, most recently: AHEAD Europe Best Resort, Gold Key Best Hotel Luxury, World Best Spa Design and Hospitality Design Guestrooms Luxury.
My passion for, and fascination in, hospitality design. I had worked as an architect on both residential and commercial projects but by the time I moved to London - then the European epicentre of hospitality design - I was determined to grasp the opportunity to practice as an interior designer in the sector. A decade of hotel design experience followed, and then I was ready to set up my own practice.
While every project is unique to us, our approach is underpinned by a belief in uniting the creative and functional to deliver a hospitality experience with purpose. This translates into a sense of sanctuary and time well spent for guests while solving operational challenges for the client. If you combine these two values, you have a result with integral longevity – in our opinion, the cornerstone of sustainability. This has been our core philosophy from day one with the result that we have great examples of some very long client relationships as well as projects that we are called in to marginally update more than 15 years after we designed the original.
Above all, the sheer diversity of our projects, from a 140-acre resort in the Swiss mountains with a glamorous legacy dating back 130 years to a new stand-alone fine dining restaurant in Riyadh, the refurbishment of a cottage on the estate of Lucknam Park and the creation of a palace hotel in Budapest. Also, I think it’s fair to say that as a company we believe in being leaders rather than followers, responding to the evolving interpretations of the luxury experience while avoiding the latest styling trends in favour of genuine local context.
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