Why Good Design Is About Concept, Not Cost with Marta Gordiychuk

0:00Sometimes people really want that higher end look, but for cheaper money, but it doesn't work that way. You need to work with what you have and be honest about it. And you always can make a feature with a different material and you always can make a feature using colours. And colour is available in any budget, whether it's high end or cost effective. First, you need to understand the budget and then you just go with what you have. three years after we've started this podcast we thought it was time to make sure that those lessons and the takeaways from our amazing guests were actually actionable something you can really put into place so we have launched show notes a bi-weekly email get into your inbox and that will give you the key headlines that is indexable findable actionable we can really start to make a difference in creating healthy happy workspaces so the link's below or you can head to stansons.co.uk forward slash space look forward to seeing you sign up hello and welcome to space by stansons where i go with marta from maris i'm not going to say your surname because i'm not i don't know how You say it.

1:20Goodychuk. Goodychuk. There we go. Marta Goodychuk, project designer at Marix. And Paris is where she goes. I mean, this is by far the hardest episode I've ever recorded. I woke up this morning. I couldn't be bothered. Horrible country. It's very, very boring. It's a lot of effort, guys, to go, you know, to admire every street. And it takes a lot of effort. I hope you appreciate what you're doing here for you guys. We will also try and do a little tour of the spaces. So if you're listening on Spotify or Apple, it will also be on YouTube. So I will walk around and show you the space. Anyway, Marta, welcome.

2:03Yeah, thank you so much. Just quickly, why Paris? Paris is one of the places when I get my inspiration from. Yeah, just tasty, tasty place. amazing culture, great acknowledgement how to enjoy life and yeah good coffee, good food. I'm just yeah I'm just recharging here so yeah that's why yeah and recharge designer means good design, means good work. Yeah so Paris are you pasta or pizza? Food? Both? Both? Yeah but why pasta pizza this is from Italy. Well, because I see pasta and pizza shops everywhere. Yeah, it's very tart. Well, what do we get here then? Croissants or? Croissants. Croissants and pain of chocolate.

2:53Which one would you have? Croissants. Croissants, there we go. And you? Probably croissants because pain of chocolate has got even more calories. Yes, but in Paris you don't count. Do you know that in Paris calories are not? I think. Do you like the fashion here? I like the fashion here. I believe that French people, they are born with a sense of taste. I wish more people were born like that. Yeah, so it just comes out so naturally for them. And yeah, this is something to learn, I think, for me as well. So for three things, for how I create design, how I enjoy life, and how I dress up myself, for example, because it comes to my personal style as well.

3:42So French people and French culture is a great example for me. Because again, in a very easy, simple way, they just do it. Yeah. Yeah. And for them, it's not a big effort. For you, home is Ukraine, right? Yes. So do you think your love for Paris, does it resemble Ukraine at all? Yes, it does. Okay, how? It does. uh again with food and style yeah same thing quite similar yeah they are uh because um so there is a korean fashion and world knows about korean fashion and there is ukrainian fashion as well so that's why i like uh style and all my friends family members they like um stylish things and I think just common for our culture to be dressed up a little bit more and that's why I find this is something familiar in French people as well they they do it as well they like to style themselves yeah but also they do it without a lot of effort it's just quite minimal natural yeah we were chatting on the way just walking down this street like so many like pockets of like boutique like one-off beautiful yeah everything coffee shops included that's not something we're really seeing then that why do you think that why is that again another thing what connects me and my country culture with french culture i believe for me personally that um this is the understanding that life should be enjoyed like aesthetics of life should be enjoyed altogether food and what you see when you eat.

5:28So for us it's very common to get this in the same time but I noticed that in UK people usually when they eat the purpose for eating is eating and it's not necessarily the best design place well well designed place but a good food for example and they go there for food they have their food and they go out but therefore us in my culture is always like you go to the place for food but you also go for the emotion and you're enjoying the space and if you even if you're like really hungry but you have not nice place close to you you won't go there because it doesn't have nice interior yeah it's interesting thing because if you're hungry so your purpose is So your goal is to eat, but not for us.

6:24We need to eat and also enjoy our company and enjoy the environment, enjoy the space. And in French culture, I notice this as well. So every time you have nice, great, tasty food, tasty coffee, even if it's a tiny coffee shop like that one where we are sitting at the moment, so everything needs to be nice and beautiful as well. so they go deeper into the aesthetics rather than covering just the food, just a drink. So it always contains something else, something more, more beauty. So for me, I think what is nice is the connection of food and emotion which you get, experience, nice interior. So all two things combined, I think French people know how to enjoy that and serve with these instruments to other people as well.

7:22Is that something you take into the designs and the work that you do? And how do you do that? Yeah, it's a bit different because at the moment I'm creating workspaces. So it's not connected with food. but my understanding I think it's always nice to of course to provide something more rather than the purpose why so there is a direct purpose why you're creating this workspace people need to work there right this as simply as that but also you're adding something else to eat like for example what about the heart of the space what about the breakout space what about the space where actually people do their coffee and having their breakfast or lunch time during lunch break so what they are experiencing there do they have nice environments do they have nice interior is it cozy is it something different from their desk so they can get away for a little bit and have a bit different 15 minutes one hour and then go back to more productive work because they spend time in something different a little bit more different environment a little bit different color and a little bit different approach of a space when you say nice like hey have a nice environment or a different environment what would you like look to put in what how would you like people to feel when they are going to that breakout space so there is a different um different approach to breakout space it depends on the company so it depends who client is uh but most of time The space for communication internally for staff sometimes is also representing what people are doing inside of the company for their clients to show, look how we spend time, look that we are very collaborative, we are open and this is our culture.

9:14So this is a place to present their own culture to outside people, to external people. But I like breakout spaces when it's more dedicated to the stuff. And in my opinion, breakout space should be like a getaway space and you need to recharge. So you need to have a little bit of a privacy corners, if I would put it that way. and you can just sit and recharge your brain just with your coffee or a little bit of milk. And also this is a space for communication between your team because out there at your desk, you don't communicate much. It depends on the company, of course, but sometimes you might feel a bit lonely with your work and chatting is great, but it's not like chatting with a coffee in a nice breakout space with a cozy sofa and nice colors.

10:12If there was one thing you could steal from Paris, is there anything in the design of French spaces that you see that you particularly like, any element that you love? I like how they combine traditional inheritance with the modern approach. so like for example we were walking here I just noticed that in one of the restaurants they very nicely combined an old building, an old space with vintage chairs but in the same time on the ceiling they have acoustic funnels and it's like modern KitKat tile at the bar so it's all very well balanced and combined i think it's a it's a legacy of french taste yeah it comes naturally yeah no that's interesting yeah and if there was one thing you could take from london and bring it to france or bring it to paris is there anything you would bring or would you is there nothing no me myself i would i would bring myself to paris that's it okay so we don't need anything from London Paris has got it we are happy with that I love London in just different space London inspires me in a different way yeah but the reason why we came here and why we are specifically in Paris this is something that you can't simply get in London yeah no it is very inspiring it's also somehow very slow and relaxed without being like physically asleep but people seem to work in a much more like nomadic relaxed way.

11:55Yes. Yeah. Seems to have more time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think we should give as well to that fact that London is very busy capital. Yeah. And because our specific of working, most of the time we work in central part of London. Yeah. So yeah, it just keeps us busy even more and it keeps us very stick to that atmosphere. so yeah are there any materials that you're seeing that you're loving that are quite unique to or not unique because i guess we've got all the materials all across the world but how they apply materials new materials is any surfaces you're loving oh yeah of course i love marble but this is something that not necessarily is implemented quite widely in our spaces yeah it's available though yeah it always comes to the budget as well so this is a good balance in between your taste clients brief and the budget that they would like to have and they have for the project and also you need to be wise as a interior designer to have to provide the best quality and then still make it with a budget that they have yeah so not necessarily the marble in every corner but yeah I think my approach would be whatever is possible so let's just do something natural just a little bit if you really need to make a feature out of it but everything else just don't copy too much of the natural materials if you don't have budget for natural material just put color don't copy don't copy original textures yeah I would say okay so if you've got the budget for a natural surface like a marble go out do it yeah if you can't afford a marble you would just go with a blocks of color yeah in in instead exactly just like pretending i think it's about um honest approach if it's not marble don't act like it's marble uh so i think what makes um interior approach in workspaces specifically sometimes look a bit cheap it just sometimes people really want that higher end look but for cheaper money but it doesn't work that way it's always you need to work with what you have and be honest about it and you always can make a feature with a different material and you always can make a feature using colors and color is available in any budget whether it's high-end or cost-effective first you need to understand the budget and then you just go with what you have but yeah be honest with materials i would i would recommend sorry you didn't no one asked me about recommendation but i would recommend yeah no no i love it it's really good to hear how people tackle that and whether to put in a like so material and just just go all out and do something completely different i like it seems like the intelligent approach like i can see how that works although there is a lot of foam materials that do look incredibly realistic.

14:59It's a balancing act isn't it? So what's a material that's not a natural material that's trying to be like it that you really don't want to use or you don't want to see? Any kind of laminate I think. So laminate has different colors options so you can use that but obviously they have like different laminate, stone laminate, marble laminate it's obviously not a stone yeah but it's uh it's just trying so hard so you can feel it and you can see it so yeah i would avoid that one thing that i'm spotting here is that every space is really individual like yeah haven't got so the chain feel somehow every every space we're walking into feels very unique and like embracing its unique beauty rather than trying to conform to all the other chains and that compete with the other chains.

15:59I'm getting this real sense of uniqueness in each space leading into the actual ancient architecture. The materials used are beautiful. So yeah, I'll walk around here. The staircase here is really cute. Spiral, tiny, like a wrought iron staircase. Lots of curves, lots of soft materials, lots of marbles. Also, you'll see the glass front here to the space. these arched doorway so... Would you say about the interior that actually how it's done and actually every coffee shop here the way which we are seen when we were walking here, it's actually like a... would you say that interior design is actually a good instrument rather than the main concept?

16:48Because they're using the exactly like you said, they're using something that they have and they're using something big they adding to it rather than re-changing directing that good in balancing things yeah what i'm seeing is they're creating environments everywhere they go like memorable environments which i think is what we need to do in the office in terms of creating a memorable environment a space to create good memories a space for clients to come to staffs come to and make good memories so they feel connected to the space they feel warm they feel welcome they feel energized or whatever the space is going to be doing.

17:24This is a really great first pit stop and we will keep moving along. Thank you.

17:40What would you say like is something that you're seeing, like the common thread you're seeing throughout everywhere? You've been in all the streets, you've been to some shops, dancing to Paris shopping. Yes, indeed. So what I see, I think it's like a presence of taste everywhere and balance, taste, balance and order to everything and because of that everything is just beautiful and I think beauty is insufficiency. But of course about Paris you wouldn't say every time that this is simple city it's quite complex architecture right and it's just remarkable how obviously some buildings like you wonder oh how people feel like that back then but also I think this is something a bit different from living here and living is simple and how people treat for example like in terms of materials, how they take all space and refurbish it.

18:44And they connect, as we talked about it previously, they connect what they already have, they connect inheritance with something modern and they do it in a very, very nice way. And I think even the proof of that actually are the chairs that we're sitting at, because that specific color people actually wasted a lot a lot of time to to choose this specific color for all the green areas in Paris that's why it looks so natural so convenient for the eye in green areas which keeps me thinking about when you spend time on choosing something wisely it's not just random color it's not just a random detail, random shape, it just there is a concept behind that always and the purpose why you've done this.

19:39So I think if you follow those things you will just end up with something beautiful as French people do. Yeah no they definitely do, I'm definitely experiencing it and hopefully we can capture it and audience watching can sort of experience a little bit what we experienced. Unfortunately you can't experience food with us and taste and smell but it's just amazing it's an inspiration for me every time I come here and I just yeah I'm just renewing myself all the time I'm here. Is there any pockets in London that you've got this?

20:22So, yes, I have a few nice spots, like alternative coffee shops, where I can go and recharge myself. And also a few parks as well. Like what I actually like about London, we have those big areas with parks. And parks are not like tiny, tiny with one bench, but you actually can go explore. And it's just one hour walk easily, because it's so big. So, yeah, any connection with nature, actually. This is my advice for exhausted interior designers out there like me who struggle to recharge themselves. And I think the best advice would be just find any connection with nature. This really helps. How do you bring in nature to your designs without it just being cliche and planned?

21:13Yeah. So if it's the goal for the client, because not necessarily every client needs that, some companies are quite tech and they want to make it as a feature through all of their interior to feel a tech environment so it's not connected much with nature but once we are allowed to do it once the brand story is about organic nature and free floating shapes so we go actually for floating shapes for very curved shapes for very natural shapes organical shapes so this is how you can do it not only because you brought a plant in the middle of a office but also yeah you can just use um more organic shapes not so strict not so direct just follow how the nature goes just follow how the path in the park goes for example so yeah it's a yeah once you start to do this from the concept, from the starting point.

22:13Once you put this as a mainstream for everything, it should be easier to reflect on everything else and finishes as well. Talking about finishes, what's the last thing that you would allow to be VE'd? What do you absolutely cling on to? Yeah, this leads us actually to the concept itself. Once I settle the concept and then you, you know, this is your like a heart of it. So once you're starting to cut off from the heart this is like no goal this is not we can we can cut we can cut decorations around we can cut some supportive elements around which i understand because again like designing build it very often works with a challenging cost not actually like designer would imagine how how uh you would like to reveal yourself as a designer but still um yeah the heart should remain and then this actually helps once you know your concept from the beginning you understand where is the boundary and you know like and everyone else in a team knows like this is untouchable they'll touch it you can cut this this this you can rewrite this you can rethink that but this is untouchable yeah and once you um understand how to deliver this message to the client this is the heart we're not touching this yeah so at some point everyone is protecting your heart concept of the project.

23:35It's not only you defending this, but also the internal team and the client, they understand the concept. So I think the secret how to protect your horror of the project actually to deliver the importance of the project. You did residential design before you did work design. What's one thing that you still harness from the residential experience that still creating projects now in a workspace? I think my experience probably working with quite low cost. From residential perspective? Yes, because a lot of times I worked with, so people are keen to personalize their space but still many of those people don't have a lot of opportunities like they don't have um allowance for italian furniture for example natural wood and piece vintage piece so we need to understand how we make it work around our idea so i think it's a good skill and also yeah because of that i think when i actually um were talking earlier i was talking earlier about the color so color color and shape was always my main language in period, the color and shape quite often has the, you can find it at high level costs and you can find it at low level costs.

25:01So, and it's also always the same language, so you can translate yourself and to communicate with help of those things. What shocked you when you went to work Facebook? What were you surprised? How fast it was. Fast? How fast it was and how big scale it was. yeah yeah yeah fair enough and coming back to paris what you're loving what's something in the next five years you're gonna try and be putting more into to evolve your designs but what's your inspiration here i think um to be honest i don't have answer to this question direct answer because i'm still exploring myself in designing build i've been here only for three years uh so i'm just like it's a lot of new things i still want to explore for myself and find my own path but I think naturally I'm leaning towards minimalistic things anyway so it's just my predictions that I think intuitively I will just I would lean to more minimalistic ideas and more conceptual design rather than decorative approach yeah would you ever go into like food and hospitality because of your love for food yes I think this will happen at some point because I never thought about workspaces and here I am and the food is quite opposite.

26:20I think about it a lot so I think it's just naturally I need to step in at some point. I did some tries in the past but those were like tiny coffee shops so I think maybe this is something in the future. If you could design anything what would you design? In terms of food? No, no, no, any interior space at all? I think that would be an exhibition space which is created for people to experience some emotion. I think I would communicate like emotion and space, I would make it work for people to live through something in there, in that space and have their own personal experience. I would design that.

27:04Like that. For me, number one is always the concept. The concept might be achieved with any cost that you have. Or almost any cost that you have. So it's not only about the money. It's not actually about the money. It's actually about how well you understand your language as an interior designer. And how well you can explain those things. Like things that you have in your mind. Your thoughts, your dreams, your creation. How you can explain this. and like to translate it to other people i think this is the secret of everything it's not the course language it's uh it's more like a yeah it's a concept color shape all old good traditional stuff yeah yeah it just works yeah exactly it is really inspiring being here i totally see why you love it and i can also see not that i've ever been to you brain but i from how you're talking in a secure direction to home so that's special.

28:05Yeah, so my connection every time we go to Paris I think it's because of food as well and because Ukraine is quite tasty country and we experience through food a lot so our connection to food, like tasty food and interior experience is all in the same we can't split it. One experience. Yeah, one experience always and I think for us as well so that's why every time I come here this reminds me of my home and I'm just enjoying the way that I would enjoy space and food. What would you tell yourself like 10-20 years ago? What would you say to yourself back then? I think I would say never stop, achieve your dreams, don't listen to anyone and just do what you feel you need to.

28:53Nice! Never stop, change your dreams. Yeah, don't change. What was Marta like then? Was she nervous? Was she confident? I think she was confident but in other way. I think I've been through last, during the last four years, I've been through like junior self-awareness. Then something broke and then the awareness that I have now, it's completely different from what I had in previous time. so it it feels like i brought myself back but it's not exactly because i'm more experienced now uh it's not only about interior design it's like life overall life happens with you every year you have some path you have some steps and uh after my tiny trip and everyone got his own and i just feel i'm just re-recreated myself i think but it's completely it's something different it's not like I found myself back there where I left myself.

30:00It's just a different personality which I like and I respect previous one but I'm also looking forward to do some nice things with my personal life. What surprised you most about London Manoeur? It was beautiful to me. It still is. And also I understand that I think you need to find those beautiful places for you. you need to look for it. It's not necessarily like on the plate. You just need to put an effort to find your people, your place, your food, your corners of recharging. Yeah, it's like, takes a bit of an effort. Yeah, I can imagine. Did you know English before you could say? Yes, I did.

30:49Yeah, it's funny enough that before, four years ago, I thought like, oh I know English and then I come to London and I'm like right I don't know English at all so it was struggling with different type of accents still do you have and yeah it was interesting how did you learn it so well because of our first-paced environment because you meet so many people that at some point you just need to understand them and yeah you have struggle on the way of course but you just adjust yourself. Thank you Marta, I really appreciate you bringing me there, showing us everything. Before we go, just on your mute, would you read a book or would you visit a podcast?

31:31No offense, I would read a book because we are kind of in a podcast. That's fine. You would read a book and what book would you read in the minute? I like something about exploring topics rather than just some poem or a story about someone. So I like something that will give me just a tiny bit of an upgrade in life. Anything, it can be anything like money, psychology, spiritual thing, mental support, anything. Love it. Thank you, Marta. Thank you for tuning in. Thanks for coming to Paris with us. Hope you enjoyed the show. please do your thing um please like and subscribe also when you rate the show it does literally wonders so go ahead do your thing and we will see you next time can i say something i always dreamt about it hit the follow button if you like like that sort of thing i always dreamt about it right there we go that's not your message to hit the follow button you've got to do it ciao ciao see you later au revoir I find it simply fascinating how physical space can totally change how we think, feel and behave.

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