On the evening of August 29th, Stanley Sun and Ashley Rumsey, the founders of Mason Studio, a well-known Canadian design company, shared their work and design concepts through Yinjispace. In addition to the two landmark projects in China: Shenzhen Bay and Shanghai Jing'an Prime Land, there are also Kimpton Saint George Hotel, Vancouver Andaz Hotel, Cabin Residences and Burnaby Residence.

Essentialism is Mason Studio's Philosophy, Every design must have a set of attributes that are necessary to its identity and function. If any attribute is removed, the design becomes incomplete. If any part is added that is unnecessary, the purity of the design is ruined.

Yinji: How can designers better discover and understand the essential needs of design? Every project is new and different! But there are some design elements throughout, where do these elements come from?
Stanley: Different designs have different details. There is a core idea behind the details. This is the idea that they derive from these cores, and they continue the design from these ideas.

Yinji: What was it like working at Yabu and how did it affect Manson?
Ashley: In my work at Yabu, he told us that design is something that brings us passion and gives us confidence in our ability to create Spaces for our clients to live and live in. At the same time, the years of working in Yabu gave me opportunities to travel to different countries, different cities and contact with different kinds of design. These experiences enabled me to co-found Manson Office with Stanley and continue to provide inspiration for our work, which is the most basic source of our future projects.

Yinji: Such collisions occur in cross-border design. How to realize the integration of different cultures and concepts in design? What are the differences and limitations in the process of doing a project in China versus Canada?
Stanley: when we do a lot of multinational project, we found that more and more, the general process is similar, we can use the design as our language, design itself is a kind of common language, we can chat with the designers of different countries to design, such as we say in Chinese, said in French, and so on, we can use the sketches, concept map to communicate with you, even we use gestures to communicate with you. Gradually, we can find that design becomes a universal language, so that people can understand each other. I think the reason why we can make some success in China, because I am in touch with some Chinese, although I grew up in Canada, but my family is Chinese, they are living in China, I have many times to feel the local conditions and customs and culture in China, so we are trying to put the Oriental culture and philosophy in the design of the west, Chinese culture to Canada, we can feel the culture collision.

Yinji: How long is the design cycle of the hotel? How many phases and how long is each phase?
Ashley: We think that the hotel cycle is really unique, like the hotel we just did in Ottawa, because it was a brand new building, so we talked to the architects very early on, including designing the whole building, and it took us three years from the beginning to the end. We just mentioned the hotel in Toronto, it was just a renovation project of an old building, the part of our design took 6 months, because they were running a little bit out of time and needed to redecorate and open it to the public. Our approximate design cycle is 1-1.5 years, depending on the design conditions. So to sum up, our firm is very flexible, we adjust the time according to the specific needs of partners, accelerate the design and so on.
Stanley: I would say a little bit more about that. I would suggest that the partners get us into the design process earlier, early on to leave more time for a more perfect piece, to arrange the furniture and other details as early as possible.

Yinji: To create a delicate space that is unique and meets the needs of customers, its focus is on cultural exclusivity. How do different regional cultures create it? The meaning of space material choice and collocation?
Stanley: When we receive a project, we communicate to the client why we are working with our firm and whether our approach is culturally appropriate so that we can ensure that the design is culturally appropriate. In the design, we not only communicate with customers, but also with local people, including residential areas, shopping malls and so on, to know some of their ideas. So we talk a lot with our clients to make sure that our design is in line with local cultural attitudes. Ensure that our products are satisfactory to users. We didn't want our work to be disconnected from the local culture, and Ashley and I were very interested in the creation of local sexuality. No matter in Europe or China, we will integrate our design into the local culture.