Creative Balance
Clint Nagata and Rengy John of Blink Design Group believe in crafting timeless spaces that cater to the specific needs of each project
There have been two fateful encounters in AmericanJapanese architect Clint Nagata’s professional life. The work of American hospitality designer Bill Bensley in Asia inspired Nagata to move from Hawaii to the region, while the inf luential oeuvre of Jaya Ibrahim persuaded him to acquire Jaya Ibrahim Design (JID) after Ibrahim’s sudden passing four years ago.
Nagata was approached by Ibrahim’s business partner Bruce Goldstein in 2016, inspired by the creative commonalities between the two firms. “For me, it was more of a personal endeavour to acquire the firm and to make sure that his legacy carried on properly. So we have been working on some projects out of China that he started,” he says. Today, JID is a part of Blink Design Group, a firm that Nagata founded in 2006 currently with offices in Singapore, Bangkok and Shanghai.
The third fateful encounter could arguably be with Rengy John, the firm’s managing partner, who joined the practice three years ago; their dynamic is instantly palpable when we meet them in their office. After working brief ly together a decade ago on a hospitality project in China, the two reconnected during an event a few years back and bonded over their multicultural backgrounds—john is a Singapore citizen who grew
“We work really well together, we argue less and less and finish each other’s sentences; kind of like an old married couple”
up in South Africa. And the rest, as they say, is history. “We work really well together, we argue less and less and finish each other’s sentences; kind of like an old married couple,” shares John. Quips Nagata: “You have to work with someone you enjoy being around.”
When most hospitality projects typically take between three to five years to complete, designers constantly work as creative soothsayers to anticipate what guests will need to ensure the longevity of their designs. “As designers, we always try to embrace what the users are saying; in so many ways, you have to guess how the space will be used years later,” explains Nagata. “Right now, there’s the sense of interiors becoming more residential and more personal, so that people can relate to them.”
Their goal is to create interiors that cater to unique experiences for each hotel or resort, in order to entice guests to visit and also make return trips. It’s a challenge that the firm rises up to—whether by including nods to its Singapore roots for the brand-new Raff les Maldives resort, or when designing a property on a conservation estate, such as for Capella Shanghai. “The Blink approach doesn’t take something cut-and-pasted. It’s always reimagined to create a new story for each new location,” says John.