Nina Wigfall has sole charge of Softroom’s samples resource and archive
Softroom was founded in 1995 by directors Christopher Bagot and Oliver Salway. The practice has been in its premises – a low-rise building in Waterloo, south London, where it occupies two floors – since 2013. The design studio is on the second floor while the first floor accommodates a kitchen area, a group of lounge chairs, a generous meeting table and the materials library. Interior designer Nina Wigfall is responsible for the curation and organisation of the library, which is at the far end of the room and can be closed off with a movable wall. It doubles as a venue for using VR to explore planned interiors.
What is your role?
I was working here as an interior designer but realised that my passion was materials and furniture, so I suggested taking charge of the materials to create a new library.
We’d carted twenty years’ worth of samples around with us in various office moves. The library was originally upstairs but disorganised, so part of this initiative to take ownership was to move it down a floor, to be in a space we use for meetings with clients. We can show them materials, which is an aspect they find wholly compelling.
The challenges at the beginning were deciding on what heights to set the shelves at, working out where everything should go, what things should be at eye level and where to have heavy items.
It is easier to say to people ‘I have a returns box, please leave things in there and I’ll put them back’”
I was leading on the FF&E side of things on a lot of projects. My role was to contribute to the initial concept design – the way that materials would fit into it – then doing the furniture scheme and fittings. I’ve been the first point of contact for manufacturers and suppliers coming in. Working out what was relevant, what was out of date, getting rid of things that were no longer appealing or that I knew we would never use, bringing in new materials as I found them and showing them to the rest of the team has been my responsibility.
It is easier to say to people ‘I have a returns box, please leave things in there and I’ll put them back’, because it’s really quick for me to find things; I know exactly where everything is and there’s a system to it, like a proper library. When I was putting it together I was doing it alongside other work so I was dipping in and out of it, and it would infuriate me when someone had put something back and it was out of place!
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Do you find it easier to maintain the library because it’s removed from the main workspace?
It can still become chaotic. I did a big blitz at Christmas, going round everyone’s desks to remove things and file them away again. We have large project trays where we set things out, which serve as a way of keeping things together that are live and being worked on. We have a series of archive boxes where I store samples when projects are finished. As far as possible I’ll replace those samples so that we still have some on the open shelves, because we find that there are certain materials we’ll return to.
How often do you have a blitz?
I carry one out, on my own, about every six months. When I did the initial overhaul of the library you wouldn’t believe how much I had to get rid of, and it really pained me because I didn’t know what to do with it. We tried very hard to contact schools and colleges to say ‘would any of this be useful material for your students?’. But people would cherry pick and maybe take a few tiles, still leaving a mountain of stuff.
There are some companies who are now pretty good about taking back samples. I really try and encourage people in the studio to control how many samples we get in, to only order what they need, but sometimes suppliers send a whole box of stuff when we wanted just one example.
Your colleagues also order materials…
Yes, but this resource is largely the starting point. When we have meetings to talk about the design everyone is throwing things in the pot and it’s a case of coming up with stuff, or putting new things out there, saying ‘what about this?’ then evaluating all the constraints, including costs and durability.
Do you think that your research is different from that of your colleagues?
More time is allowed for it and I perhaps have more curiosity about it. In the mornings I allow myself a little bit of time for pure browsing, say half an hour. I have websites and journals that I will always turn to, and I look at what’s happening in different countries. I like the Material Source website, then there’s an agency called By-Form that represents furniture and some materials. Things just catch your eye and if you have a bit of time you can go on a trail. Even through Instagram or on Pinterest you can follow stuff which often will take you to completely unexpected areas. I’ll look at fashion and at craft too. I like juxtaposing quite different materials.
Do you have a regular CPD programme?
Yes, they take place about every two weeks. Mostly they are on materials, but some are on regulations.
Do you go to trade fairs?
Softroom has supported us to visit the Milan Furniture Fair for the last few years. Last year I went to the Stockholm Furniture Fair with Aram and to the Belgian Biennale. I’ll do all the London trade shows as well: Craft Week, London Design Festival, Clerkenwell Design Week. The other huge perk of my role is making factory trips, either organised by manufacturers for groups of designers, or directly-arranged visits.
Back in the studio I give feedback on what I’ve learnt. When I came into this particular role I stressed that it was important that I participate in these trips, and the practice has been very supportive of that.
Would you say that the library is at its peak?
Possibly. It’s a fine line between having a lot of materials and so many that the library becomes unmanageable and therefore unusable. While it covers a great deal there are sometimes areas that I know could do with building up. For example, when we were working on a hotel we were looking at carpet finishes, but we hadn’t used much carpet historically.
Then there came a flurry of projects where we were specifying carpets. We created bespoke carpets for the Virgin Voyages cruise ship we’ve been designing for, which necessitated talking to various carpet manufacturers. There are however certain finishes that I can’t ever imagine us using.
Because the cruise ship was so long in its manifestation we were working on its interiors four years ahead while trying to ensure that sure they would still feel relevant and fresh when the ship was finally launched.
From a materials perspective it was challenging, because it was the first time we had worked on marine interiors and there were so many different regulations and requirements. Certain furniture has to be movable so that it could be jettisoned in the event of an emergency, whereas other furniture must be fixed.
“Recently my director and I visited Dinesen in Jels, Denmark, and stayed in the Dinesen Country Home. You come back with enormous respect for what they are doing and you realise that there is so much precision and passion invested in getting their flooring perfect. It’s one material I’m yearning to use. There’s something majestic about the scale of their Douglas Fir planks, and the age of the trees they are taken from (between 80 and 200 years). Their flooring is a premium material and everything else around it can afford to be so simple.”
“This aluminium foam was used for the wall of a staircase on a ship. The inspiration for its use came from looking at coral and its structure, and from our desire to have something that light would permeate. Originally we were looking at GRC but the cost was spiralling due to the complexity of the design. Aluminium foam came up as the perfect material because it is so lightweight and can be moulded. The majority of people wouldn’t know what it is. This isn’t the final finish; we used a gloss paint in order to play with light still further.”
“We’ve used Pyrolave enamelled lavastone many times, including in black for the circular sunken bar we designed for the Eurostar Business Lounge at the Gare du Nord in Paris.”
“While working on a hotel project a ribbed wall came up in conversation and when I began looking at ribbed finishes I came across a manufacturer called Buxkin. They make both ribbed felt and, more surprisingly, ribbed leather. Offcuts from a shoe factory are broken down into composite and formed into sheets that are then put through a ribbing process. Clients increasingly like an interesting story, such as this one, behind the materials, that they can use when marketing a project.”
Natural plasters by Clayworks. “The material is 100 per cent natural, you can break it down and it biodegrades. The plasters can be used for a very smooth sophisticated finish in a contemporary setting or applied for a rustic effect. We’ve worked with them a lot, particularly on our Wahaca restaurant projects.”
Woven wool upholstery fabrics by Eleanor Pritchard. “One of the first projects I worked on here was The Woodspeen, a restaurant and cookery school for the Michelin-starred chef John Campbell. Eleanor Pritchard is a weaver whom I’ve been following for some years, so I was glad to be able to have some of her cushions in the restaurant space; they reflect my love of craft. I continue to admire the work that she’s been doing. From her online journal on her website you can see that much of her inspiration is architectural. She works out the patterns on a loom in her Deptford studio then uses UK-based weavers to produce the cloth in greater quantities.”
“In the library the loose swatches of fabrics are sorted by colour; other things are organised alphabetically. I want to instigate a coding system so that if I’m absent other people can use the library quite easily. It could include price banding, so that it can be understood whether something fits within the budget they are working to.”
“The first use of the white trays came about when we were working on a particularly complex project. There were so many different areas being designed, and the trays facilitated efficient collection and presentation of the materials for each one.”
