Spatial Lab: Interior Thinking Belongs at Project Start
Why interior design should be included at the feasibility stage: Spatial Lab addresses layout, circulation, and guest movement while the building is still open to change.
Key interior decisions are often made before an interior designer is involved. To address this, Melanie Martin introduced the Spatial Lab, Impey Studio's initiative that focuses on layout, circulation, and guest flow during the feasibility stage.
In most projects, interior design starts from a fixed position. By the time the brief reaches the interior team, the structural grid is set, the cores are positioned, and the service routes are established. The interior is then expected to resolve decisions it had no part in making. Sometimes the result is beautiful. More often it is a compromise that no material or piece of furniture can fully correct.
The most consequential spatial decisions are made early, usually well before anyone considers how a guest will arrive, stay, look out of a window or reach their room. Architecture, structure and MEP rightly come first. But when the interior is briefed only after these are fixed, the building has already determined much of the experience it can offer.
Spatial Lab works further upstream, in feasibility, pre-concept and early concept, while space can still be shaped with intention. It brings this approach to Impey Studio as a dedicated practice.
The work begins alongside the architect, engineers and operator. It does not set finishes. It sets the principles that will later guide them: which areas carry the most value, how those areas relate to one another, where the best views are and who benefits from them, how guests and staff move through the building, and how front of house and back of house can support each other rather than compete for the same floor area.
The scope is the first three project stages. Feasibility focuses on spatial strategy, yield logic, and circulation frameworks. Concept design focuses on the guest journey, vertical movement, and front-of-house/back-of-house planning. Schematic design finalises the plans and ensures the key elements (arrival sequences, signature spaces, etc.) carry through into later stages.
Deliverables are intentionally simple: zoning and adjacency diagrams, guest and staff flow diagrams, plans to protect key areas, and an early planning framework coordinated with the structural and MEP teams. The aim is to gain agreement and give everyone a common reference point to work from, so the major issues can be resolved early.
For developers, the costs do change. You have to invest more effort upfront in interior thinking, but you end up with far less redesign, far fewer conflicting instructions, and far fewer late contractor changes. The operator gets a layout that will perform well for years after it opens, and the building has a spatial story guests will remember: how long they spend in it, how much they spend, and whether they come back.
Impey Studio is a natural home for this work. The studio has always been concerned with people, context and the meaning behind things. Essence Lab investigates what a space is made of; Spatial Lab addresses the shape a space takes before anything is built. Both rest on the same conviction: a building's real life happens in its interiors, so interiors should help determine its form.
Surface matters. It gives a space its personal, memorable character. But it can only do that fully when the space beneath it has been planned around the people who will use it. Spatial Lab is designed for the stage when the building is still listening.
