Nicola Fahy reflects on winning CID’s Young Designer of the Year 2020

This month we’re absolutely delighted that our Young Interior Designer of the Year, Nicola Fahy, was featured as this months cover star on Commercial Interior Design Magazine.

The following is what was published in this edition:

Nicola Fahy reflects on winning CID’s Young Designer of the Year 2020:

Nicola Fahy of Studio EM talks F&B, family and coming first in the Young designer of the year category at the 2020 CID Awards

There’s a hullabaloo for every winner we announce at the Commercial Interior Design Awards. But there are a couple of categories that illicit genuine raw emotion. At the event in November last year, when Nicola Fahy’s name was read out by our MC Tom Urquhart in the Young Designer of the Year category, there was an obvious outpouring of emotion.

Nicola Fahy doesn’t really remember going up to the stage to collect her award for Young Designer of the Year 2020, she confesses to us eight months later as we catch up to find out what her career has been like since. All the carefully choreographed COVID protocol went out the window for a moment as she gathered herself and made her way to the stage. The gentle guidance of Urquhart made sure she sanitised and got up the steps to collect the coveted trophy.

“I didn’t think I would win,” she admits, a strong northern English accent softening every sentence.

Fahy is the head of F&B for Dubai–based Studio EM and, at the time of winning the award, was 30 years old – the cut-off point for the title of young designer.

But win she did after a panel of nine international and local judges decided she was the standout choice from an extremely tough category.

Nicola Fahy joined Studio EM after a stint of university in the UK, but the role brought a return home in every sense, as she grew up in Dubai and her sister Emma runs the design practice. The sibling status tying them together is a fact that still surprises people, including CID.

Emma invited Nicola to join the studio after she graduated from university in Nottingham. She’d also been offered a place with another firm and it was a tough choice, as she rated them highly. In the end, it “had to be family” she says.

She looks back fondly at a childhood spent in Dubai, where her parents moved to in 1981. “My dad got a transfer; he didn’t even know where Dubai was,” she says. “He was a medical engineer, fixing laboratory machines in hospitals.

“My mom went to the library at home to try and find some info about where she was moving to. The library said they have absolutely no idea what she was talking about. So they got a map out to find out where it was at. They found it and my mom said ‘right, well, we’ll just go for two years, and then we can always come back.

“So, there’s me, my brother and my sister. My sister and I were born out here.”

What was Dubai like, we wonder, in those heady days of frontierism? Nicola explains: “Incredible. We absolutely loved it. It was just so quiet. You could just drive on the beach and have a campfire. Obviously, you can’t really do that anymore. So when people go, ‘oh, the good old days’, that’s what they mean. It’s changed so much. But there are days when I just wish we could drive on the beach.”

Much of the Dubai Nicola Fahy remembers is gone and she furrows her brows as she thinks about the city that has grown out of the sands and into the sky.

She says: “I think that is one of my gripes is instead of looking at what buildings are here and trying to preserve the history of them, parts of the city are often knocked down to build new developments. That’s great for the construction world. But a memory inside of you is gone. My dad’s office block been knocked down. My old house has been knocked down.

“My whole thesis in uni was about sustainability and about Dubai. So I’ve studied it a lot. If you look at the early architecture, they had it so right and made learned from traditional building techniques and how to keep it cool, without having these high AC bills. But the city was influenced by the Western world and all of a sudden it’s in competition with New York and these major cities. To do that you have to build more and build higher. I just hope people remember where the city came from.”

Nicola Fahy, however, is firmly grounded in her roots, with her childhood in the emirate influencing her eventual career choice.

She explains: “My mum would take us for walks on the Dubai Creek and Bastikya. [now Al Fahidi Historical Neighbourhood, the former fishing village on the Creekside]

“I think it’s just always interested me. We used to draw the wind towers and take boat trips and we learnt all about it at school. So I think that’s really interesting and I love how unique it is.”

Going green

Sustainability is another passion of Nicola’s and the COVID period has been both a blessing and curse in that field, she says.

“Every project, if it’s a renovation, I’ll try and encourage them to reuse something. I hate any idea of adding to the landfill or anything like that, that just annoys me. So we try and convince them to just be clever in certain ways and use empathetic materials. But it doesn’t just doesn’t always work out the way that we want.

“People’s budgets have reduced as a result of COVID, so we’ll be try and be clever with certain items. Maybe we suggest there’s only one big feature and that’s it. Maybe the time of multiple features or extensive designs has gone.

“I’ve read quite a few articles focusing on climate change. We’ve seen even just this last few weeks how much the weather has affected the world. What can we do? As designers, I think we should try and see if there’s anything we can do with the materials we use.

Joining the family

As Studio EM‘s head of F&B, Nicola Fahy has been able to carve out a niche for herself in a field where the studio didn’t previously have a presence. Joining the family firm would seem a no–brainer, so why was there a decision process?

She laughs: “My brother used to work with my dad when he had a scuba diving business. Every now and again, they’d get annoyed with each other and just storm out. Then you’ve got to have dinner with them.

“I think I tried so many times to go in a different direction from Emma. Because I wanted to be and do something different. I didn’t want to copy her, so I went to Leeds College of Art thought I’d maybe go into graphic design. But then you do your different modules. We did one module on 3D and I just absolutely loved it. I loved every aspect of it, so I was thinking about what courses I could do. Then I realised I should just go for it and do interiors.”

As the family business has grown, so they’ve evolved and learnt from each other. Nicola has a young niece, Emma and Kristian’s daughter. Now she makes sure her F&B designs include baby changing facilities that both men and women can access, and, where possible, areas for children to play.

Some clients push back on losing table covers to climbing equipment, but the data shows that parents stay longer and spend more when their kids are occupied.

A great example of Nicola’s family-friendly design is Caya, a community café in residential development Nshama Town Square Dubai. Think white-washed walls, pretty mosaic flooring, plenty of natural light, and lots of cosy nooks, with a dedicated kids’ play area and an expansive outside seating terrace, plus an airy, light-filled courtyard, and you have it.

Speaking to CID at the time of its launch, Nicola said: “I really loved the brand direction of Caya, it’s so in tune with where the F&B scene is heading. That being warm, friendly and family-orientated community spaces that are all about coming together in a really relaxed environment and getting together to enjoy a gorgeous breakfast, lunch or dinner while also being a great place to hang out and work from at the same time, creating an offering that is affordable and pleasing on the eye.

“The multipurpose nature of the concept meant that we had to really focus on creating a clean and simple design that could adapt throughout the day, while also being thoughtful and intricate enough to really capture that Mediterranean vibe.”

It was her drive, Nicola Fahy says now, to bring the channel of F&B to Studio EM, while Emma specialises in retail.

“When I told them [the other studio that offered her a job] that I decided to go with the family, they said ‘That’s such a shame. But can we ask what you’re working on?’ It was this little café, selling gourmet doughnuts. But it was a homegrown brand and the owners were so excited. And that was the start. We had that one project and we tried to learn and grow from it.”
Sadly Nicola lost her father just before the placement year on her MA, which sealed her decision to return to Dubai, followed by her partner and now husband.

Her father’s death inspired her final year project, a centre for cancer patients, which Nicola compares to Maggie’s, a network of drop-in centres across the United Kingdom and Hong Kong that aim to help anyone who has been affected by cancer.

She’d love to see this rolled out in the UAE, so watch this space.

Role models

There’s no hesitation when we ask Nicola Fahy to name her role model. As you’d expect, as heroes are very close to home.

Nicola says: “It’s my sister [Studio EM founder Emma Stinson]. She’s pretty cool. She’s done so well. I’m so proud of her and Kristian [Emma’s husband]. We went through a quiet patch, as a think a lot of people did, but they’ve come through COVID and now we’re winning all these awesome projects. And we’ve come around to another CID awards.”

Winning a CID Award

“The 2020 awards were pretty special, not just because of me winning the award, but merely the fact that it happened at all,” Nicola explains. “I remember how good it was seeing everyone, reconnecting, have a few celebratory toasts, and seeing the bottom half of people’s body for the first time in months, you know, not on Zoom!

“I remember the night going like most of the awards before; we had won none out of four categories by the time my turn came up, I really went in expecting nothing, if anything I was more excited for Emma for being up for Interior Designer of the Year, then it came to reading out the nominees for Young Interior Designer of the Year and Tom [Urquhart] started reading something out and Kristian had to say to me ‘Nicky, you’ve won’ and I totally thought he was kidding. The rest is a blur, I remember being on stage with Tom. I just remember being so happy and Emma and the team going wild, they were so proud and chuffed. They went nuts and after the excitement and adrenaline settled, I remember just feeling so proud, thinking, ‘yes, I’ve finally achieved it.’”

Advice for young designers:

“It feels weird to be giving out advice,” Nicola laughs when asked to dispense some wisdom to the shortlisted young designers of 2021. She thinks carefully before delivering her own brand of self–effacing honesty.

“It’s a cliché, but just be a good listener,” she says. “I think a lot of people want to put their own stamp on the designs they do. Absolutely, yes, you should have your own style, but don’t go too far. Listen to the client. They’re the ones that are paying at the end of the day. Just try and keep them as happy as possible.

“I think that that’s why we get quite a few repeat clients that come back to us. They don’t have too many revisions, because we’ve not gone and done our own thing and then had to keep revising until we end up with what they wanted all along.

“A lot of people look at interior design and think, ‘oh, that’s so glamorous,’ but 90 percent of it is me being hot and bothered on site, dealing with problems. If that’s something that you don’t feel comfortable with at the start, just take on as much as you can; dive into it and just try and get your head around it. Don’t shy away from it.

“Due to the nature of the industry, sometimes things go wrong. People will try to point the blame at you, but it’s not personal; it’s just the nature of the industry. You learn to stand your ground on site.”

And with that our chat is over and we get on with preparing the CID Awards 2021. Nicola isn’t eligible for the Young Designer of the Year Award this year but Studio EM will be represented in various categories. And while the first chapter of her career might be over with t

hat win in 2020, we’re sure the decades to come will be even more successful. She might even remember the high points that are still to come, too.

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