Yabu Pushelberg, From Toronto to Shenzhen and Guangzhou

George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg met at Ryerson University in their native Toronto in the mid-1970s and founded Yabu Pushelberg in 1980. The studio now works in 19 countries and has grown from interiors into a design practice that covers furniture, lighting and accessories.

Approach

Each project begins with a narrative, often framed as the story of a couple and drawn from the local context. They treat luxury as a matter of the quality of experience and materials, and prefer natural materials to heavily processed ones. They also like to take a long-established brand and reinvent it, as with Raffles.

In Asia

Their Asian projects include Lane Crawford in the IFC Mall in Hong Kong, Park Hyatt Shenzhen, whose opening we cover in Park Hyatt Opens in Shenzhen, and Rosewood Guangzhou, described as the tallest five-star hotel in the world. The second Raffles hotel in Singapore, on Sentosa, is today Raffles Sentosa Singapore.

Outside the region the firm’s list includes the Four Seasons in Kuwait, Park Hyatt New York, the London EDITION and Bergdorf Goodman in New York.