When, where and why did you set up Mr Buckley Interiors & Stuff?
After my studies in Milan, and then an internship at Adidas HQ in Germany, I came back to Edinburgh in 2010 and that’s when I started the studio. Before studying a Masters in Interior Design in Milan I had worked in various architect offices around Edinburgh. On my return I knew I wanted to work for myself and develop my own ideas. Studying design in Italy was a huge eye-opener and has forever changed the way I think about design and how people interact with it.
What kind of projects does the design studio work on?
At present, I have a wide scope of projects. I’m working on a couple of restaurant interiors, and a couple of residential projects also. Then there’s the furniture, the lighting, some art direction for a fashion brand and of course, more rugs!
The rug in this project is designed with cc-tapis. How did you come to work with them?
I met Fabrizio, Nelcya and Dani when I moved to Milan to study. Both Dani and Fabrizio were on the course with me and at some point I showed my sketchbook to Fabrizio. He was launching cc-tapis at Salone that year and asked if I’d like to have my design included in their show, which of course I did! That was ten years ago now and we have worked on a few since then, with hopefully many more to come!
Have rugs become an important part of your interiors?
I have spent a good bit of my career working on commercial and retail projects so it was nice to start working on residential where I could make the best use of my friendship with cc-tapis. Up until recently it hadn’t really been much of an option to employ my own designs in my schemes, but now that I can I try to utilise them as much as possible.
How do you think the current Covid situation will effect the designing of homes and interiors?
I read an interesting article about how Modernism was spurned from outbreaks of cholera, typhoid and the Spanish flu, as surfaces needed to be more easily cleanable so there was a turn away from fenestration and opulent details in favour of planar surfaces. Perhaps we will see more of this but with an emphasis on antibacterial and non-porous surfaces. In the commercial sector many businesses are providing screens that need to be glass or plastic, the latter of course causing concern as we were beginning to phase out single-use plastics globally. We will adapt though, so I have absolutely no fear that things won’t work out for the better in the long run.
