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June 8 - June 15,2003 |
Room At The Top For Design Duo
Diego Burdi and Paul Filek are the brains behind Toronto's acclaimed burdifilek firm
By Mark Curtis
Originally Published: 2003-06-01
Quick and clean. That's the way Diego Burdi and Paul Filek like it. The "it" is the work of their Toronto interior design firm burdifilek and the two Ryerson design graduates, who will celebrate 10 years as a partnership in July, are swiftly becoming a known quantity - and quality - to design followers across North America.
The industry certainly knows about them. The Toronto designers scored an impressive three awards of excellence in their provincial association's latest competition (the 2002 ARIDO Awards), but a good-natured Burdi says "the best is yet to come". "The focus for the next five to 10 years is to really push the firm internationally," says Filek, who primarily handles business operations while Burdi heads up the creative studio.
They have 23 staff members working on a variety of projects ranging in duration from three months to a year. That's the "quick" part of their work. Both designers, who began their careers with internationally acclaimed Toronto firm Yabu Pushelberg, had early interests in architecture but decided that the sometimes long-winded nature of that business wasn't as compelling as the comparative immediacy of interior design.
Burdi and Filek have been lauded for retail environments like Club Monaco (Canada and the US), Caban, Jacob and Danier, but they don't want to be pigeonholed. Burdi says taking on other types of work, like hospitality and installation projects, "keeps the studio very, very fresh".
Still, projects like Caban have made retailers beat a path to their door and the two designers are in the midst of their latest major challenge - they're redesigning the ground floor of the high-end and ultra-hip Holt Renfrew department store flagship location at Bloor and Bay streets in Toronto. "They're providing a phenomenal canvas to paint a picture on," says an enthused Burdi of the midtown retail project. Watch for a September debut of a new burdifilek design.
And new it will be. The designers are loath to repeat themselves ("definitely a danger zone," says Burdi), so they count on every new client and project to give them new inspirations. They also travel and research constantly to stay ahead of the curve. Filek says an increasingly design-savvy public continues to raise the bar for designers.
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