Abu Dhabi Week last week met just one of the people responsible for the award-winning excellence of Etihad Airways’ style. Ho Pheng Chua is the airline’s very own Interior Architect and Project Manager. Before setting up shop here, he spent 12 years as a design consultant in the States and 13 in Singapore and Malaysia; then he landed his first UAE project, the mammoth Dubai Mall. Now he jets all over the globe to oversee the design of Etihad’s offices.

“My job is to design the layout of Etihad’s offices – reception, ticketing and corporate – and to project-manage the construction. As a result, I don’t have set office hours; I travel often and stay for about two days at each destination.” Currently, he’s working tirelessly to see the completion of offices in Almaty, Moscow, Islamabad, Toronto and London.

6pm: After braving airport immigration and the traffic bottlenecks, Ho Pheng successfully wraps up an afternoon of floor plan discussions with the Russian country manager for Etihad. Avid photographer that he is, he makes sure to find some time in between to capture each city’s architecture “if I have a little time to spare before or after a meeting”. So in Moscow he might tell the driver to drop him off at Red Square – “I am always interested in each city’s respectivearchitecture, design, landscapes and arts and always make a point to document them.”

9pm: After freshening up at the hotel for dinner, he goes in search of food. “I try to take in as much culture as I can on these trips and am very open to trying new things, so I try to find those properly authentic roadside joints to eat at.” He calls it a night at 10pm.

9am: He is on-site at one of the offices. “I must make sure everything is up to speed and at top quality. I must visit the site a minimum of three times – at the start of the project, midway, and upon completion.” An entire project takes three months on average, including the planning stages.

11am: He and the local design consultant proceed to his office to discuss this particular office’s layout thoroughly, tackling nitty-gritty details on everything from corporate expenses to the colour scheme of the walls and furniture to the layout of the space.

3pm: That’s Moscow done for this trip. He braves the traffic once again and eventually by 7pm he’s on the runway taking off for Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Final thoughts: “It’s one of the most rewarding jobs and I wouldn’t change it for anything else. Etihad Airways is one of the more unique airlines. It has an inspired service and unique branding. So I was certainly in the right place at the right time when I got this job. The hours are long but it’s very interesting, and it’s such a unique opportunity for me to see and appreciate the world and different cultures. In seeing, you learn a lot – it enhances my knowledge and design as an architect. This job gives me the opportunity to put ideas on a universal spectrum. The only real challenge is in working with such an international team, coordinating with them is tricky because of the different time zones, languages and work methods ...

Kara Martin