Resident Collaborators - Alma Moses & Liz Wert from ADITIONS

Alma Moses and Liz Wert of San Francisco Creative Agency ADITIONS are close Resident collaborators and were major contributors towards the New Zealand Design Pavillion which was installed in June this year.

We sat down with Alma and Liz to reflect on this experience and learn more about their practice.

What is Aditions?

ADITIONS is an experience design studio focused on re-imagining connection through spatial experiences. 

Who are the principles of Aditions are what are your backgrounds?

Alma Lopez and Liz Wert, both interior designers have been in the design industry for a collective of 20 years. Working for notable design firms, procurement and manufacturers. ADITIONS was created to focus on FF&E and experience design consulting. 

How did Aditions become involved with the New Zealand Design Pavillion?

We have collaborated with Resident and Nodi Rugs (two brands in the NZ Pavillion) on past projects and have been fans of their work for sometime. When the opportunity to partner together and help them curate a North American exhibition came around, we were excited to be part of it.  

What was the aim of the New Zealand Design Pavillion?

The aim of the New Zealand Design Pavillion was to bring New Zealand design to the North American market through an experiential exhibition. Turning the traditional concept of tradeshows on its head and curating an experience in an active coworking space.

The exhibition took place within the iconic Shack 15 working space overlooking San Francisco Bay. How did you secure such an incredible location?

ADITIONS role within the project was to spearhead overall experience strategy, design concepts and venue scouting. Shack-15 came into the mix as one of ADITIONS clients and offered a unique space nestled in an iconic San Francisco landmark overlooking The Bay. The similarities between SF and New Zealand landscapes complimented each other well and the co-working space added a dynamic and active element.

How did the San Francisco design community respond to the exhibition?

The exhibition was well attended and SF Design community enjoyed learning about new brands. The exhibition was a great platform to bring our design community together again.

What was the biggest challenge working with six different brands from New Zealand? What was the key to overcoming that challenge?

Bringing 6 different furniture brands together cohesively and making sure representation within the space was equal. Each brand worked well together through trust and played into each other’s portfolio strengths to create a well balanced show. 

Which aspect of the exhibition are you most proud of?

Helping New Zealand based furniture brands understand and launch in the North American market as well as seeing the SF design community come together to experience and celebrate NZ design.

What does the next 12 months hold for you ladies? 

Outside of ADITIONS, we are leading creative and brand teams in-house at a tech startup called Canoa. Canoa is a vertically integrated design and procurement software with an embedded circular furniture marketplace. Canoa was started in late 2019 with a mission to decarbonize commercial real estate with a focus on trying to drastically reduce the waste generated by the ever constant design, build and demolish cycle of commercial interiors. We are super excited to be using our furniture and design knowledge to build software for interior designers that helps with specification, purchasing and carbon indexing. We believe the future of our industry is not only a more automated experience but understanding our environmental impact when choosing specific products. We hope that we can help other designers make smarter decisions by generating less waste. 

What projects are you working on and what are your goals?

With most businesses across the US rushing to reduce and adjust their office footprints and figure out what hybrid work means for them, the world is about to be flush with millions of tons of furniture that has barely been used in the last 3 years. Our product focus over the next 12 months taps into this opportunity and adds a curated marketplace of new and reused products and hundreds of ready-to-use design kits that make it easier for workplace design teams to buy, sell goods and allows them to move faster, iterate easily and deploy better designs for a lower cost.