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Self-taught interior designer and founder of Wolf Woof, Carmen Tang tackles unconventional design briefs with imagination, exploration and perceptiveness to bring out clients’ personalities in her projects. When it comes to beginning her next interior design project, one thing you will not see design director of Wolf Woof Carmen Tang do is to look for inspiration from other designers.
Carmen is no stranger to using interesting textures in her project, such as the artificial grass pads on the wall creating the image of a rabbit and bear.
Open to all designs
“I don’t follow designers as I don’t want to be influenced by something in particular,” explains Carmen of her unorthodox approach to creative ideation.
“It’s important to be open to all kinds of culture and types of design – all these ideas will find their way back into my thought process when I design.”
Interior designer Carmen Tang worked to create a unique display shelf for this owner’s valuable collection.
Portrait of interior designer, Carmen Tang, founder of interior design firm Wolf Woof
Wolf Woof Interior Design
For the director and founder of Wolf Woof, this design approach that does not rely on finding inspiration through Pinterest boards and social media posts, and the way she interacts with her clients, is as important as the final design outcome.
Perceptive of people’s tastes and personalities, Carmen has an uncanny ability to take even the vaguest of client briefs and distil initial ideas into concepts and into forms.
She recalls multiple instances where, while initially puzzled by a strange or unique design brief, through continuous conversations with the clients and the exploration of how briefs could manifest themselves into interesting, personality-driven interiors, she delivered spaces that were reflections of their owners’ desires.
“I attribute my intuition and the way I can tell little things and nuances in my clients to helping me to design projects that are uniquely for them,” Carmen says. “I try to dig deep in terms of what clients might or might not like; sometimes it’s as subtle as listening to the way they talk or interpreting the reference examples that they show me that helps me to discover who they are and what they want.”
A fountain in an apartment? Carmen will tell you it is definitely possible.
Giant visuals are also used when necessary to add a pop of inspiration to the space.
How to become an interior designer?
With an unconventional entry into the world of interior design (Carmen had initially started her career as a copywriter-slash-marketing executive), the Wolf Woof director describes her early works as being very graphic-driven, very bold and fun.
In a similar fashion to how she took on advertising campaigns in her previous career, Carmen adapted the strategy to interior design projects that came her way. “I aim to not do predictable work,” she elaborates.
“So I approached every project as having one central visual element that would then pull the concept together.”
Carmen feels that coming from a different background other than interior design has, in some ways, given her less constraints in terms of what she perceived to be possible and impossible in design. “I wanted to be the breath of fresh air in the industry,” recalls Teng. “I would think of an idea first and scramble looking for ways to make it happen.”
With years came an eventual evolution of her style, which she jokingly refers to as being ‘really everywhere’. “People want you to transform a home that they can enjoy for a long time. My aim is to interpret different styles and satisfy the client,” says the designer.
Indeed, the biggest progression in Carmen’s approach to design is the greater variety of influences and an even greater ability to interpret unconventional briefs into memorable interiors. She attests that though her works are still bold now, they have slowly progressed to ooze more sophistication and are a lot more varied in style.
The artistic and engaging displays hint at Carmen’s former life in advertising.
Unique interior design projects
With project names like the Campervan Adventure Theme Home, Bear & Rabbit Home and Bruce Wayne’s Dark Lair under her belt, it’s not hard to see why Carmen does not play by the rules.
She does not shy away from unique project briefs, saying that she often seeks out projects that can put her in a discomfort zone so she can challenge herself as a designer.
True to her character, the design director’s upcoming projects give a similar glimpse of the playfulness and whimsy that’s become the signature approach in her projects. She is currently working on two projects in the same development, with both units having the same exact brief and a challenge of not overlapping the same ideas to give each homeowner what they deserve.
Her dream project brief? “I want to go full retro,” Carmen says. “’I’d love to use a lot of authentic, vintage stuff. It’s important because when you use old items, the flavour and the charm will come out very different.”
This bold living room design goes against all conventional rules, including having dark walls and a contrasting yellow ceiling. Yet in spite of this, Carmen made it come together harmoniously.
Wolf Woof HDB 4-Room Interior Design
Communication plays an important part in all of Carmen Teng’s projects. Working closely with the owners of a four-room HDB BTO flat, Carmen drew out aspects of the owners’ personalities that inspired the unique and whimsical décor of the unit.
“The owner seemed mild and quiet at first, but through conservations, I found him to be a very warm guy, like a bear; while the wife’s Chinese zodiac sign was a Rabbit, I incorporated both animals into the feature wall design,” recalls Carmen.
Not tied to any specific style, Carmen’s projects range from Scandinavian-chic to full-on fancy.
She used unorthodox materials and abstracted shapes for the feature wall, infilling the shapes of the bear and the rabbit with artificial grass – a material that found its way to be one of the key accent elements throughout the house.
“Grass and nature take on different forms throughout the home and reveal more of the homeowners’ lifestyle, like the grass surface to hold the husband’s bicycle, which became a prominent display together with the quotes on wall in the background,” she explains.
Wolf Woof Key Interior Design Projects
Astro Boy Home
Carmen lovingly refers to the project as the one ‘that started it all.” Her first interior design commission where she could explore an unconventional design brief that led to a unique concept inspired by the Japanese animation character Astroboy and Belgian comic strip character Tintin.
The graphically-driven look against the almost-all-white backdrop canvas and the splashes of yellow encapsulated the playfulness and out-of-the-box thinking that Carmen brought with her to this project.
Although her very first commission, the apartment is a testament to Carmen’s bold and daring style that propelled her to not to shy away from even the strangest of design briefs over the years.
The Collector's Dream Home
“Our client loves robots and has a cool collection. To give her the feature wall that a unique person like her deserves, we created a bespoke design that incorporated both 2D vinyl sticker and 3D objects that include pressure gauges, game joysticks, digital clock and battery-operated wall lights,” describes Carmen of her whimsical approach for a home that defies any definition of a prescribed style.
She worked closely with her client and had literally put the TV feature wall by piecing LEGO pieces together to form the shape of a game console in the living room.
“I remain extremely proud of this one-of-its-kind feature as it is never before done (or at least it’s an original idea from my end) and it remains refreshingly unique till this day,” says Carmen.
Campervan Adventure Theme Home
A clever play on the client’s name as well as the overall design approach to a home for couple who likes to travel, this project incorporated an adventure theme to tie all the spaces together.
Thus, for the central feature element for the living room, Carmen designed a graphic campervan feature surrounded by topical props that reflected the owners’ love for travel.
“You can see the strong graphic influence in this project with all my bespoke artworks and concept,” says Carmen, referencing her background in advertising and branding.
Read more: House Tour - Banking couple’s $40,000 road trip Vespa-themed interior
Bruce Wayne's Dark Liar
One of the most fun briefs that Carmen recalls working on was a project inspired by Bruce Wayne’s house. The brief called for a dark and moody enclave influenced by the setting of the Batman films, minus the bat mobile.
The challenge for her was to create a feeling of grandeur and exclusivity in a space of a limited size, which she achieved with dark materials, reflective accents, moody lighting and plenty of bespoke elements, like the mesmerising table integrated with a head of a horse. Batman himself would be proud!