Studio
Origin
A studio founded on continuity.
Deboss Collective was established in 2024 by Founding Director Tegan Kajewski, following two decades of senior design leadership at two of the world’s leading hospitality design firms. The studio was created to offer something specific: the quality and rigour of larger practices, with the focus, accountability, and creative continuity that only a smaller, founder-led practice can deliver.
Based in Hong Kong but with a global reach, we work with renowned international operators, regional developers, and independent owners who are shaping the future of luxury hospitality.
Approach
From first sketch to launch.
Our work begins with a location, a brief, a vision. Before the first mark of pen to paper, we study the site — its orientation, its footprint, its heritage. We understand the operator — their guest, their service, their defining brand pillars. We listen to the owner — the long-term vision, the constraints, and most importantly, the aspirations.
We safeguard the design journey through every stage that follows; concept, visualisation, documentation, tender, and most importantly, construction and installation. While the disciplines are what you would expect; we aim to do it differently. Our full scope commitment maintains the integrity of the original vision, so that the room you stand in at handover is the room we promised at concept.
We work closely with architects, structural and MEP engineers, lighting and signage consultants, F&B specialists, artwork consultants and the operator’s technical services team. We document to the level our contractors need, in the language their construction and procurement teams understand. We are practical about cost, frank about timelines, and realistic in our solutions to issues that inevitably arise.
Story
On the meaning of a name.
To deboss is to set a mark into a surface by removing material rather than adding. It is the opposite of emboss — quieter, more deliberate, more confident in its restraint. It is, we believe, a fair description of how we create: by considering what is essential to a space and resisting what is not.
Each project carries the imprint of its place, its brand, its purpose. Rather than impose our design, we prefer to listen to and be part of the overall story and we aim to leave no more imprint than that.
We are a collective in name and nature and believe design is a collaborative journey where the sum is always far greater.