Suzanne Bha­gan

In the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad Ho­tel, all 428 guest rooms have bam­boo floors. It, there­fore, makes per­fect sense that a bam­boo-in­spired Christ­mas tree stands in the cen­tre of the ho­tel's lob­by, al­most kiss­ing the ceil­ing. It's the first thing one sees up­on en­ter­ing the front glass doors. Bam­boo pieces and Ger­man im­port­ed rain­lights al­so adorn the lob­by's chan­de­liers. Who was the per­son be­hind this cre­ation? None oth­er than de­sign­er Bri­an Mac­Far­lane. Since his first adorn­ment of West Mall in 1984, Mac­Far­lane has be­come a dec­o­rat­ing vet­er­an. This year, his work at the Hy­att, West Mall, Gulf City and Low­lands, To­ba­go re­flects his cut­ting-edge style.

With a gold se­quinned base, the Hy­att's 20-foot tree shoots up­ward, a com­plex over­lap­ping of bam­boo pieces topped with a spiky gold and sil­ver star. Mac­Far­lane cre­at­ed the tow­er­ing mas­ter­piece by at­tach­ing sev­er­al bam­boo pieces to a met­al struc­ture un­der­neath. Al­though some on­look­ers com­ment that there should be gifts at the tree's base, Mac­Far­lane re­mains adamant that his pre­cise de­sign needs noth­ing more. He says, "It's very min­i­mal­ist, clean, very Zen." In the day, the tree shim­mers in the sun­light, giv­ing it an al­most Car­ni­va­lesque look. At night, am­ber and red LED lights il­lu­mi­nate the tree, giv­ing it a whol­ly dif­fer­ent look. Mac­Far­lane men­tions that the tree is par­tic­u­lar­ly stun­ning at dusk.

When Mar­Far­lane in­formed Hy­att man­age­ment of his idea, he hit the nail on the head. Hy­att's mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Neemah Per­sad-Ce­les­tine says, "We want­ed some­thing dif­fer­ent but al­so some­thing that had a lo­cal flavour and was al­so in keep­ing with the look and feel of the ho­tel."

Mac­Far­lane is ec­sta­t­ic re­gard­ing peo­ple's re­sponse to his de­sign. He ad­mits that this tree is one of his most cre­ative pieces ever, adding, "I would put it in my top ten." How did the tree be­come re­al­i­ty? Af­ter do­ing some re­search on Hy­att's char­ac­ter­is­tic style, Mac­Far­lane con­sid­ered how he could dis­tin­guish the Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions at Trinidad's Hy­att. In the wee hours of the morn­ing, the con­cept of a bam­boo Christ­mas tree hit him.

He sketched his ideas fu­ri­ous­ly on his bed­side sketch­pad. Mac­Far­lane gets his best ideas be­tween 2 and 4am. When the sun rose, he still asked him­self, can this re­al­ly work? It took two weeks from de­sign to erec­tion of the struc­ture. De­sign­ing the tree was par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing. Us­ing 3D com­put­er soft­ware, he was able to con­cep­tu­alise it, es­ti­mat­ing how many bam­boo pieces he would need. Then bam­boo cut­ters, fab­ri­ca­tors and Bri­an's team all pitched in. First, bam­boo stems were cut on a moon­less night. They were fu­mi­gat­ed, dried and paint­ed with a green wash.

In­di­vid­ual strips of gold and sil­ver se­quinned ma­te­r­i­al were then glued to each piece. Holes were drilled at the top of each piece. Wire was then thread­ed through and each piece at­tached to a met­al skele­ton. Mac­Far­lane used bam­boo pieces of dif­fer­ent lengths and thick­ness­es to give the tree a bal­anced look. Even though some artists would be daunt­ed by the chal­lenge of bring­ing a cre­ation to re­al­i­ty, Mac­Far­lane is dif­fer­ent. He says, "Be­cause I am spir­i­tu­al, all my ideas are from God." Mau­rice Cheva­lier, Mac­Far­lane's work col­league, adds, "If he gets in­spired, he sticks with it even if he is aware of ob­sta­cles."