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2024 IID 🏆 Awards

Gold Winner | Bad Mama Taipei | Adam Hunt Ideas

Bad Mama’s Design Philosophy is: “The Future is Best Served by how we Reimagine the Past”.

They call their obsessive process: “The Art of Extreme Sustainability”.

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Gold 🏆 Winner
International Interior Design Awards 2024

Bad Mama Taipei
Hospitality Interior Built

Firm
Adam Hunt Ideas

Designer
Adam Hunt & Gemma Lin

Design Team
Adam Hunt & Gemma Lin

Location
Taipei, Taiwan.

Country
Taiwan

Photographer/Copyright
Adam Hunt Ideas

Apart from the Kitchen & Bar equipment – everything else in the venue – the decor, furniture & art is built by them, by hand, out of recycled, up-cycled, beach-harvested and street-found materials rescued from abandoned buildings.

Gemma Lin – the original Bad Mama – was born in the rustic fishing village of Yehliu on the wild north coast of Taiwan, which she left at age 18 to study Fashion Design in Tokyo, where she managed a bar owned by the Yakuza.

Then she moved to Australia where she met Adam – her Life & Design Partner.

They currently live in Taiwan – about 30 minutes from Yehliu – so the beautiful coastline is their free outdoor Building Supplies Superstore.

Bad Mama Taipei is their 5th Bad Mama Venue spread across Australia & Taiwan.

The Design Plan is to have no plan.

Once the Kitchen & Bar equipment is placed in the space the Interior Design process becomes a journey of adventure & discovery – they design & build based on what they find, scavenge & steal.

They see treasure in trash.

They believe that successful Interior Design indulges all the senses – what you see, hear, smell, taste & touch all add up to an unforgettable destination experience.

They are a Husband & Wife team with zero academic training in Interior Design apart from what they taught themselves – having been bored with poorly lit badly designed hospitality interiors when they started.

Most importantly, they were lacking a budget to hire professional Interior Designers.

So their Sustainability Journey started 15 years ago when walking towards their first empty site in a brand new building in Bondi Australia – they passed an industrial bin filled with old wooden doors & leadlight window frames from an old house being renovated.

“I reckon I can make a table out of that” were the fateful words that began their journey. 

The building materials for their first venue were entirely sourced from skip bins from a 5 block radius of the original venue.

They also rescued, repaired & restored street abandoned furniture.

As a result – 15 years & 5 venues later they are Internationally Awarded Interior Designers, Furniture Designers, Chefs, Mixologists, Artists, Builders, Carpenters & Painters – they see themselves as Urban Aesthetic Warriors utterly obsessed with creating new things from old stuff. They Forage. They Design. They Build. They Paint. Then they Drink!