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As part of Independent Hotel Show London 2026, taking place at Olympia London on 5–6 October, TUNTU Design has been selected to design this year’s exclusive Members Suite — a stylish retreat created for the Independent Hotel Show Members Club and their guests.

Ahead of the show, we caught up with the team behind the studio to discuss their design philosophy, inspirations, and what visitors can expect from the Members Suite concept at IHS 2026.

Can you briefly tell us about your background and education? 

I'm Kirsi Ihalainen, a sound artist, entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of TUNTU. My background sits at the intersection of sound art, spatial design, and neuroscience-informed experience design. I've spent years studying how acoustic environments shape human physiology not just emotion, but nervous system response, cognitive state, and the felt quality of presence in a space. 

Before founding TUNTU, I worked extensively with immersive sound and multisensory environments, developing methods for integrating technology invisibly into architecture. That work evolved into a platform that doesn't add technology to spaces it turns the space itself into the medium. Today TUNTU operates as a spatial intelligence company: we design environments that respond to, and actively influence, the people inside them. 

What makes TUNTU unique? 

Most spatial technology is additive speakers which are placed into a room, lighting rigs are installed, screens are mounted. The room remains passive. TUNTU works from a fundamentally different premise: the environment itself becomes the instrument, spaces become alive. 

We embed sound, vibration, light and sensory content directly into architectural surfaces, walls, ceilings, furniture, structural elements with no visible technology. The result is an environment where technology is completely invisible, sound is distributed evenly and felt through the body, and every sensory layer is orchestrated in real time as a single unified experience. 

What makes this commercially compelling for high-end hospitality is that it's not about spectacle it's about atmosphere. Guests can't explain exactly why a TUNTU space feels different. They simply feel more present, more at ease, more connected.  

How do you start a project? 

We begin with a single question: what state do we want people to be in when they're here? 

Not what they should see, or hear but what they should feel physiologically and emotionally. From there we work backwards through the architecture: acoustics, materials, surface area, lighting behaviour, spatial flow, and the rhythm of how people move through the space. 

We collaborate closely with architects, interior designers and operators from the earliest stage. The technology needs to be designed into the fabric of the space, not retrofitted into it. That integration process is where the real design work happens and it's what separates a TUNTU environment from anything that can be achieved with conventional AV installation. 

What is the most special project you have done? 

One of the most significant was designing therapeutic environments for clinical mental health spaces psychiatric and high-dependency units where sensory overload is a genuine clinical risk. We engineered immersive soundscapes and resonating surface materials to reduce cortisol response actively, lower anxiety and create measurable physiological calm. Seeing clinical outcomes shift in environments we designed confirmed that what we're building is not aesthetic, it's functional at the deepest level. 

In luxury hospitality, a defining moment was seeing guests instinctively slow down within seconds of entering a TUNTU space. That behavioural shift is what we design for. When a space changes how people inhabit it, technology has done its job invisibly. 

What will you do for the Independent Hotel Show London? 

We're creating members suite spatial experience that demonstrates what intelligent hospitality environments will feel like in the next decade. 

Visitors will enter a space where sound is embedded into the architecture itself no visible technology, no directional audio sources, just an enveloping acoustic presence felt through surfaces and the body. This is layered with precisely choreographed light, curated sensory content, and atmospheric depth that shifts as you move through the space. 

The intention is to give hoteliers, designers and operators a direct, embodied understanding of what TUNTU makes possible because this kind of environment cannot be explained in a brochure. It has to be felt. 

Can you tell us about the concept? 

The concept is built around the idea of intelligent stillness the quality that defines the world's most exceptional hospitality spaces. Not emptiness, but a precisely calibrated environment that makes people feel immediately held, present, and away from everything else. 

We're creating a space that operates on multiple sensory frequencies simultaneously: sub-bass resonance through structural surfaces, spatially distributed sound with no perceivable source, lighting that responds to the room's energy, and a layered sensory atmosphere that builds imperceptibly. Guests won't consciously process the individual elements. They'll simply feel that the room is working for them. 

This is the future of luxury: not more materials, more finishes, more visual complexity but more intelligence embedded in the experience itself. 

What was your inspiration? 

The inspiration begins with nature, specifically the way natural environments affect the human body without a single word of instruction. A forest doesn't announce itself. It simply changes you: your breathing slows, your shoulders drop, your attention softens. That effortless, total shift in physiological state is what we've spent years learning to recreate inside built environments. 

The deeper question became: what is nature actually doing, scientifically? Research in psychoacoustics, environmental psychology and neuroscience has shown definitively that the spaces we inhabit affect cognitive function, stress response, creativity and emotional regulation. Nature has always known this. Most architecture hasn't caught up. 

TUNTU exists because there's a profound gap between what we know about human sensory experience and what our most premium spaces actually deliver. The inspiration is closing that gap taking what nature does instinctively and embedding that intelligence into the environments where people spend their lives. 

What does hospitality mean to you personally? 

The finest hospitality creates a place you never want to leave not because there's nowhere better to go, but because the space itself feels so attuned to you that leaving requires a conscious decision. That quality is rare. And it almost never comes from the visual design alone. 

I believe it comes from atmosphere, the acoustic character of a room, its light, the way it holds silence, the almost imperceptible sense that the environment is working in your favour. The best hospitality spaces do to people what great natural environments do: they restore something. They return you to yourself. 

The most meaningful shift coming in luxury hospitality is that this restorative quality will stop being accidental and start being engineered. TUNTU is designed to be the infrastructure for exactly that. 

What are the three most important interior trends at the moment? 

1. Physiological design The conversation has moved beyond wellness as a visual language. The most forward-thinking designers and operators are now asking how a space performs biologically: how it affects sleep, stress, focus and recovery. Spatial acoustics, air quality, circadian lighting and sub-sensory stimulation are becoming design criteria, not afterthoughts. 

2. Invisible technology The premium marker has inverted. Visible technology even sophisticated technology now reads as mass market. The highest-end spaces are defined by the complete disappearance of infrastructure. When the technology cannot be seen or located, the experience becomes the only reference point. 

3. Experience as competitive advantage In a market where product quality has largely converged, experience architecture is becoming the primary differentiator. Guests increasingly choose and return to properties based on how they felt a quality that cannot be replicated by a competitor installing the same furniture or the same bedding. Immersive, multisensory environments are the next non-replicable asset in luxury hospitality.