Glen Coben - NYTimes.com Mr. Coben, 49, is the founder of Glen & Company, an architectural and interior design firm in New York that specializes in the hospitality and retail sectors. The company recently designed the interior of the TRYP Times Square South hotel. Before starting Glen & Company in 2000, Mr. Coben was a principal of the Rockwell Group. Interview conducted and condensed by Q. Do you use your middle initial "J"? The birth certificate has "J" and a period. But the "J" doesn't stand for anything, it's just a letter. I think it was one of my parents" rebellious things. My brother has the same thing. Q. What would you have wanted the "J" to stand for? A. I would probably say Jack. My grandfather's name was Jack. Q. So tell me a little bit about Glen & Company. A. We're a boutique design agency. We focus on hospitality, and that's hotels and restaurants. You can extend retail into that. I tell people that what I do for a living is tell stories. Q. How so? A. About two years ago we designed a hotel called Fashion 26; it opened as a Wyndham Hotel on West 26th Street. The story of that hotel was that it's not just a hotel, it's in the fashion district. And the beauty of taking a story that really is locally relevant is that your decisions are no longer random. So when we were designing the front desk we were inspired by sewing-machine and cutting-room tables. We extrapolated it. For instance, a sewing table would have bobbins on the front desk. We had a local artist create bobbins out of spun aluminum. That created a shroud to hide the computer terminal. Q. You also do corporate work. We do some corporate interiors, which I refer to as branding. Sony store or Niketown are examples of branding - they are living, breathing ads. We're doing some projects for some brands right now. We're working with a juice-cleanse group in Connecticut to create a prototype and a rollout of what's called Green and Tonic. We're also working with a fitness company, Cybex. Q. Were you one of the creators of Niketown when you worked for Nike? A. I helped to expand it. Q. How many projects are you working on? A. We have about 16 active projects on the boards or in construction. We just opened the TRYP hotel; it's a new brand that Wyndham introduced to North America. It was a really big project. And over the next three years we're working on just under 2,000 guest rooms. It is six hotels. There are four in the financial district. Three are with the Lam Group and one is with Hersha Hospitality. The three with Lam are Four Points by Sheraton, on Platt Street, there's a loft on Ann Street and a Fairfield Inn and Suites on Fletcher Street. Q. Sounds like you're busy. A. I'm cautiously optimistic. During the recession we weren't affected to a great degree. Clients are expecting and demanding that we do things for less money and do them quicker. A big firm has a harder time navigating those waters than a smaller firm like ours. And our fees are lower. Q. You were a principal at the Rockwell Group. Why did you leave to start your own business? A. I felt like if I didn't do it then, I would probably regret not having done it. This was in 2000. If it didn't work out I knew I could probably get a job somewhere else. This month it'll be 12 years. Q. What are your goals for the company? A. I would love to do the overall structure - interior and exterior - of hotels. We're doing a hotel right now in Madison, Conn. - the Madison Beach Hotel, where we did the entire hotel. It should be opening the beginning of May. It's 68,000 square feet, right on the Long Island Sound, and it is 33 guest rooms. It has a banquet facility, a spa and a couple of restaurants. I would also like to get into residential - what we do for the hotel world. Developers should take a page out of the hotel development handbook and understand the guest amenities that could be brought to the table. And I would love to get involved with the renovation of some of the commercial lobbies. Q. Where do you get your inspiration? A. It's seldom that I don't have a sketch book with me. I'm out there and I'll look around, and if I hear about a place I'll pop in, or if I'm walking by a construction site I'll walk into the construction site. Inspiration comes in the craziest places.