THIS SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA–BASED ARCHITECT SPENDS MUCH OF HIS TIME EXPLORING THE WORLD FOR BOTH WORK AND PLEASURE. HERE ARE SOME OF THE HOTELS AND RESORTS THAT HAVE INSPIRED HIS ICONIC CONTEMPORARY WORK…
01
Views.
Since COVID, wellness has become a huge component of our work. We’ve been trying everything out for our clients, from cryo-chambers to infrared saunas. When it comes to designing spaces with wellness components though, we’re really inspired by the Address Beach Resort at JBR in Dubai. There’s an infinity-edge pool on the 77th floor, and as you’re sitting on the deck, you can see people skydiving right in front of you [at the nearby skydiving school].
The gym and wellness area is located just below the roof deck on the 75th floor and looks out over that same view through a wall of glass. In the past, we’d do gyms in whatever space was leftover in the basement, but we’ve been rethinking that and are now doing steam rooms, saunas and other wellness spaces with direct views to the garden. I also experienced something similar at the Weissenhaus on the Baltic Sea in Germany, where the saunas have big glass walls looking out to the landscape. It changes the entire wellness experience when the view becomes a factor.
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02
Pools.
Someone once told us that we do swimming pools with attached rooms as opposed to houses. We find lots of pool inspiration in Dubai: Along with the Address Beach Resort rooftop pool, we enjoy the One&Only Royal Mirage with its palm tree islands and shaded areas. With its clear walls, the iconic acrylic pool at Laucala Island in Fiji has been a huge inspiration for our own cantilevered pools. Many of the pools we do are resort-like in scale. For instance, we’re doing one now that’s almost 400 feet long with a perpendicular lap pool of almost 300 feet. We have noticed that resorts often do well in creating underwater architecture at large-scale pools, with different levels and platforms.
We have a project in Bangkok right now, and when visiting we stay at Villa Deva Resort & Hotel, which is so atypical for central Bangkok. Most of the hotels are in tall skyscrapers, but this feels more like a forest in the city; every room opens to the pool. You can enjoy the experience of walking off your patio into the pool and floating around during a quick tropical rain shower. I love the idea of an intimate hotel that's focused on nature in the middle of the city. We’ve been fortunate to do some work with the Cheval Blanc brand and think that when it comes to spas and pools, the Paris location is truly stunning. It’s like they replicated the Seine with their amazing underground pool— combined with the lighting and the mirrors, it’s truly spectacular.
03
Bathrooms.
I was in a room at the Rosewood Bangkok with a bathroom that had an all-glass wall, but no one could see you because you were up so high. We often like to create glass- walled bathrooms that look out to private viewing gardens. In the Maldives, Niyama Private Island has outdoor bathrooms that open onto private gardens, which is something we’ve tried to replicate in our residential projects because people just love outdoor showers and bathing options. We think a lot about how we can borrow views and help create indoor spaces that flow to the outdoors.
We often like to create glass- walled bathrooms that look out to private viewing gardens. In the Maldives, Niyama Private Island has outdoor bathrooms that open onto private gardens, which is something we’ve tried to replicate in our residential projects because people just love outdoor showers and bathing options. We think a lot about how we can borrow views and help create indoor spaces that flow to the outdoors. We're doing a large property in Turks & Caicos right now where all the bedrooms have outdoor shower spaces. For the primary bedroom, there's an all-glass bathroom that looks out to a private 2,000-square-foot garden. Other Caribbean properties like Saba Rock, which is in the BVI and is all light and fl ow, have also inspired that kind of mood and energy. However, when you're doing a residence, the primary goal is to maintain privacy while creating an attractive outdoor bathing area. We’re working on our first horizontal shower for a client, inspired by a trip to Le Bora Bora, which has this incredible spa in the middle of a lily-pad pond. Their horizontal outdoor shower experience was pure decadence.
04
Sense of Place.
As a young boy in Ireland, I always wanted to stay at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, and it's my favorite place to stay now when I return home. Another favorite stay is Claridgeís in London, which a friend of mine bought and renovated in the most amazing way. Both properties ooze history and tradition and are such an asset to their locales, making them wonderful places to stay. Their longevity connecting us to their cities past is so inspiring. You can't go wrong with an Aman hotel, but you really can't miss a stay at Amanjiwo in Java. I think of myself as a modern architect, but our work is very much inspired by traditional Asian and Japanese architecture and its connection to nature and borrowed landscape. The way Amanjiwo is so contextual to its location is actually very similar to how we approach our work, even if the styles of architecture are seemingly centuries apart. At Mwiba Lodge in Tanzania, everything is built around rocksóitís straight-up James.
Bond and so eye-catching, but the best part is that they were just working with what was already there. Iíve always been inspired by Richard Meier, but people sometimes have a hard time looking past the white. It's really about distilling the quality of the light though and looking at the way it moves through the structures. There's something so essentially South Florida about how he created Four Seasons Hotel at the Surf Club with the creamy travertine that looks like sand, set against the turquoise water. It all just comes together so perfectly. We've done a lot of contemporary projects in Los Angeles tony Bel-Air neighborhood and right there in the middle is the classic pink palace Hotel Bel-Air. It seems like such a juxtaposition, but it's not. When people stay at that hotel, what they're looking for is an old-time feel of Los Angeles, which is similar to what draws our clients to the hills in Los Angeles in the first place. It’s the epitome of California living with indoor/outdoor use of space and incorporating natural light and vegetation. All the things that resonate throughout our work.
