If you've ever visited a Four Seasons, One&Only, or Aman property, you've probably experienced the creative vision of this designer who is behind some of the world's most exclusive hotels.
From Dorothée Meilichzon to André Fu and Bill Bensley, we’ve been lucky enough to sit down with some of the world’s best hotel designers. One of the major players when it comes to designing unique properties for exclusive international brands such as Four Seasons, One & Only, and Aman is Belgian-born, Malaysia-based Jean-Michel Gathy. Through his studio Denniston, he has been creating the spaces for some of the world’s most impressive hotels since 1983, and we chatted with him about his experiences.
Actually you get into a niche whether it is designing hotels or whatever else normally by coincidence and that is what happened to me.
I designed offices, first class shops etc., and I had an opportunity to develop a construction system for hotels – for renovation of hotels. I then had an opportunity to apply that system to one of the hotels in Hong Kong. I met the GM who was Hans Jenni and he became the partner of Adrian Zecha in a company called GHM.
From developing a construction method for hotel renovation, I basically ended up designing hotels for Hans Jenni and then Adrian Zecha and that’s how I started.
Denniston is the name of the company I set up to do that. I set it up in 1983 and I’ve been designing since 1983 with Denniston being my company as my vehicle.
When you design hotels, you create spaces for everyone.
When you design residential, people come, they like it, they will buy it. If they don’t like it, they don’t buy it. But you can’t do that for hotels because people book the hotel, arrive in Frankfurt or in Japan and they get into their hotel that they have booked without having seen it. So you want to make sure that it is going to be pleasing for most of them. You don’t want people to say: “Oh, I don’t like it here”. That’s the first thing.
Second thing is it has to work. A hotel is not a trophy. A hotel is a business venture, and the ultimate purpose of a business is for the owners to make money. So they want that hotel to be efficiently designed with a proper flow etc. and they want to make sure that it looks good so they can use some of the elements of design for marketing and positioning in the market.
So it’s very different. Designing residential and commercial is much more specific, it’s basically commercial; it’s much more square footage based and it’s more market driven. Whereas hotels are more product driven.
How do you bring a sense of place into your design? It’s actually relatively simple. The first thing you do when you design in a country is you visit that country and not just visit the British Museum and Trafalgar Square, that’s not visiting the country. You take your car and go into the Cotswolds. That’s the way you visit the country. You visit the cultural part of it, the physical part of it, the habitat, and you can see the way people live.
So when you design a project in that country, you try to integrate in your design all these elements that you have perceived by visiting that country. You feel people are discrete or you feel people are loud or you feel people live outside or inside or you feel people like dark colours or light colours or you feel that they like arches or the architecture is based on arches and stone or it’s very simple timber cladding architecture etc. So you just observe.
Originally, when I started to design hotels, hotels were basically a place to sleep. I’m talking in general, of course, there were already exceptions, but basically 40 years ago, hotels were a place to sleep. They were all-day dining with a buffet, there was a coffee bar and a few facilities, but it was a place to sleep.
Nowadays, hotels are lifestyle venues. You go and you assimilate yourself to a hotel because you like the image they project; you think it gives you face if you invite one of your client, one of your friend, one of your family, if you want to organise a party etc., you choose a hotel you like and you want that hotel to suit your personality.
Luxury is totally a matter of opinion. What do you think is luxury for a man in Hong Kong? Luxury is space. For a man in New York? Luxury is time. For some people it is privacy. Luxury has many many forms. For other people it is hardware. The fact that you have a gold forest painting, that is luxurious, or a chandelier, that is luxurious. So it is totally private.
What do we do? We design exclusive places which mean places where you have a limited number of people who can utilise and therefore each person becomes more important to the client. We have to give more for that person to feel exactly that moment when he feels he important. Exclusive is probably the word instead of luxurious but exclusivity is luxury.
The other issue is we are more targeted. Our hotels are not general places to live as I had covered in my answer 5 but they are more lifestyle. So we will design hotels which have a very specific identity: diving hotels, golf course places, other culturally interesting hotels. Our hotels are more exclusive, more specific, more targeted and they have a very strong identity normally.
I believe that is the future of the hospitality industry. I believe that people will look more and more for that feeling of big importance and living the characteristic they like. They like the cultural valley, they like the romance of Bhutan, they like the activity of a golf location, or they love to go to places for diving, for sailing, for wind surfing etc. People are more and more selective.
I think fundamentally the design of hospitality products will not change substantially after the pandemic. Yes, there will be progress with regards to technology. The rooms, for example, are going to have everything in sensors. You are going to have sensors for the showers, sensors for the sink, sensors for the TV, you are going to have voice control, etc. So technology is going to adjust itself.
Besides that, I believe the biggest changes are going to be in the restaurants, in the food and beverage. In my opinion, the food and beverage, for example, are going to reduce the amount of buffets because obviously it is more exposed to the transference of the virus. But I think fundamentally at the end, you will not really see a big difference. We will reduce the number of people in the lift. We might have to increase the number of lifts, we might have to reduce the size of the lift. We might have to reduce the numbers of rooms etc but the industry will solve the risk by the use of technology, mostly.
Well as you probably know, last year we opened the Four Seasons Tokyo, the Four Seasons Bangkok, and One&Only Portonovi, Montenegro.
Recently, we launched Aman Resort New York, Jumeirah Bali, and we are trying to open the Cheval Blanc Seychelles.
There are other projects coming up but we normally we do not disclose projects that we are working on. We are heavily involved in Italy, we are doing two projects in Italy, we are doing projects in Japan, in Saudi Arabia, in America, in the Bahamas, in Mexico, in California, in upstate New York. We are very very busy for the moment.
The answer, in one word: comfort. When you arrive in a hotel after 18 hours or 22 hours in the plane, in the airport, in the traffic and the taxis and everything. You arrive in the hotel and you drop your suitcase in front of your bed, you just crash on the bed – look at the ceiling and all you want is to take a shower. Take your clothes off, take a shower, relax for five minutes, and have the feeling that you are still alive. It’s really the first thing I do. I take a shower. That is the answer.
Whether it is the first time I go there or not, I will do that automatically. Now after that, when I have taken a shower and I feel good, then I will normally go down to the hotel and look how it is, the facilities, what they have and the restaurants etc. then I can organise my day in the hotel.
Now obviously if it is for business, most of the time you take a shower, you put your clothes on, and you go to the meeting. But if I’m on holiday or if I have time, the first thing I will do is to visit the hotel.
I prefer room service in the morning. I prefer restaurant dining for lunch and dinner.
If I’m alone in a hotel, it’s the pool. If I am with my wife, I love going to the spa with her.
When our designs come to fruition, obviously we love it. It is like giving birth. The labour, the baby has taken time to grow – 2,3,4 or 5 years and obviously it is not like a surprise but it is a release. It is an enormous, important self-satisfaction. You are proud.
But the first thing you start to do the day after… you criticise yourself. I am an absolute critic of what I do. I am never happy. I say: “Oh God, I should have done that bigger.” Or: “Why did I do this so big?” Or: “ We chose the wrong colour.” I critique. So first release, second – while you’re happy but you see it coming so it is not by a coincidence ,and then progressively critique.
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