Exquisite Detail: In Conversation with Jean-Michel Gathy

Acclaimed hospitality designer Jean-Michel Gathy talks to us about his process and oeuvre

It’s ridiculous, I tell you, ridiculous how much I fly!’ says Jean-Michel Gathy, seated in a green velvet, high-backed armchair during lunch at the Shangri-La Kuala Lumpur.‘ Twice around the world every month, four times more than long-haul pilots.’ A Belgian who’s been based in Asia for almost four decades, the gregarious and engrossing Gathy is in demand across the globe as a hospitality designer and the creative powerhouse behind projects like the St. Regis Lhasa Resort in Tibet, Cheval Blanc Randheli in the Maldives, Chedi Andermatt in Switzerland, Aman Venice and the iconic rooftop and pool at Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands.

As principal of Denniston, the design practice he founded in 1983, with four offices worldwide and clients that include tycoons and royalty, Gathy maintains a personal interest in every project, hence his relentless routine. While he does turn down work regularly, he says, when he’s involved, ‘I’m very hands-on — I design everything. From the very first site visit of a project I’m there and involved at each stage along the way. I am totally passionate about and addicted to what I do.’

Despite his and his contemporary hotel architects’ incredible capabilities and creativity, Gathy does feel that they are unsung heroes within the industry. ‘We’re like the midfielders in soccer or 1500-metre runners in the Olympics — we’re the engines. We work miracles with impossible programmes and budgets. What we do isn’t just glamour, it’s difficult. Hotels are businesses — nobody develops a hotel for pleasure. We need to be creative and study the habits, cultures and rituals of the country we’re designing in. We have to give the client a product they can make money from — it has to make sense operationally, financially and commercially, but it still has to have 500 windows and look good. A museum or a library doesn’t have to make sense in such a detailed way.’

Gathy’s fascination with hospitality and this jigsaw of a planet emerged at the tender age of seven, when he’d spend the milk money his parents gave him on maps, studying their every detail.‘I’d put a pillow under the door frame so my parents wouldn’t see my light on. By the time I was nine years old I knew a hundred and sixty countries by heart,’ he says, eyes closed and hands moving in the air like an illusionist, plotting the outlines of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq on an imaginary board. When his parents eventually discovered his secret, they gave him the responsibility of planning family holidays; this task he willingly accepted, poring over guide books and maps, and learning about architecture and the castles and gardens they’d visit. The aesthetics and creativity of those trips stuck with him, and in a sense shaped him. In fact, when asked what he’d like to claim to have designed, most of the answers are ancient temples — in Myanmar, Luxor, Belize and more besides.

Gathy studied architecture in Belgium and then worked in the architecture office at the University of Liège before moving to Asia. It was while living in Hong Kong and designing retail spaces, offices and hundreds of bank branches that he met Hans Jenni, a hotel executive who went on to open ghm Hotels with Adrian Zecha, two people that Gathy identifies as his mentors, and who gave him some of his earliest hotel commissions.

Today, Denniston is actively working on 40 hotel projects and developments, including masterplanning a project of 100 square kilometres north of California’s Napa Valley that will have a polo field, hotels and vineyards, the Mandarin Oriental Bali, Four Seasons properties in Tokyo and Bangkok, the new Oberoi in Mumbai and the first Aman in New York.

Gathy believes that in great hotels there should be no definition between the interior and landscape, that they should be seamless, a word he often repeats. (‘If I ever write a book, it’ll be called Seamless,’ he quips). He begins each project with the bed and works outward, and while every property varies in size, scope and feel, they all need what he calls ‘a soul’. They also typically feature a strong water element. ‘In a resort, the daytime focus is to look out, but at night the sea and the mountain are black holes. You see nothing.’ Light and water add reflection and drama to both resorts and city hotels, can be peaceful or active, and can help to mask and dilute sound.

He also identifies the need for a good shower and perfect acoustic performance, or soundproofing, in a room. And the greatest mistake? Having too many electronic controls. ‘If you need a doctorate in mathematics to switch off the lights, the design is useless.’ With the hands-on designer in charge, at least a hotelier and guest can be assured that such a misstep would never happen.

Text / Sanjay Surana
Images / Courtesy of Jean-Michel Gathy/Denniston