Meet the man behind the glorious hotels such as Aman resorts, One&Only hotels, Cheval Blanc and many more. The creator of the world famous reflective infinity pools that are now landmarks of the purest hedonism. It’s the French architect Jean-Michel Gathy whose love for traveling started when he was 8 years old with his first travel to Italy. In 2013 he had his nine hotel openings of different style and location. We can say the Mr. Gathy is the top architect of all luxury hospitality.

His first grand entrance to the world of luxury travel was the Amanwana hotel in Indonesia, first project of its kind and his first full hotel project. Since then he designed many more luxury hotels, many of them were for Aman resort, so we can say he is their landmark architect. He was as well the designer of much praised Aman Canal Grande Venice hotel which instantly became famous for George Clooney’s wedding. When we talk about celebrities and their favorite hotels, we must mention the Cheval Blanc Randheli, another hotel designed by Jean-Michel Gathy where Prince William and Kate Middleton stayed for their vacation.

If you ask him how it is possible to design luxury hotels in such different ways, to manage to stay unique and in tune with the brand, he will answer that the uniqueness of the brand and the hotel is the most important thing for his design. He defines the characteristic of the brand and transforms it into the site. One&Only resorts are more playful and they want properties to be a little bit bigger, whereas Aman places a heavy focus on aesthetics more than facilities, tuning into a zen, psychological aspect. Cheval Blanc is all about elegance. You have to be elegant, smooth, silky, refined and [the best] of everything.

As the best designer for luxury hotels, we wonder what is luxury for him? He says that luxury is the combination of time, space and privacy. And what drives him to create luxury hotels is the idea to create the space where you don’t need to go anywhere for anything. To create the space where you have the luxury of time, space and privacy to do whatever you want at the most incredible destinations of the world seems like a challenge that drives a true artist.

And how about his favorite travel destinations? It came to our surprise that he has chosen Botswana and safari’s. He visited over 50 different safari’s in the world, from India to Malawi. He could sit in his safari jeep and look at the leopards and glorious nature the whole day. For more urban getaways he prefers New York and London because he loves its restaurants and Rome and Sydney for the urban vibes. The love of traveling and design are essential for Mr. Gathy, there is a funny story about that love that of course include safari place. It’s the Singinta Lodge in Kruger National Park. As the fees for his design were too high, Gathy made a deal with Singita and gave them his sketches and masterplan of the lodges in exchange for staying there for the rest of his life for free. They said yes and Gathy has already been there 4 times.

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