JEAN-MICHEL GATHY
You won’t find JEAN-MICHEL GATHY on social media. The man who has designed some of the world’s most iconic hotels believes in being emotionally immersed in the present, as Grace Ma discovers
Aconversation with architect Jean-michel Gathy is an intriguing insight into the mind of a design genius that lives in the moment. His eyes are focused on you as he speaks, he laughs uproariously while sharing happy memories, and he is taking in the surroundings with an astute eye – all at the same time. “You see the bench here,” he says in mid- conversation, pointing to the hotel lobby lounge’s cushioned wooden seating where we are having the interview. “I would never design a bench like this. A bench should be 70cm deep, and the cushion about 11 degrees in slope. This is 90cm; it’s too deep and uncomfortable.”
When I casually suggest that it is not too bad-looking, he looks aghast. “Ok, it ‘ looks good’… Whatever nonsense, it’s not! It looks like what you get at a clinic waiting for the dentist!”
Curiosity may kill the cat, but in Gathy’s case, it is the elixir that directs his mind in designing hotels with a soothing geometry and subtle cultural references that reflect a sense of place. Whether it is luxury tents on a verdant island at Amanwana in Indonesia ( his first project in 1993), a gold-tiled swimming pool at The St. Regis Lhasa Resort, or the contemporary flourishes of Arabic-influenced architecture in The Chedi Muscat in Oman, it is hard to forget a Gathy- designed hotel once you step into it.
And it is all thanks to his father, a forest engineer and a biologist, who would teach the young Gathy how to distinguish the fruit trees in their family orchard just by looking at the leaves. One day, Gathy was tested on his knowledge, and as he studied the leaves, not realising that the answer was hanging overhead, his exasperated father bellowed: “Look up! What do you call a tree with apples on it?”
“From then on I’m always looking!” Gathy guffaws at the memory. “I am extremely curious. I want to know everything, and I don’t mind looking stupid asking questions. When you are curious, you look, analyse, and unconsciously, build up a library in your brain to know how to design.”
From the age of seven, the Brussels-born architect, who’s now based in Kuala Lumpur, has planned all his family’s holidays, intrigued as he is with landscapes and exotic scenery. He still studies maps two hours a day, poring through details on a potential project from the terrain to the altitude and prevailing winds. Give him a topographic map, and he is confident he can retrace it in 30 seconds, he says. Take him on a recce of a hotel site and he can replicate it almost exactly on paper in contour lines – depressions, hills and all.
“I’m a maniac about physical geography. People read emails in the bathroom, I read maps,” he says. “Before I start on a project, I go on Google Earth and study the site. By the time I arrive onsite, I know how far we are from the town, and if there’s a river and lots of vegetation.”
That is probably the only time you will find him on the Internet. Gathy eschews social media, scoffing at the idea of putting his life 24/7 under scrutiny or that he needs to publicise his work. He says, matter- of-factly. “What is social media? I don’t want everybody to know where I went to ski or who I’m meeting today. Even if I have a million followers, who cares? I’m not looking for work. We refuse work every day,” he says of his studio, Denniston International Architects and Planners.
Even if this sounds like a boast, he is soon forgiven. Gathy may work 12- to 14-hour days, but when he is on family holidays, he makes sure he is fully focused on them. “When I am with my family, it’s for them,” says Gathy, who
has four children aged from 15 to 27 years. “You will find it difficult to contact me because I respect my wife and children. When I am with them, I concentrate on them.” Even while working, he would send text messages with romantic emoticons to his wife, he adds, showing me a quick glimpse of an example with a twinkle in his eye. “I’m romantic like hell. It’s fabulous. If you can be in love, it’s the best thing in life.”
The same passion is poured into his work, where he is the principal designer of Denniston, an international architecture and design consulting firm with offices in Singapore and Malaysia. When asked how many projects he takes on a year, Gathy says, “It is not how many, but how much I, Jean-michel, can design because every project comes from my hand.”
He estimates that he works on 20 to 30 projects at the same time, with each in varying stages of development from waiting for permits to designing the infrastructure and interiors. “A project takes five years. Some people will tell you ‘no, I can do it in one-and-ahalf year’. These are the few exceptional cases,” says Gathy.
He designs everything by hand – which he’s done since he started his career 38 years ago, and that he is adamant will never change – before taking a picture of it and sending it to his staff.
“The only way to translate an emotion is through my hands; you can’t trace an emotion through a machine because a machine only translates facts. I think this is the reason why every project of ours is successful: People like our hotels because we are emotional about what we design; they are charismatic.”
But isn’t being emotional unmasculine? No, he says passionately. As a sportsman who used to swim, play tennis and football, and participate in track and field events, he readily admits to tearing while watching the Olympic Games’ medal ceremonies “because I know the effort they have put in to get there”.
“A man who has no emotion, for me, is not a human being. I always say to my children, do whatever you want, but love something, have a hobby. If you look for money, you’d never be rich. I make very good money, and could make more if I were obsessed with it. But then I wouldn’t love what I do. I’m more interested in loving what I do.”
“Even if I have a million followers, who cares? I’m not looking for work. We refuse work every day”