Boutique Design - November 2019 - 184

GRAB LIFE
(BY THE...)
EoA founder Malcolm Berg's
insistence on living with a
vengeance is piloted by
an inherited third eye that
lets him see design from a
different vantage point.
BY ANNMARIE MARTIN

Group, has been erasing the lines between architecture, landscape and interiors ever since his master's thesis for Harvard's Graduate School of Design.
His work replaces them with holistic experiences that tell a story, giving
guests the originality they seek. He doesn't get complacent in life either,
proven so by his passion for aviation. Setting a goal for himself each year of
learning how to fly something new, he's gone from planes to hang gliders,
peppered by the occasional skydive. So, let's start with the obvious:
DO YOU HAVE A DEATH WISH? No. But I am always seeking experiences

that drive me just a little bit further. That's sort of been my heaven and my
demon all at the same time. And right now, flying helicopters is my Zen.
It's my moment where I can see the beauty others can't.
WHAT'S THE SOURCE OF THE HOT PURSUIT? I grew up in Argentina
surrounded by a family consumed by the arts, especially my grandfather who
was a photographer but also an outdoor enthusiast. He was a racecar driver,
rode horses and carried a video camera wherever he went. He had miles and
miles of videotape from his travels, and it showed how his appreciation for
beauty went beyond gazing; it was about full-on engagement. His movies
were composed in such a way that they were paused and rhythmic, then
would explode into turmoil: panning a sunset over the sand dunes with tall
pampas grasses swaying, followed by the roar of clamoring motorcars
behind him, biting and elbowing for first place. To him, that was beauty.
HOW IS THAT FERVOR TRANSLATED TO YOUR WORK? I try to develop cine-

matic passes through my spaces, turning static moments into a much more
kinetic presentation. At the JW Marriott Marco Island Beach Resort we created
a path woven through the steel trusses supporting the building, leading you
through a monastic corridor of tree trunks and ceramic glazed sculptures
resembling lava. It's a very quiet flow. The concept was driven by the cooling of
lava and the tenacity of the ferns that come to life from it afterward. Once they
grow, the animals then come out to seek their shade and food. Life "erupts."
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NOVEMBER 2019

The path leads to the property's fine dining rooftop restaurant Tesoro (a
2019 Gold Key Awards for Excellence in Hospitality Design finalist) where
the wood ceiling mimics that eruption with a cataclysmic folding of
tectonic plates. It has a crunched origami effect. That, to us, is the roar of
those engines beyond the swaying grasses that my grandfather captured.
It's a cinematic passage that leads to a crescendo.
EVER TAKE THE EASY WAY OUT? You know what drives me the most? When
people say something can't be done. They told us to redesign that ceiling just a
few months before opening. They looked across the table and said, "We're not
going to construct a mockup of something that can't be built." So, I went and
built one in my garage-a full-scale, 5-ft.-by-4-ft. wide portion. I showed them a
video of how to do the whole thing and they agreed based on that. It's easy to
dream things up. It's difficult to get them to the finish line. I tell my staff you can't
just think it. You have to go into a room, after poking a lot of holes in something
you designed yourself, and be ready to look at it from every possible angle. If
anyone asks you a question, you need to know exactly how to answer it.
ANY OTHER PET PEEVES? "Instagram moments" that have likely been
plagiarized from Pinterest drive me crazy. When I see little shrines built to
tempt people to stop and take a selfie in a pretend environment, I recoil.
Stop hitting the easy button and come up with something original!
WHAT IS THAT "SOMETHING ORIGINAL"? For us, it always stems from a

design approach driven by both empathy and simplicity, allowing guests to
relate better to the spaces we give them. They want to feel comfortable.
When you get a new phone, you want it to be intuitive. You don't want to
spend six hours trying to figure it out. There's been a big push in guestroom
automation and technology, but I'm much more the humanist. I spend a
tremendous amount of time doing adjacency diagrams, Venn diagrams and
flow diagrams. To me, it's very much about the specific use of the space.
And just like that iPhone that any two-year-old can turn on and use, I want
guests to be able to walk into their room and go right to what they need. 

J UA N S I LVA

MALCOLM BERG, founder of multidisciplinary hospitality design firm EoA

http://www.boutiquedesign.com

Boutique Design - November 2019

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