M
ari Balestrazzi is not one to steal the spotlight. When the properties she’s overseeing tout names like Marcel Wanders, it would be hard to. Her job, as Senior Vice President of Design at Morgans Hotel Group, is to find the most creative minds in the world to conceive designs for the company’s luxury boutique properties; all of which trace their origins back to the original boutique hotel and the brand’s namesake – Morgans. After a recent remodel of that very property, the iconic Morgans Hotel in New York City joins a group of recent projects that Mari has guided from concept to completion, showing her design expertise at every step, but never stepping on her guest designer’s toes.
Typically, Mari’s role as the overseer of all the brand’s guest designers runs smooth. That’s because she and her team do their homework before choosing a designer for the next Morgans property. “You’ve got to have the two pieces, and we definitely underplay our role,” said Mari. “I always think of ourselves as the guardrails. The designers are going down the highway and we make sure to keep them on track. We’re a very informed consumer.”
Mari’s journey to her current seat at Morgans and her award as BD’s 2009 Designer of the Year, began with a childhood full of travel and culture. With an Italian father and a mother who worked in the travel industry, Mari had been to Machu Picchu, Australia, Italy and Peru by the time she was twelve. The addictive travel bug had bit her before she finished adolescence. She went to school for architecture, and after completing her undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, she worked for SOM. Mari then went on to the graduate program in architecture at Harvard, which she said was “incredibly rigorous,” and also where she met some of her most valued colleagues and friends.
After her program at Harvard, Mari moved to New York, and like many was “trying to figure out what to do” in the big city. Many of her friends were working in interiors, even though they were in architecture firms (as the story goes for many recent architecture grads). Mari thought, “If I’m going to end up in interiors anyway, I want to work for an interiors firm.” This led her to Aero Studios, where she served as Studio Director for about five years, working with owner Thomas O’Brien on an assortment of projects. Her first day at the firm, she was assigned to work on a penthouse for Giorgio Armani. Before long, she was developing retail stores for the mega-fashion house. Soon after, she was assigned to work on 60 Thompson, under the direction of O’Brien and the three Pomeranc brothers before they brought on Stephen Brandman, now the fourth member of Thompson Hotels’ ownership team.
Mari’s experience on 60 Thompson was an eye opener for her and she learned how the world of hospitality works both from the designer and vendor side. She worked with one of Thompson’s principals, Jason Pomeranc, to uncover unique and innovative manufacturers, often traveling to Italy to see their origins.
From Aero, Mari was headhunted by Starwood to re-brand the Sheraton. Plans changed at Starwood though, and about six months into her new position, Mari instead was placed as the Design Director for the St. Regis brand.
“Every St. Regis property is unique so we would work with the developer of the property to identify designers that would be appropriate for the location,” said Mari. “We would choose a designer and work hand-in-hand with them through the design process.”
The experience primed Mari for what she would be doing at Morgans: stepping out of the spotlight so that someone else can step into it, whether they are ready to or not.
Mari knows that hiring a designer who may not know or understand the constraints of hospitality means she must be prepared for the worst, but she always expects the best. Sometimes designers get it right away and the process is more about working with them to edit, modify and tweak, Mari says. But other times, designers are very conceptual and Mari is left with a kernel of an idea that she and her team must develop into a practical reality.
“We really try and make sure that they have the skills and the personality to be someone we want to work with for the long haul,” said Mari. “Hospitality projects take a long time. For Morgans, we worked with [Andrée] Putman for two years before the opening. It was similar to Marcel [Wanders’] team – he had never done a large hospitality project. It was a lot of back and forth. Their ideas were incredible but we really needed to guide them through the process of what makes sense in a hospitality environment.”
Mari and the design team arrived at the choice of Marcel Wanders for the Mondrian South Beach after careful deliberation. The company had originally spoken with Wanders about doing the Mondrian Los Angeles, but decided to go with Benjamin Noriega Ortiz for that project. Ortiz’ concepts worked better in L.A. while Wanders’ ideas simply suited Miami – a city that would embrace an imaginative design like his.
For Mari, that’s what the process of designing a boutique hotel is all about – finding the right personality to tell the story of the property’s locale. As a senior employee at the company credited with the creation of the concept, Mari’s perspective on the genre is respected. Although she thinks the core concept hasn’t changed much since the first Morgans (in fact, the team took care to change almost none of Putman’s original design in its recent revamp), Mari knows that travelers are more aware of their surroundings today than they were 20 years ago. They’re less accepting of a “run-of-the-mill experience” and are not easily pleased or fooled.
“The core values of what a boutique hotel is are still the values that drive us everyday,” she said. “There are more people now interested in the concept and want to play in the sandbox. People want a unique, inviting, dynamic experience. Design is one aspect that makes a hotel boutique, but it’s everything. A boutique hotel is a unique destination. It’s a way for a traveler to find a unique way to experience a destination. It’s the antithesis to the cookie cutter. A boutique hotel has to be relevant to its destination, to its locale. I think that’s one of the most important parts of the definition for us as a company.”
Next up for Mari is the Ames Hotel in Boston, the first Morgans property in the historic New England city. The Ames, set to open late this fall, will sport a design from the Rockwell Group – another design industry giant – with the working theme of “Benjamin Franklin meets a supermodel.”
“I think that Boston is ready for us,” said Mari. “I guess they have a few boutique hotels, but Boston hasn’t been a huge market for that segment. The originators are arriving and I think we’ll bring something vibrant to the city.”
Further down the horizon for Morgans is the Mondrian SoHo, being designed by Benjamin Noriega Ortiz and set to open in the summer of 2010.
“This is now the third property we’re doing with him,” said Mari. “We love his work but we also love him. It’s not always about having the next new designer, it’s also about developing a rapport.”