Receiving a brief along the lines of, ‘reimagine, rethink, and redesign a guest room experience for our deeply-historically and culturally-grounded hotel in one of the country’s most iconic hospitality towns, but make it sing Santa Fe,’ could be thought of as challenging. We offered a fresh approach, one that honestly and implicitly integrated the well-known Santa Fe aesthetic with deep historical expressions and contemporary flourishes.

The desert palette—windblown red dust to impassive granite faces—recalls not only the lands through which guests have recently passed, but also the possibilities of what is to come. The serpentine flow of the plaster to the raw hewn look of the millwork, to the visceral texture of cacti and the nurturing weave and weft of textile, guests find themselves surrounded by something both new and old, elegant, and effortless.

Both the beams and the shower stalls of the design are as much about beauty and functionality in and of themselves, as they are evocations of our contact with, and adoration for, the natural world constrained. Tactility and visual mass are expressed whenever possible, giving guests a feeling of being in a part of nature they recognize, but that is supremely comfortable.