Fashion designer Anna Trzebinski: Surviving Tragedy by Fostering Beauty INDAGARE GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS | 1.14 Melissa Biggs Bradley: Hi, and welcome to Indagare's Global Conversations. A podcast about how traveling the world shapes our lives and perspectives. I'm Melissa Biggs Bradley of Indagare. A company I founded on the belief that how you travel matters. I'm sitting down with some of the most inspiring and innovative people I've met while on the road. They are activists and conservationists, designers and filmmakers, writers, chefs, and entrepreneurs. They will share stories about their travels and how they lead lives with passion and purpose. They inspire me as I hope they will you. Welcome to the conversation. Even if you don't recognize the name Bill Bensley, if you're an avid traveler, chances are that, you know his work or that you've actually stayed in his work, because along with his team, the legendary hotel landscape and interior designer has masterminded 200 plus projects in over 30 countries. But it isn't the quantity that's most impressive, it's the incredible diversity and distinctive quality of each of these hotels, including some of Indagare's favorite properties. Like the Four Seasons Hualalai on the big Island of Hawaii, the Four Seasons Tented Camp in Thailand's Golden Triangle, or the Siam in Bangkok, or the Oberoi Udaivilas in India. In fact, most of the Oberois in India and the one and only in the Maldives, but the list goes on and on. I mean, it's really not an exaggeration to say that Bill has designed more top luxury hotels around the world than anyone else alive, but it isn't the hotels that have garnered the most awards or press that are dearest to Bill's heart. Rather it's the Shinta Mani properties that he designed to do good in their communities. The first one he developed was in the temple city of Siem Reap in Cambodia, and the newest edition, Shinta Mani Wild also in Cambodia, is a 15-tent glamping lodge set on 600 protected acres in the Southern Cardamom Mountains. Both have tremendous social and environmental impacts in their respective locations. And Bill speaks with passion and purpose about the responsibility he believes hotels and resorts should always have in the communities where they're built. He's also just an incredible storyteller, thanks to his sense of humor, whimsy, and wonder, all of which can be seen in his design sensibility. Suffices to say that at Shinta Mani Wild, guests can opt to arrive via a 1,200 foot zip line over a waterfall. And that the decor inspiration there was the idea of Jackie O going glamping with the king of Cambodia in the 1960s. Bill is based in Bangkok, where he met his life and business partner, Jirachai Rengthong when he was working there on his first job in 1984, has been to 92 countries. And no one talks about travel quite like he does. So Bill, I'd love to start with how you ended up in Asia, because I know you studied at Harvard, and I don't think that many Harvard graduates take off right away for Asia and ended up having the kind of rich and varied and, and wild, adventurous life that I think you've had. And so I'd love to have you tell us what took you to Asia in the first place and into the design life you've led? Bill Bensley: Um, the, uh, on graduation day, it was really a funny story in that my I, my classmate, Lek Bunnag, um, asked me, "Where are you going after graduation?" I said, "Well, I don't really know, Lek. I have no idea. Uh, I'm just gonna go to do, go and, uh, and do Europe for four months." And he says, "Well, why don't you come to Singapore?" And I said, "Well, where the hell is that?" And he said, "It's under China, just come." And he gives me the address and sure enough, four months later I was there in China. I was there in Singapore. I tried to get a job, uh, teaching at the university there as he was doing, they told me to go away and come back in 10 years when I had some experience. I was 24 at the time. And then the next day I went out to a landscape architecture company, American one, and the next week I was on a plane to Bali designing gardens for the Hyatt. So that was, that was it. It was, it was fantastic. I arrived in Singapore with $17 in my pocket. Melissa Biggs Bradley: So you'd already been trained as an architect. Bill Bensley: I've been trained as an architect and landscape architect. Yeah. Melissa Biggs Bradley: Okay. And then did you ever go back to the States or was Asia your home from then on it? Bill Bensley: I, the moment I got to Asia, I said, "I'm home." (laughs) Never went, and I've never practiced in the States. Melissa Biggs Bradley: And then from Singapore, how did you end up moving to Bangkok? Bill Bensley: Uh, well, uh, I went to, uh, went to Hong Kong first for a couple of years and open, they opened the company, opened a branch office of that landscape architecture company, uh, for a couple of years. And then at 1989, that's when, um, Bangkok was really starting to boom, the economy was, and people were building hotels and so forth. Yeah. So the, the owner of the Dusit Thani, uh, invited me to come to Bangkok. He loaned me, no, he forwarded me $20,000. Uh, and he asked me, he said, I can stay in his hotel as long as I want and did work on some of his projects in one hand. And it was the week that I got there that I met my husband, Jirachai, in 1989. Melissa Biggs Bradley: Was there a hotel that really put you on the map that you could say really cemented your career as the designer of luxury hotels around the world? Bill Bensley: Uh, there were several. Um, by the time I was 30 years old, I, I was doing the, um, Four Seasons in Hualalai, Hawaii. And I went out, I was doing, I did a design competition against EDA, which was the dean in EDA was my professor in school. And we came in with 100 meters of drawings and we won the competition hands down. So that was probably it. Uh, then I did the Four Seasons in, in Chiang Mai, then the Four Seasons in Langkawi, then the, and then the Four Seasons in Koh Samui. So all of those were very, very instrumental. Melissa Biggs Bradley: And then you went on and worked for lots of other companies like the Park Hyatt in Siem Reap and the Oberois in India. Bill Bensley: R- yeah. All, and all the Oberois and the Leelas, the, the Capella, uh, Capella Ubud, that, that project is one of the best hotel in the world, travel and leisure. 22 little tents, and it's all filled with, um, uh, secondhand, uh, previously loved furniture. That is what really makes me tick. I love this when you can, when you can fill, when you can make the most out of going to junk shops and you can create, you know, the world's number one hotel by, by reusing something. And that's, that gives me the greatest kick in the world. And also by, by not having to spend new, uh, new materials, not have, to not have to, um, to do something environmentally sensitive. That's an interesting project. I wanna tell you about that one. Melissa Biggs Bradley: Well, tell me about it now. Bill Bensley: Um, the, the owner, first time hotel owner came to me and said, uh, "Mr. Bill, we wanna build 120-room Novotel here in Bali, in Ubud, in this beautiful, beautiful valley. And the Novotel, you know, they would take, you know, 20, no, $120. And I said, you know, if we do this, the entire valley will be completely destroyed. And I said, you know, "So we don't, what if we, what if we build only 22 tents and we, we put the tents up on stilts so we don't cut down any trees and we leave the, we leave the valley as it is, and, and we recess into the landscape?" And he said, "Okay." Um, and, and we spent, so we spent less money. We didn't cut down, down any trees. We were environmentally much more sustainable. And it's the top, uh, revenue making hotel in Bali today. Melissa Biggs Bradley: That's amazing. And I know Bill for a long time, um, you've been focusing on creating properties that are sustainable and have a conscience and a purpose. And that's something that's been really important to you. Is that something that you've known was going to be integral to your work from the beginning? Or is it something that you've evolved through your work to understand the importance of the relationship between bringing people into appreciate a place, but also the impact that they're having on a community when they're there and how there can be more of a give and take relationship? Because that seems to me what you've been doing at properties like Shinta Mani.