WIA_ISSUE2_2023

DESIGN
Redefining luxury
hospitality with
Clint Nagata
By Yap Shi Quan
Designer Clint Nagata eschews conventional notions of
luxury in his hospitality designs, focusing instead on telling
stories of a place’s culture and history, creating elegance
out of meaning and authenticity.
Clint Nagata,
Founder and
Creative Partner of
BLINK Design Group
Designer Clint Nagata and the studio he
founded, BLINK Design Group, had a
busy and fulfilling 2022. While overseeing
multiple luxury resort and hotel design
projects across numerous countries, they
also scooped up regional and international
accolades for their projects.
Their Roku Kyoto resort, which is reportedly
Hilton’s first LXR resort in Asia-Pacific, won
the award for Best Guestrooms at Ahead
Asia, and at the 42nd Gold Key awards for
Excellence in Hospitality Design in the US, it
was a finalist for the Best Luxury Guestroom
and Best Luxury Lobby categories, among
other awards. Another resort, the Regent
Phu Quoc — a personal favourite of Nagata’s
— made the finals for Best Luxury Resort
at the Gold Key awards last year. This
achievement is more impressive in hindsight
since Regent Phu Quoc was built during the
pandemic, where Nagata and his team could
not travel to the site and had to rely on
Zoom meetings to track the progress.
For them to have garnered so many
achievements, Nagata and his team seem
to have figured out something integral
about luxury hospitality design.
PLACEMAKING
Luxury travelling is back in full swing after
the pandemic, and travellers are starved
for bespoke experiences. What was once
purely associated with luxury hospitality,
that of opulence and indulgence, gave
way to more curated destinations and
packages. And the architectural and
interior designs of such resorts and
hotels play a part in the redefined luxury
experience.
It happens so that creating meaningful
luxury designs is the specialty of Nagata
and BLINK, and they do so through Nagata’s
design philosophy of ‘placemaking’.
“My design philosophy is to take both our
clients and guests on a journey that tells the
story of a place through a modern design
lens,” he explained. “We seek to create
striking interior-based designs that capture
the spirit of the place through simplicity,
balance, and proportion.”
BLINK’s mission is to translate their clients’
visions into exceptional pieces of architecture
inspired by travel experiences and cultural
encounters. To do this, Nagata and his team
listen closely to their clients on their choice
of location, the site history, the community
relationship and connection with guests — a
time-intensive process, according to Nagata.
For instance, when designing Regent Phu
Quoc, Nagata and BLINK discovered a type
48 WOOD IN ARCHITECTURE • ISSUE 2 – 2023