Faena Hotel breathes new life into neglected Miami beach neighbourhood

“When I came here this was not a good area. People passed but nobody stopped, there was nothing, not even a cafe.”

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Fast forward to 2016 and the glamorous Faena Hotel is one of the first openings in the nascent Faena district (the neighbourhood is only the second given official district designation since the Art Deco Historic District was thus named in 1979). Beautifully fashioned out of the former 1940s Saxony Hotel, which was a luxury playground for stars such as Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe and Dean Martin, the hotel is a multi-sensorial and dramatic experience. It’s no surprise then that its look and design comes courtesy of a collaborative effort between Faena, film director Baz Luhrmann and the latter’s wonderfully talented set designer wife Catherine Martin.

The spaces are cinematic and layered, revealing themselves a little more every time you look. The trio have created interiors punctuated by intense reds, turquoises and golds and the work of artists and designers, known and unknown, many from Latin America. Multi-talented Argentine graphic designer Juan Gatti was asked to create a lush and extravagant artistic universe for the hotel that includes site-specific murals celebrating exotic flora and fauna in its contemplative double-height entrance and opulent, nature-themed designs that feature in everything from the scarves the female staff wear around their necks to the paper that lines the hotel’s stationery envelopes.

As well as the usual extras (a spa, two restaurants, seven cocktail bars, a pool and the beach with its red-and-white themed umbrellas and cabanas) Faena Hotel includes a 160-seat cabaret-style theatre, also designed by Luhrmann and Martin, in the only new-build part of the hotel. Faena says the theatre is just another strand in a project that is all about telling stories. Its first show will include singing and dancing and has been created by internationally renowned director Alfredo Arias with costumes by Gatti.

“Nobody takes risks today any more, in any industry,” says Faena. And he should know about risks, having sold off his fashion business in 1996 and retired to Punta del Este in Uruguay for five years to become a rose gardener. “When people create a US$300 million (HK$2.3 billion) hotel they usually go safe and choose to make it all white. Many hotel chains look like banks.” Faena isn’t about to go safe any time soon because he isn’t interested in places that are cold, lacking in intensity or low on “love and emotion”. “What we brought to the table is the opposite of what a hotel is today,” he concludes.