Patina Maldives, Under the Design Hotels Brand, Opens on the Largest of the Four Fari Islands

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Main Photo: The new Patina Maldives resort

Date: August 2021

Name: Patina Maldives

Location: North Male Atoll, The Maldives

Number of Keys: 90 beach and over-water villas plus 20 Fari Studios

Seller: The site is reclaimed land from the sea…this is one of three projects side by side, there is a Ritz Carlton as well with Kerry Hill Architects and a Patina with Kengo Kuma still to be completed.

Buyer: Patina Maldives has opened on the largest of the four Fari Islands in May 2021. Patina is a new brand within Capella Hotel Group. Nicholas Clayton, CEO of Capella Hotel Group: “Patina Hotels & Resorts will become a new leader in progressive hospitality. Focusing on creating a seamless experience, the brand is refreshing, dynamic and modern, appealing to the blended lifestyle of today’s curious and conscious consumer.”

Here, a focus on wellness, sustainability, and cultural education are manifested through features that include a soulful spa, an organic garden, and an immersive art installation by James Turrell. The result is a multi-faceted resort that presents a place to recharge through both the recalibration and stimulation of body and mind. Patina Maldives was designed by Studio MK27, led by Brazilian architect Marcio Kogan, with the preservation of nature in mind.

The resort, the debut property from Patina Hotels & Resorts, is populated with 90 contemporary beach and over-water villas and 20 Fari Studios, where unassuming elegance and architectural lines align with the sea’s horizon. The structures and their interiors combine neutral tones with natural materials, such as soft woods, stone, and organic textiles, and overlap with verdant gardens shaped by landscape designer Vladimir Djurovic for a network of serene spaces evenly scattered across the island, who did the landscape architecture for the 3 resorts.

“In such a unique location, architecture’s role is to enhance the experience of the astonishing surroundings”, Kogan says of this harmony of indoors and outdoors, of sanctuary and stimulation.

This is also accomplished through the expert illumination of spaces with custom light pendants; floor-to-ceiling windows that frame stunning views; and the application of lines and texture to reflect and mediate the connection between nature and the human body.

Rather than building purely functional structures, Studio MK27 has developed a series of poetic spaces. This vision fills each of the 110 accommodations, which range from studio rooms and one- and two-bedroom villas to the two-story, three-bedroom Beach House and The Beach Collection, which combines multiple villas to create an expansive private enclave.

The peaceful Fari Studios feature balconies offering views of either the island’s social hub, Fari Marina Village, or tropical greenery while the resort’s villas are either located on land or built on platforms directly over the Indian Ocean and are equipped with private pools and over-sized outdoor tubs. Suited to larger groups,

The Beach Collection is a hideaway woven into Patina Maldives’s tropical terrain and includes the two-story Beach House and six surrounding one-bedroom villas, for a total of nine bedrooms, seven pools, and private beach access.

Beyond living spaces, Studio MK27’s contemporary aesthetic also unites Patina Maldives’s 12 restaurants, lounges, and food trucks.

These include the Fari Beach Club, where fine dining and imbibing come together under the guidance of chef Nick Bril, whose previous restaurants have been honored with multiple Michelin stars. This joins Helios, an outdoor Mediterranean restaurant; Roots, with its plant-based experience centered on organic home-grown produce; and Wok Society, a high-energy social club serving Asian fusion dishes.

Three roaming food trucks also offer quick bites such as burgers, Asian-inspired street food, and homemade gelato. Across all dining options there is a consistent theme of conscious cuisine, compounded by the employment of a zero-waste approach and proactive carbon footprint reduction practices.

Complementing the diverse array of dining experiences is Patina Maldives’s far-reaching wellness and cultural programming.

Each guest’s wellness journey begins on their first night, when they receive a turn-down amenity of personalized 3D-printed gummy vitamins designed by the British nutritional company Nourished. The vegan supplements hint toward the idea of recharging one’s mind and body, which can be fully experienced at the resort spa, FLOW.

A Watsu pool, saunas, cold showers and sound therapy are among the standout features of this space, which also offers a range of restorative experiences in its four double treatment rooms, salon, floatation tank, yoga pavilion, and hammam.

This is further supplemented by both private sessions and workshops, hosted by on-site specialists, on sound healing, sleep therapy, nutrition, and posture, in addition to high- and low-impact workout classes, aqua cycling, and paddle boarding.

An artist-in-residence program further stimulates the mind and is joined by several creative initiatives that include personalized playlists for guests during their stay via the Patina app, as well as an impressive island-wide art collection curated by The Artling.

Hypnotically detailed landscape photographs by Cássio Vasconcellos are in every villa, while Filipa Frois Almeida and Hugo Reis of the experimental Portuguese studio FAHR 021.3 conceptualised and built an architectural intervention on the beach. Elsewhere, striking mirrored columns by Chinese artist Hongjie Yang blend reality with fantasy.

The cornerstone of Patina Maldives’s art collection is Amarta, a site-specific, immersive “Skyspace” installation by internationally renowned artist James Turrell; inside the autonomous structure, one’s senses are not only heightened but also realigned with the pulse of nature through a renewed perception of the sun and surrounding light.

Each element of the resort is tied together with Patina Maldives’s overarching commitment to transparency and sustainability.

QR codes placed at Amarta link to detailed information about the origin of building materials provided by Sourcemap, a supply chain mapping program, and when developing the island over 300,000 plants cleared during construction on surrounding islands were brought to the resort for replanting. Moreover, no single-use plastics can be found on-site, restaurants such as Roots source produce from the hotel’s own organic garden, and solar panels provide the resort’s energy.

Located in the archipelagic paradise that is The Maldives, Patina Maldives occupies the largest of the four Fari Islands in the North Malé Atoll.

Two of the neighboring islands are also home to resorts and the third, known as the Fari Campus, hosts staff residences alongside an innovative program for employees focused on community, education, and engagement.

Patina Maldives is connected to neighboring resorts via a complimentary dhoni service and luxury boat transfers are provided for the 45-minute ride between Malé International Airport in the Southern Atoll.

The new hotel is a member of Design Hotels, which represents and markets a curated selection of over 285 independent hotels in more than 60 countries across the globe. In 2017, Design Hotels launched Further, a traveling laboratory for experiential hospitality that transforms hotels across the globe into temporal hubs of thematic exploration. The mission behind Further aligns with the values of the future-facing Promad, a new generation of traveler embracing progressive travel and global nomadism.

Founded by Claus Sendlinger in 1993, Design Hotels offers its members insightful travel industry knowledge, from market trend consultancy to international sales representation. The company has it’s headquarters in Berlin and branches in London, Los Angeles, New York and Singapore. In 2019, Design Hotels joined forces with Marriott Bonvoy, enabling its member hotels to have both a greater and more selective reach while offering its Community the benefit of the industry’s leading loyalty program.

THPT Comment: THPT prides itself on cutting out all the “flowery crap” out of hotel press releases, and presenting our readers with factual statements on the hotels we write about….however here we’re in a quandry – both the Patina resort and Design Hotels forward-thinking activities sound absolutely fab! Can’t wait to visit this one….

First Seen: Dreaming of Maldives – A Blog

The Hotel Property Team (THPT) is a small group of highly experienced business professionals. Between us, we provide a range of skills and experience which is directly relevant to those involved in the hotel property market.

 

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