The billionaires’ escape, dubbed ‘the land of white couches,’ has a new refreshingly chic hideaway, thanks to one of New York’s most sought-after designers.
Giancarlo Valle combined a José Zanine Caldas chair, tile-topped coffee tables by Annie Fourmanoir, artwork by Blair Saxon-Hill, and a rug and sofa of his own design.
At just 42 years old, the designer-architect Giancarlo Valle has already become known for his warm take on modernism—a deliberate mixing of past and present that’s rooted equally in American craftsmanship and high European design. His holistic approach unifies interiors, furniture design, and architecture, the discipline in which he trained at Princeton, garnering a range of fans, including Hard Rock Cafe co-founder Peter Morton and Kylie Jenner. (Valle has even done a suite of furniture for Jenner’s children, Stormi and Aire.)
The curvilinear pool overlooks Gouverneur Beach.
For his first project in Gouverneur, a beachy area on the southern coast of ritzy St. Barts, Valle didn’t want to simply provide decorative surface polish. The designer says he cannot separate the interiors from a project’s architecture and environment. So for Villa La Pausa, as the home was dubbed, Valle worked closely with celebrated landscape designer Raymond Jungles and local architects at Design Affairs.
Being St. Barts, many things needed to be shipped in. “We brought in the tallest palm tree on the island...they all came in on a barge sideways,” Valle says. “The palm trees took instantly, creating an environment overnight.” For the dining room ceiling mural, London-based Israeli artist Yulia Iosilzon sent hundreds of handmade ceramic pieces in abstract shapes, which her team painstakingly installed.
Such exploits are just another day on the Caribbean isle, a luxury destination for such luminaries as Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Jeff Bezos, Larry Gagosian, and Paul McCartney. The villa is set to be one of the most expensive ones available for rent on an island flush with slick glass-and-metal contemporary houses with vast infinity-edge pools, which can sometimes go for over $400,000 a week during the high season.
The villa’s design bucks the trend of such massive new builds. At 6,000 square feet, the space has a relatively small footprint. And like a series of Russian nesting dolls, it comprises six bungalows that contain gathering spaces and bedrooms, while the expected trappings of an expansive property—spa, gym, and additional quarters—are all built into the hillside underneath. “Nothing I’ve seen in St. Barts feels like it has a sense of place,” says Valle. “I wanted to stir something up with an easy, relaxed quality...in an elevated way.”
Valle, who grew up in Guatemala and Chicago with Peruvian parents of Italian descent, brings eclectic references to his projects. His spaces feature unusual, immersive color combinations, a dynamic interplay of eras in art and objects, as well as his trademark wavelike lines in furniture and millwork. “What I love about interiors,” says Valle, “is that there’s a jazz element, you have to think on your feet and do it in a quick way; it’s such a counterpoint to the architectural process.”
At Villa La Pausa, Valle mostly eschewed a tropical treatment—Jimmy Buffett was a famous St. Barts resident—and instead relied on ultra-high-end European makers: Upholstery custom-made by Jouffre in Lyon, France, mingles with collectible midcentury design pieces from the likes of Charlotte Perriand, Jean Prouvé and Mathieu Matégot.
This ability to imbue a space with a sense of both the historical and the contemporary is on full display in Valle’s newly opened Tribeca outpost, 50 Lispenard. A devotee of the neighborhood, Valle set up his first office around the corner in 2016 on Broadway and Walker, amid street purveyors of knock-off handbags and watches. Valle’s wife, Jane Keltner de Valle, a former magazine editor and the co-founder of children’s skin-care brand Paloroma with Valle, discovered that the former gallery of design dealer Patrick Parrish was available, just a stone’s throw away. “It felt like nice continuity,” says Valle of taking over the space. “[Parrish] was the true pioneer of this neighborhood.”
On the ground floor of the 3,000-square-foot “Annex,” as the firm calls it, 19th-century furniture sourced from Scandinavia, 17th-century European artwork, custom commissions with contemporary collaborators, and Valle’s own designs in furniture, lighting, and hardware all mingle in a home-like setting. Mining the early New York City vernacular of the street, Valle clad the interior walls in his version of a white clapboard to reference a painting of the original buildings in the area. “I wanted to marry pre-cast iron New York and a cast-iron building.” Unlike traditional design showrooms, which are open only to the trade, with 50 Lispenard, Valle is hoping that Tribeca sidewalk shoppers will feel welcome to browse for furniture pieces and vintage items.
Downstairs is the Annex’s library and a zinc bar. Valle’s goal is to use the space as an intimate salon-style meeting place to host clients, friends, and collaborators. The library also displays the handmade dollhouse-like maquettes he is known for scaled models of rooms down to the furniture and objects. The use of technology is now ubiquitous among designers & architects, yet Valle often remains analog in his methods.
“Gravity doesn’t lie,” says Valle. “Primitive ways of working are more direct.”
