Patrick Burke, FAIA, a Principal of Michael Graves Architecture & Design, was elevated to Fellowship in Object 2 for his decades-long influence on hospitality design. For hospitality projects around the world, he has envisioned the experience of places at every scale. His work ranges from master plans for extensive eco-sensitive resorts steeped in the local environment and culture, to award-winning architecture, interiors, furnishings, graphics and branding.
During his 40-year career at Graves, he has been at the forefront of several transformative periods in hospitality design. His work precipitated the rise of boutique hotels in the late 1980s before design was appreciated as an important part of the guest experience. In the following decades, he led the international hospitality industry toward unique hyper-local contextual developments that redefined visitors’ expectations. Now he is once again refocusing the guest experience through the lens of cultural context, social promise, sustainability and biophilia. His expert focus on hospitality has also transformed how other building types are designed to enhance the user experience, whether for cultural institutions, for health and wellness facilities, and even a federal courthouse.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he and Michael Graves, FAIA, co-designed the influential Walt Disney World Dolphin and Swan Hotels near Orlando, Florida, and later the Hotel New York at Euro Disney near Paris. While their exuberant designs responded to Disney’s vision of entertainment architecture at a theme park, it was the idea of creating desirable, unique and locally focused guest experiences that had a lasting effect on both clients and other architects and designers.
Dolphin and Swan by Michael Graves
Most of Patrick’s hospitality projects are located outside the United States – in Europe, the Middle East/North Africa, Central America and Asia. When he found that local resort markets embraced a neutral, vaguely Mediterranean aesthetic in places like Egypt and Costa Rica where no such culture existed, he argued for localized guest experiences. He has given each of the hotels and resorts he has designed throughout the world a character than reflects the historical, environmental and cultural context. They are thus more buildable and sustainable as well as enjoyable.
Patrick’s work has broadened the role that architects play. Hospitality design has consistently provided him the opportunity to conceive of hotels, resorts and other building types comprehensively – from master plans and architecture to interiors, furnishings, and graphics. For his most prodigious project, the international award-winning Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore, he designed the highly sustainable 3.5-million SF master plan, all of the buildings except for the theme parks (6 hotels, casino, spa, museum, convention center, theaters and retail), and most of the interiors down to the details of furniture, furnishings and graphics.
Espa Spa by Michael Graves
His most recently completed project, the interior design of The Loutrel, a boutique hotel in Charleston, South Carolina, opened in the fall of 2021. Building on local garden traditions, he named the hotel after famed local landscape architect Loutrel Briggs. Collaborating with the firm‘s interior designers, he created biophilia-inspired public spaces that have already made this hotel a must-see destination to visit.
The Loutrel Hotel | Photography by @kimgrahamphoto
Original article featured on AIA NJ website located here: https://aia-nj.org/blog/2022/02/28/24074/
Learn more about Patrick Burke, FAIA
Learn more about the Walt Disney World Dolphin and Swan Hotels
Learn more about ESPA Spa
Learn more about The Loutrel Hotel
