Solaire Resort & Casino

Samantha was responsible for overseeing all the resort’s design needs and worked closely with the company chairman and his operations team to develop the programme requirements that were the platform for this multi-faceted project. She identified and secured an on-site design management team and in consultation with the client established their key deliverables. Ongoing monitoring and reviews ensured that risks were mitigated, that the team was regularly flexed to match current requirements and that information was delivered in a timely manner to avoid project delays. She also managed Design Change Orders to ensure that any design changes were appropriate. Sam drove the design development process through a series of workshops with relevant consultants, including architects, designers, FF&E, M&E, landscape design and lighting, as well as client representatives, ensuring that the Coordinated Construction Drawing Sets which were produced were functional and buildable. In addition, she created the business case for luxury retail brands and successfully presented this, securing such tenants as Prada, Bvlgari and Louis Vuitton.

CLOSE-UP

Samantha works closely with the Hunat Glass team, and particularly Adam Kohout, the celebrated designer of bespoke glass installations based in North Bohemia, where the tradition of hand-blown glass has flourished for centuries. A magnificent Hunat chandelier has recently been installed in the main lobby of Solaire Manila’s new VIP Club, comprising nearly 1,000 hand-blown glass tubes of various colours, shapes, dimensions and optical structures, together weighing in at 2,500 kg. The company is currently crafting other chandeliers working to designs articulated and sketched by Sam and created and developed by Hunat’s in-house team.

For Samantha, the secret to their successful relationship is that they speak the same language creatively and in terms of service; they are both perfectionists, extremely conscious of the client’s high expectations and they share a creative eye. “Our installations are all over the world, but our approach remains personal and artisanal,” says Adam Zahradnik of Hunat. “It’s about listening well to clients and knowing how to interpret what they say into a genuinely original piece in which we can all take pride.”