Architectural Digest named the designers Will Cooper, Billy Cotton and Adam Charlap Hyman to its 2023 AD100 list of industry tastemakers, and for good reason.
Will Cooper, partner and chief creative officer at Ash NYC, “got the design world’s attention,” the magazine said, with the vision he brought to Baltimore’s Hotel Ulysses and the Dean, a hotel housed in a historic building that was once a brothel in Providence, RI.
The “mix-and-match philosophy” behind Billy Cotton’s Brooklyn-based studio has made the designer “a go-to for art world luminaries” like Cindy Sherman and Gordon Terry for everything from home furnishings to architecture to lighting.
And Adam Charlap Hyman, one half of the firm Charlap Hyman & Herrero, brings an “academic approach to every job,” whether that is a rice paper lantern adorned with painted fungi or an avant-garde birdhouse installed at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
But Cooper, Cotton and Charlap Hyman are more than just a trio of creative wunderkinds. They’re also travel buddies. Earlier this month, they embarked on an inspiration trip to the baroque Guatemalan city of Antigua in search of new textiles and techniques to expand their repertoires.
For this week’s newsletter, Cooper shares a travelogue of their four-day stint, from bumpy tuk-tuk rides to private helicopter tours of the country's volcanic peaks.
A Hacienda Filled With Arts and Crafts
The designers stayed at Villa Bokeh, an artist’s estate belonging to the expat Mitchell Denburg turned 15-room boutique hotel with nearly six acres of verdant gardens, walking paths and bamboo forest. “Mitchell worked with the garden designer John Saladino on the whole thing, or, as Mitchell would say, John helped him ‘site the property,’ which is why it looks so well done,” Cooper said.
The property’s suites blend colonial architecture with Denburg’s own photos of Guatemalan life (baptisms, townspeople with stacks of wood on their heads), antique tapestries curated by the Guatemalan textile collector Violeta Gutiérrez Caxaj, and tilework designed by Paliare Studio and Grupo Alta. Cooper’s own room offered a postcard-perfect view of Volcán de Agua. “It’s a nice thing to wake up to,” he said.
