Insights on the future of travel from the visionary behind the membership-model luxury lifestyle concierge, Roman & Erica

In 2009, Erica Jackowitz and Roman Chiporukha cofounded Roman & Erica, a first-of-its-kind, high-touch luxury lifestyle concierge service. Through their expertise, organizational prowess and extensive network, Jackowitz and Chiporukha have worked to maximize the leisure time of their ultra-high-net-worth clients, and bring their dreams to life along the way. Their suite of capabilities ranges from securing impossible dinner reservations to planning remote travel—and they do so through a membership model that, for their clients, is like taking on an assistant dedicated to the leisure needs who works as an intricate part of their team. Jackowitz and Chiporukha are not a third party; they’re practically in-house.

As the acclaim of Roman & Erica has grown, Chiporukha has since co-founded SpaceVIP—a pioneering space-travel organization developing off-planet pursuits (including, right now, a Michelin-star chef’s dinner in a balloon at the edge of space). Chiporukha and Jackowitz also founded Rêve Travel Club, a travel-only spin-off of Roman & Erica. With this organization, Chiporukha and Jackowitz can reach more people by passing some of the logistical work to their team after leading creative with their clients for an initial quarter dedicated to experience ideation and planning. Rêve Travel Club has become an immediate success and channels the profound capabilities of Chiporukha, Jackowitz and their growing team.

To learn more about Rêve Travel Club, we sat down for a spirited, insightful conversation with Jackowitz.

In conversing with you, it’s easy to understand your level of expertise in the travel and lifestyle sectors. What is this expertise the result of?

Firstly, and most importantly, we actually live the lifestyle, and experience all that we curate for our clients. It all comes from first-hand knowledge, which allows our clients to trust us implicitly. We personally travel for about six months out of the year uncovering the hidden gems while also putting on our party shoes and dancing—loudly—at the world’s best spots and doing everything in between. To this end, I often find myself in conversations with potential new members who are unhappy with their current lifestyle and/or travel solutions and ask them: have you ever met the people planning these moments for you? Have you wanted to go grab a drink or dinner with them and hang out? Almost 90% of the time the answer is “no.”  They’ve been working together for 10+ years and have never met. What a funny thing that is. The person you entrust with your most valuable asset—your time—should be someone who uniquely understands you.

How do you maintain this enthusiasm for travel that’s very evident when meeting you?

Experience is something I am in constant search of. It is an absolutely unquenchable thirst for me. I am quite taken by the once-in-a-lifetime experiences, but perhaps, more importantly, I am continuously mesmerized by the beauty of life’s simplest moments. For example, the way a magnificent sunrise or sunset captivates and makes the whole world stop and look. Taking a bike ride through a city so you can feel the city, elicits all of the five senses rather than seeing it through a car window. Timing things the right way so you are the only one there, making it feel like the world is yours and yours alone. My enthusiasm comes from my own zest for life and life experiences. For me, no day is ever the same.

You invented the lifestyle management model with your company Roman & Erica. Can you talk about this model—what it allows you to provide, and how you’re able to provide it?

With Roman & Erica, we created the lifestyle management model almost 15 years ago. We are the first ever “Lifestylists.” We looked at many of the models out there back in 2009 and they had either a mass market concierge appeal and/or were replete with undisclosed hidden costs and heavy percentages added on top of any and all services. All of this didn’t make sense to us. 

First, how could you have a super-exclusive service and secure a dinner reservation at the latest hotspot if you’re charging annually what is essentially the cost of a luxury handbag? That means there must be dozens of calls per day from that company for that 7:30/8PM spot and not only do the hosts get annoyed but who gets precedence? There are a lot of people that can afford a service like that, so obviously the service has to be diluted and the client is not getting that reservation anytime soon unless a 5PM or 11PM reservation time sounds like a win to you? 

Next is transparency. Wealthy people have made their money for a reason. To not respect that and charge 20-30% on top of things like a last-minute car service reservation because they think no one’s watching is just stupid. We go for loyalty all day every day and, while I am sure we could have racked in a lot more money over the years had we followed the lead of many others before and after us, transparency is far more important to us and builds a kind of trust with our clients that keeps them coming back year after year.  

With these things in mind, we scaled back the number of clients we would manage and raised our costs charging an annual “salary” for our services that is commensurate with the level of dedication required. Growth has been organic and by word of mouth for the better part of the last decade, allowing us to control our numbers, and staff our team, accordingly—ensuring that they are appropriately trained in our way of doing things prior to taking on their first client. We charge more than anyone else because we dedicate more time than anyone else, have the best interests of the client in mind always, and have no other financial motivation.

With Rêve Travel Club, you’re further expanding access to your capabilities. Can you share a little bit about this model and what you hope to achieve here?

Well, the Roman & Erica lifestyle membership is a very limited model and we can only service about 30 or so families at a time. As we very rarely have a breakup, we are quite limited as to the number of new members we can service since Roman or I serve as their direct account manager available to them 24/7. We also like it that way, to be honest. When it comes to their leisure, we are their first call and we become a necessary part of their lifestyle and, at the end of most days, actual friends! On average, most of our clients have been with us for 10+ years. 

Over the years, we have been approached considerably for one-off travel needs by family and friends in our network as a result of our reputation in the industry. No model out there really inspired me as to how I could service the needs of those who were looking for a solution for only their travels versus their lifestyle as a whole. That was until the idea of Rêve Travel Club came to me about a year-and-a-half ago. Most importantly, I didn’t need to look to anyone else’s model for inspiration, I only needed to look at my own! 

Can you imagine that people have consultants they pay to give them advice in every single facet of their lives, from lawyers to accountants to interior designers, party planners, money managers, etc?  Yet literally the one thing in their lives that they work toward—their leisure time with their family and friends—they leave in the hands of a person on the other side of the 1 800 number they call on the back of their credit card or to a travel agent they don’t actually pay seriously? Then they proceed with expectations that everything they desire will be all set because the person they booked through gets paid by the hotel? To be clear, that person gets paid 5-10% from the hotel which is a joke considering the amount of time it takes them to get a spa reservation confirmed! Do you really think they have the time with this sort of model to dedicate to you given the number of people they must service just to make a living? It’s an absurd model. 

Those that are happy with these free services, diluted with so many members that the consultant has to prioritize quantity over quality work, should stick with it. For those who actually want to be able to simply show up to their travels with every detail planned and considered, every desire acknowledge and anticipated, confirmed and reconfirmed so that all you have to do is enjoy—then for the first time ever, Rêve Travel Club offers clients a solution. Moreover, that solution comes at a cost that can be less than what a weekly housekeeper costs. What could possibly be more worthwhile than not having to think while on vacation and take an actual break from it all?

Based on your observations, what are luxury travelers looking for in 2024 that they weren’t looking for before?

Availability! Wealth is at an all time high and, in a post 2020 Covid world, advanced planning is something that is here to stay. I talk about this often but what happened to travel in 2020 was that those that had bookings for 2020 were rescheduled to 2021. In 2021 people went to book for the current year and were sold out of dates and/or accommodations they wanted. Then in 2022 those people planned way in advance so that others were sold out. Thus a pattern of advanced planning began and I believe it is here to stay. 

A result of all of this advanced planning is that luxury travelers who once booked things on a whim with under two weeks’ notice are now often not able to get what they wanted. It’s about finding creative solutions that surpass what the client may have thought they wanted. That’s part of the fun!

Is there something that travelers aren’t looking for that they should be?

Enriching and unique experiences even in destinations that they often frequent! I am a big believer that, while you could go to the ends of the earth and beyond—see Space VIP—you can also do things in your travels to places you frequent in order to make them more exciting and something out of the ordinary. Just please don’t be boring. If you are going to St Tropez, try jet skiing in the canals of Port Grimaud. Go beyond the party in St Barth’s and hike in the mornings. Take a vintage Segway tour of Rome at night when it’s lit only by city lights! Climb a Via Ferrata one morning in Lake Como! Be weird, be different, and most of all, have an experience in time and place that will remain with you, always. A view from the top in and of itself is not by itself enough!

What are you providing that people can’t get elsewhere?

An unfiltered realness that uniquely syncs with their desires. Everything we do has a real feel because we have really felt it!  We only recommend the things we ourselves experience and do not recommend those that we didn’t enjoy and are just as vocal about them. We enable them to just show up to their travels and lifestyles, which is something that doesn’t exist elsewhere. 

When a client comes to you and says, “this is my dream,” how do you start to turn that into a reality? How collaborative is it, or do most clients put it in your hands?

Rêve actually means to “dream” in French so this question is quite apropos! How we make these dreams a reality really depends on the client! Some want to be involved in the process and some do not. No matter where they fall along that spectrum, our client intake and subsequent conversations help us get at what they are looking for and curate experiences accordingly. The questions I ask may sound simple but have been developed so strategically that they allow for maximum insight into who the client is and what they truly seek—even if they don’t yet know that themselves. We are in the business of delivering things on a silver platter. For some, they wish for that platter to be one of curated choices and for others, it is one that is more of a final itinerary that shocks and surprises.

Indian practice Studio Terratects has completed Urul, a house on a forested site in Kerala, India, which features a mud-plastered interior.

Designed for a client engaged in environmentalism, the home in Wayanad has a natural material palette intended to evoke nature as much as possible.

Studio Terratects has also celebrated local craftsmanship and “artisanal techniques” throughout to help connect Urul to its context.

“The core concept behind the design was to create a residence where every corner and element narrates a unique story of craftsmanship and nature’s interplay,” principal architect Roshith Shibu told Dezeen.

“The design integrates artisanal techniques and natural materials, resulting in a home that feels both thoughtfully crafted and organically connected to its environment.”

Urul has a clean-cut geometric form. The lower level of its front portion is contained within a cuboidal, earth-toned block, left open on one side to make space for a terrace.

Its upper level has a smaller footprint, enclosed by black and grey walls with large windows. It is topped by a flat roof with deep eaves to shelter a balcony.

Additional volumes intersect to form the remainder of the home, including a pale grey form and an earth-toned block that are connected by a glass link.

A black C-shaped volume extends from one side of the home’s raised ground floor, perforated with a circular opening that forms the front porch.

Accessed by a small flight of steps with a wooden handrail, this sheltered porch opens into a bright living area, bordered on one side by a fully glazed wall with sheer floor-to-ceiling curtains.

The living space is further brightened by white sofas and a skylight near the home’s entrance, while wooden furnishings give the space a natural feel.

Wooden battens line the ceiling and add texture to the room, in tandem with exposed structural elements made of concrete and steel.

In addition to the other materials, mud plaster made with locally sourced earth was used across the interior walls.

“In designing this residence, the material palette was chosen to reflect the client’s environmentalism and desire for a nature-inspired, earthy home,” said Shibu.

“Mud plastering was selected for its thermal insulation properties and natural aesthetic, with the added significance of bearing the fingerprints of the local tribal community, telling a story of traditional craftsmanship.”

A walkway extends from one side of the living space, where a wooden workstation runs along a wall lined with woven artwork. Behind this is a small courtyard.

“The arrangement of the spaces, including the outdoor areas, was guided by a commitment to creating a harmonious flow between the indoors and the natural surroundings,” said Shibu.

“Key considerations included maximising natural light, ensuring optimal ventilation, and fostering a seamless transition between the home’s interior and its external environment,” added Shibu.

“Functional zones are arranged to promote both privacy and social interaction, ensuring that each space serves its purpose while contributing to the overall harmony and balance of the residence,” he continued.

Other spaces on the ground floor include a bedroom illuminated by floor-to-ceiling glazing, a kitchen and dining room that borders a small courtyard and a bathroom. Beside the walkway is a winding staircase surrounded by walls with geometric cutouts and irregular voids.

The upper level of Urul features rooms designed to blend with the outdoors, including a generously sized terrace and a second bedroom. The walkway to the terrace borders an interior void decorated with hanging lights, offering views of the home’s ground floor.

Other recently completed Indian homes include a curving home with walls lined with discarded toys and compressed earth blocks and a rammed-earth home informed by vernacular building techniques.

The photography is by Prasanth Mohan.

The post Studio Terratects nestles earthy home into Keralan forest appeared first on Dezeen.

Among the many discoveries we experienced on a recent trip to Seoul’s Jeju Island is the bountiful scent of Hinoki, a cypress tree native to East Asia. Hinok is a local brand that leverages Hinoki-infused water to create fresh smelling room spray, laundry, hand and body products. This travel kit is a great way to to discover two of their signature items—the Hinoki Spray To Go (100ml) and the Hand Balm Mini (20ml). The spray is 100% Hinoki water with no other ingredients; the Hand Balm uses Hinoki water instead of purified water and both are upcycled. You may not easily be able to visit Jeju Island, but these items bring a little of its magic to you.

An updated, postmodern value framework for architecture preservation is needed to protect buildings that are young or ubiquitous as well as those that are exceptional, writes Owen Hopkins.

It’s not uncommon for architects and clients to disagree. In fact, it’s often better that they don’t entirely see eye-to-eye. A lively exchange of ideas and opinions often leads to a better building.

However, it is unusual for a client – or rather funder in this case – to disagree so much with one aspect of the design that they leave a letter hidden inside anticipating its future removal and their ultimate vindication. Yet, as was reported last week, this is exactly what happened when a column in the foyer of the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in London was removed as part of Selldorf Architects’ controversial remodelling of Venturi Scott Brown’s famous scheme.

It is hard to imagine any other Grade I-listed building in Britain being treated this way

The letter, from the project’s funder, John Sainsbury, who died in 2022, relayed how he thought the column was a “mistake” that “we would live to regret” and how his future self would be “absolutely delighted that your generation has decided to dispense with the unnecessary columns”.

Anywhere else this would simply be an amusing incident and example of the age-old tussle between architect and client. But here it brings to the fore once again the argument around the Sainsbury Wing’s transformation, of which the removal of these columns is a part, and, more broadly, about the preservation – or lack of it – of postmodern architecture.

Whatever one thinks of Venturi Scott Brown’s work or the alterations now underway, it is hard to imagine any other Grade I-listed building in Britain being treated this way.

The very idea of postmodern heritage presents something of a paradox when it comes to preservation and listing, with buildings of that era frequently evading many of the categories by which decisions of “significance”, and ultimately of value, are made. Partly as a result, postmodern buildings are increasingly being lost, with the furore over the Sainsbury Wing following contentious redevelopments of several seminal projects in the USA, such as Helmut Jahn’s Thompson Center in Chicago and Philip Johnson’s AT&T building in New York.

It pays to be suspicious of decision-making systems that claim any kind of objectivity, as the listing system inherently does. And the fate of these and countless lesser-known examples of postmodernism points to the deficiencies and broader ideological underpinnings that determine why some buildings are deemed worthy of preservation and others allowed to be heavily altered or even demolished.

One of the great ironies of the prevailing concept of heritage is the extent to which it is founded on a modernist value system. This, weirdly, is one part of the modernist philosophical edifice that still stands, arguably stronger than ever. But this close connection is really no surprise given the way their histories are intertwined, with many conservation movements arising in response to the modernist wrecking-ball being directed at historic cities in the 1950s and ’60s.

We urgently need more open, inclusive and progressive understandings of heritage

To prove the point, just look at the language that the UK Government uses in its Principles of Selection for Listed Buildings, which talks of buildings’ “importance”, “significance” and “virtuosity”, their “innovation”, “distinction”, “merit” and “rarity”, and how they might “represent” or “illustrate”.

While it’s possible for a building to meet these criteria in any number of ways, running through them is the assumption that a building’s value is predicated on the extent to which it has broken new ground and somehow driven architecture as a whole forward, as opposed reflecting existing trends. It’s a way of assigning value that is still frequently taken for granted – and not just in architecture – yet is entirely ideological, reflecting a belief in the idea of architectural “progress” and development that, quite aside from questions of style or aesthetics, was at the core of the modernist world view.

This doesn’t just affect postmodern architectural heritage, of course, but shapes how we designate and value heritage of all kinds. And, despite attempts by well-intentioned heritage officers to negate it, results in a system structured to exclude certain buildings and the people and histories connected to them.

Indeed, this is not a simply a question of the built environment, but of how our collective histories are written and by whom. In an ever more politically polarised and divided world, we urgently need more open, inclusive and progressive understandings of heritage. So, instead of the exclusive and restrictive modernist concept of heritage, how about a postmodern one that actively embraces the possibility of multiple value systems?

But what would this mean in practice? Well, rather than valuing buildings for their originality or uniqueness, we might privilege those that are commonplace or ubiquitous, buildings that aren’t exceptional and instead part of everyday life like shopping centres, multiplex cinemas, leisure centres or housing estates.

Then there’s the requirement that buildings stand the test of time, reflected in Historic England’s rule that buildings have to be 30 years old to be eligible for listing. It’s why we lost buildings like Terry Farrell’s TV-am in North London (pictured) – a wonderfully bold and colourful building that epitomised the energy of the early 1980s, but for that reason soon went out of fashion and was remodelled before anyone thought of listing it. So, let’s invert the 30-year rule and specify that buildings can’t be demolished until 30 years after their completion.

Heritage is not about the past, it’s about what we value enough to preserve for the future

One of the things that counts against a building when being considered for listing is alterations. Which brings us back to the Sainsbury Wing, a building that was always conceived by its architects explicitly as an addition to the National Gallery, and thereby in the modernist concept of heritage is of inherently lesser value.

But what if we looked at alterations not as things that harm a building’s significance, and instead as positive evidence of its changing use, thereby enhancing its value? Sometimes the modification is actually more valuable than the original, which is certainly the case comparing Venturi Scott Brown’s addition to William Wilkins’ uninspired original building.

A criticism of the above approach is that it ultimately leads to the preservation of everything. This may not be a bad thing given the urgent need to change fundamentally our attitude to demolition. But more realistically a postmodern concept of heritage could inform an alternative, supplementary set of principles for listing.

For example, it would be relatively straightforward to create a carbon-based value system, so that buildings with particularly high embodied carbon are automatically preserved. Or it could be stipulated that those buildings with a vital social or public purpose should be preserved – at a stroke protecting every council house in the country.

Heritage is not about the past, it’s about what we value enough to preserve for the future. Changing how we designate architectural heritage will also change what new architecture is produced. If we restrict the demolition of buildings with high embodied carbon, it will undoubtedly lead to few new ones getting built.

Yet, a more inclusive concept of heritage arguably has an even bigger role to play in helping ensure a diverse and pluralist built environment, and in turn helping pave the way for a more open politics and culture. A city that has room for every building has room for everyone.

Owen Hopkins is an architecture writer, historian and curator. He is director of the Farrell Centre at Newcastle University and was previously senior curator at Sir John Soane’s Museum and architecture programme curator at the Royal Academy of Arts. He is the author of eight books, including Lost Futures: The Disappearing Architecture of Post-War Britain (2017) and Postmodern Architecture: Less is a Bore (2020).

The photo is by Richard Bryant.

Dezeen In Depth
If you enjoy reading Dezeen’s interviews, opinions and features, subscribe to Dezeen In Depth. Sent on the last Friday of each month, this newsletter provides a single place to read about the design and architecture stories behind the headlines.

The post “Instead of the restrictive modernist concept of heritage, how about a postmodern one?” appeared first on Dezeen.

Chinese interior studio Various Associates has completed an irregular pyramid-shaped flagship store for drone brand DJI in Shenzhen, China.

Located at OCT Harbour on the shores of Shenzhen Bay, the flagship store was designed to demonstrate the Chinese drone company’s latest technology.

The 4000-square-metre store contains spaces for product display, a gallery, customer service area and an event space in four floors, in addition to a public park called DJI Oasis, which is used for drone flights.

The multi-facated facade was clad in granite with large triangular windows on the angled surfaces facing the park, which is connected to the second floor via an outdoor, zigzagging staircase.

Gentle ramps in the park lead visitors into the store, while forming a series of triangular patterns, responding to the same geometric form of the architecture.

To minimise the direct sun exposure from the glass facade, Various Associates inserted an “interior skin” of stainless steel louvres to the outer shell of the building.

The second layer forms an origami shape on the ceiling that corresponds to the outer shape.

“We hope to solve the problems of site mobility and sun exposure through a holistic program, and simplify the visual complexity of the interior walls and window sills, while retaining the original geometric aesthetics of the site architecture,” explained the Shenzhen-based studio.

“The newly added ‘interior skin’ filters the sunlight, casting unique daylight patterns throughout the day, creating a sense of outdoors.”

On the ground floor, DJI‘s drone products are displayed on custom-made tables in angled shape of the brand’s classic drones’ propeller blades.

They are lit from above by lights, which are same shape, suspended from the ceiling.

The third floor of the building contains the Hasselblad Experience Station – a joint display area for DJI and Swedish camera and lenses brand Hasselblad.

The gallery-like space with a darker tone contrasts the bright and airy product section downstairs, which is used for showcasing the photography created by DJI and Hasselblad.

The building is topped with the 15-meter-high DJI Horizon Hall, which was designed as an event venue. According to the studio, the dramatic geometric space naturally draws visitors to look up upon entering, evoking the actions of watching a drone taking off.

Various Associates is an architecture and interior design studio founded by Dongzi Yang and Qianyi Lin in 2017. Elsewhere in Shenzhen, the studio previously designed a cafe and cocktail bar that emulates a small cosy cabin.

The photography is by SFAP.

Project credits:

Architect: Various Associates
Chief designers: Qianyi Lin, Dongzi Yang
Project management: Hanqun Cai
Design team: Yuwen Deng, Zebing Li, Benzhen Pan, Chao Luo, Junrui Zhang, Qian Xie, Yue Zhang
Lighting design: GD Lighting Design
MEP design: Tongji Architects
Structural design: Tongji Architects
Contractor: HECIAN

The post Various Associates creates irregular pyramid-shaped flagship store for DJI appeared first on Dezeen.