Meet the woman behind many of COMO Group's eclectic spaces, including the new COMO Orchard

During Paola Navone's first meeting with the project manager for COMO Point Yamu in Thailand, she was aghast when he readily suggested for her to imitate the works of famous European designers. “There was no sophistication. He said that as the import tax in Thailand was very high, he could copy anything we wanted very well, and showed me a copy of a product by Philippe Starck. I said ‘listen, this country is so rich [with craft]. How can you start a project thinking you are going to copy something that is from somewhere else?’” 

Eventually, the project manager was replaced, but this incident exemplifies the honest approach of the Italian architect and designer, and founder of her Milan-based company Paola Navone OTTO Studio.

Born in 1950, Navone has created many authentic spaces, as well as furniture and products for brands such as Driade, Alessi, Cappellini, Baxter and Gervasoni. From the 1970s to the 1980s, she was part of Studio Alchimia that included Alessandro Mendini, Ettore Sottsass Jr and Andrea Branzi. The famous, post-radical, avant-garde group rejected the dominating rational sentiments of Modernism influenced by the Bauhaus, conceiving alternative playful, colourful and quirky designs.   

COMO Point Yamu was the first project Navone completed for COMO Hotels and Resorts. In fact, it was her first-ever hotel project. Perched on a cliff overlooking the Andaman Sea, it is arguably the most design-savvy resort in Phuket. The original architecture is by Jean-Michel Gathy of Aman fame, while Navone did the interiors.  

A cloud of woven lamps made by local artisans hang like laced chrysalis at the foyer, setting the tone for a craft-rich resort whose textures include traditional wood tiling, teak furniture, rattan and ceramics. The colour palette is a defining feature of the hotel, ranging from turquoise and aquamarine shades to striking burnt orange inspired by the robes of Thai monks that captures the sense of place. Plenty of white underscoring COMO’s pared-back philosophy and Navone’s love for the Mediterranean reflects the brilliant tropical sunshine.  

“If I had to import furniture from Italy, I pay three times the price and I don't have this quality, but an industrial product that everybody can have. At COMO Point Yamu, almost 100 per cent of the materials were from Thailand,” Navone shared. Having worked more than 20 years in the region prior to this project, she was well aware of the country’s rich artisanal offerings. OTTO Studio was founded in Milan after these sojourns in Asia.   

On how the collaboration with COMO Hotels and Resorts came about, Navone recalled, “I had known Mrs Christina Ong for a long time. One day, she said, ‘why don't you come to Thailand?’ So I did, and we did this project together. We discovered we like to work together so much because she is very clear, and I like simple [working] relationships. I’m also very flexible – if you like something, you like it; if you don’t like it, we can change it.” 

Navone and her team would go on to design several other properties for the brand, including COMO Uma Canggu in Bali, COMO Castello del Nero in Tuscany and COMO Le Montrachet in Burgundy. In Singapore, the studio designed the F&B spaces in COMO Dempsey (Glow and Supernature are most recent additions to the cluster), as well as several spaces for COMO Orchard that opened this September.  

The latter is an amalgamation of COMO’s entities of retail, food, wellness and hotel in one location. I had a chance to meet with Navone in the flesh when she visited a few days before the building’s opening. As we sit in a makeshift interview corner, Navone’s sharp eyes dart about, catching a detail here or there to be fixed. The designer embodies matronly chic, with her crop of silvery hair, chunky white sandals and kohl-lined eyes. She takes her time to give her observations but is free with her affections, pepping our conversation with plenty of chuckles.

Around us, people are hurriedly putting pieces together. The beeping of forklifts and men in hard hats contrast with the melange of wonderful materials and structures that Navone and the OTTO team have conceived. There is a resin counter set with fragments of recycled denim and a soft tower rising two storeys, made from silver, flame retardant fabric. On the second floor, the same fabric cloaks chunky columns like sports jackets, and accessories from Jacquemus and Alexander Wang sit in shelves made from metal wires.   

In OTTO Studio’s world, basic utilitarian materials are reinvented with regard to functionality, proportion or form. They become protagonists, shining alongside the food and fashion. For Cedric Grolet’s pastry shop on the ground floor, lamps with silver shades, folded and thin as crepes, fill the tall volume. She also designed COMO Cuisine on the second floor and the wellness centre for COMO Shambala Singapore, which will only be completed at the end of the year. The hotel segment – COMO Metropolitan Singapore – was designed by Atelier Ikebuchi.   

“It's an adventure that you go to for discovery; an integrated system with the COMO quality. The idea is that when you enter into this world of COMO, there are many things to do: You can go to the spa, you can go shopping, you can have the [cakes] from the most famous patisserie from Paris. So it’s a little chance of going travelling without going on a plane,” said Navone.  

Her design celebrates the lofty spaces and abundant light flooding in through glass walls. “When I have a new project, I always start from scratch. I don't like to repeat the same bathroom, otherwise it’s not so interesting, and not so fun,” Navone remarked. This is palpable for each COMO property she dresses.  

At the same time, all these spaces embody the brand’s identity, which Navone has come to understand very well. “COMO is a special company, which is based a lot on immaterial value. The people who come to COMO like quality, they appreciate personalised attention and have a lot of interest for lifestyle,” she described.  

Cementing a sense of place and respecting the existing architecture is important. For example in COMO Le Montrachet, the team at OTTO Studio accentuated the quaintness of the conservation structure. “It’s in the middle of a little, little town; very rural and traditional. The old building has small rooms and slanted walls that you cannot touch because the architectural regulations are very strict. So we made the rooms like cocoons – very charming, very intimate. We also try to bring in a bit of the countryside by using the colour of the olive trees – a green with a bit of grey,” explained Navone.  

The designer’s renegade spirit is inborn. From young, she was set for a creative life. “I was a very bad girl and always wanted to do the opposite of what my parents wanted me to do,” Navone laughed. “They had a technical company producing air-conditioning systems, so they were not exactly creative." As a child, she yearned to travel the world that she discovered through the Abitare design magazines her mother brought home. Some contained foldout posters, which Navone would take.   

“There was this particular set of three images of the [traditional houses of the indigenous] Dogon people in West Africa: One was the village from afar, the second was only of one house, and the third was just the door, which was a piece of wood hung on the wall. I had these three pictures in front of my bed. I was going to bed dreaming of going to Africa, and waking up thinking of going to Africa,” Navone said.  

After graduating with an architecture degree from the Polytechnic University of Turin, she went to Africa for two years, doing studies with a professor on a nomadic tribe. Upon returning, Mendini, who had noticed her thesis, got her to work for his trailblazing architecture magazine Domus. A bevy of subsequent design projects including a “crazy” collection unveiled at the Salone del Mobile led her to realise that she enjoyed design and wanted to pursue it. That was the start of many “adventures”, as she terms her work in another interview.  

Like an adventurer, Navone is not limited by geographical boundaries; the world is rich with ideas, materials and craft, so that is where she will go. In fact, after her Singapore visit, she is off to India. “We have a project in Porto. I want to see if the people there can do something for that project,” she smiled, flitting off into the creative chaos at COMO Orchard to work her Midas Touch.