Alexandra Champalimaud

Hi, I’m Stacy Shoemaker Rauen, editor and chief of Hospitality Design magazine with HD’s What I’ve Learned podcast. My conversation today is with the fabulous Alexandra Champalimaud. She fled Portugal and ended up in Canada and started her own design firm with just three people in her apartment. Today, she’s responsible for 52 in New York. She credits her success to being tenacious and paying attention to the details.

SSR: Hi, I’m here with Alexandra Champalimaud of her wonderful design firm, Champalimaud Design. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Alexandra Champalimaud: It’s a pleasure.

SSR: It’s always a pleasure to have you here. You’re right across the street, so it made it easy.

AC: It’s amazing, we’re going to have to do this more often.

SSR: I know. We could just have little get-togethers. Our podcast is What I’ve Learned and so we’re going to go through your career and your life and see how you ended up where you are today. You grew up in Portugal, right?

AC: I did.

SSR: Did you always know you wanted to be a designer, or were there any early childhood influences of design?

AC: Well, absolutely, there were many influences. First of all, I lived in an amazingly beautiful place outside of Lisbon, with glorious sort of houses and beautiful farms and beautiful views, beautiful gardens. Lisbon, as a city, has extraordinary architecture. You’re surrounded by beautiful houses and beautiful architecture, and it was very inspirational to me—the arrangement of buildings, of rooms, of houses—how everything is. It was all fascinating to me at a young age. There we are. That was the very beginning. From then on, it was easy.

SSR: You went to school for design, too?

AC: I went to school for design in Portugal, having been schooled in England. But then I went to design school in Portugal. I then ended up working with my professor (an architect), and I did my first hotel with him in the south of Portugal. That was in 1971 or something like that. A long time ago.

SSR: But look at all you’ve done now.

AC: I know. It’s been quite a journey and I’m absolutely delighted that I’ve come all the way from Portugal through to Montreal to New York and here I am now. I couldn’t be happier. It’s the most incredible place to be.

SSR: You actually had to leave Portugal.

AC: There was a revolution in my country in 1974 and that was quite something. It was called the Carnation Revolution because all the soldiers had carnations in their barrels of their guns, which is quite interesting. Therefore, they were slightly intimidating, but not necessarily violent. But basically it was a time for change and the old regime, a political regime that was a right-winged, went out the door and in came a very left, almost communist regime. It was a time where it was difficult for some of us, and I was pretty young. My husband [and I] decided we wanted to leave Portugal. He had connections in Canada, in Montreal, and he spoke French pretty fluently and I can speak some too, so we ended up there.

SSR: That must’ve been an insane experience leaving everything.

AC: It was heart wrenching, to be honest. It was heart-wrenching and life changing. I had a baby who is now 46 years old. But at the time, he was a year and a half. We left with him and left my family behind and his family behind. It’s pretty traumatic. But if you’re determined, you go through life as one has to and you try and pick out all the good things and you celebrate them along the way and you try and ignore the bad ones, so you look forward and you learn to build things and build a way of life. I was very fortunate to say that in fact was successful. It really all worked out well but with some difficulty.

SSR: You ended up in Montreal and did you continue your design career there?

AC: I did. I continued my design career. It was actually quite challenging at the beginning, because it was the the early, and people didn’t travel as much. Although I had traveled extensively in Europe, I had not to North America and Canada was brand new in my mind and my eyes and it was cold and I wasn’t used to all the snow. It was all pretty traumatic. We didn’t know anyone there and we had very little money. All those things provide a little strain on one’s existence. I actually through the yellow pages, because there were no such thing as computers at the time or the internet. Through yellow pages, I was able to secure four or five interviews for design work and for a design job. I got a couple of offers and I picked a firm, which was pretty well known, and I didn’t know that it was well known. I had to go and ask someone. My bank manager, actually, the only sort of anglophone that I knew in the whole city of Montreal at the time. I asked him what he thought of these companies and he told me, ‘This one,’ and so I said yes and then I worked there for five years.

SSR: What was the firm?

AC: It was called Mitchell Holland. Actually, I ended up meeting really interesting people there. But at the beginning, it was interesting, the knowledge of Portugal. People didn’t know Portugal the same way one does today. I was definitely foreign and had a lot to adapt to. I had wonderful coworkers. That was interesting. But learning the whole sort of way of life up in Canada and what people’s tastes were like, what about the weather and the influences of that, and understanding the monetary system. I mean, just understanding what the value of a dollar was. It was a little awkward in my first presentation to a client on some residential job I was doing and I came up with the most expensive things, of course, and presented them all with a huge smile on my face and it was sent back to my office quickly to find substitutes at a more reasonable sort of cost. Because the whole understanding of value was something that one learns over time.

Five years later, I was pretty senior and I had done wonderful work and I ended up doing a lot of residences, a lot of houses and a lot of offices, actually. Then I left and built my own firm. There were about three of us. I worked from home. By then I had a second child and by this time I was separated from my husband. Then, the journey was myself and my two sons and it was like that until I came to the U.S. [about] 25 years ago.

I ended up doing work for very well known people all over Canada. Slowly, but surely I did one hotel, then the other and the other. I did a lot of the old railway hotels: Canadian Pacific, Canadian National, and all of those hotels. The Château Frontenac in Quebec City, the Queen Elizabeth in Montreal and others. In fact, my very first hotel was a very basic 3-Star. It was more likely sort of 2-Star, if that’s possible, but it was very well located. It was bought by a Swiss investor, so someone had heard of me. When I went to check out the place, basically it was a brothel. I had to change it into a hotel, which I did. But I mean, it had its draw and it had its location. We actually simplified it and made it more current and turned it into a proper hotel.

SSR: That’s kind of amazing.

AC: That was a big success. But it was fun. It was such a colorful place to start with. I made lots of friends in Montreal and made a great life there eventually and my sons went to university there. Then, eventually, there was a very bad period in Quebec when there was another attempt at succession and the economy tanked and people were going in droves to Toronto. I entered international competitions and won a few. One competition got me two projects, actually, which was a Swiss hotel in Boston and the Drake in New York City. The Drake’s on Park Avenue and it now no longer is a hotel, but it was a hotel. That actually gave me an opportunity. Once finished, my Blackstone relationship started then because they saw my work and from then on I was doing some international work with them. Then I was entering another competition for the Algonquin Hotel, and won that. That was great because it was such a landmark and such an important hotel sort of historically for the city. The exposure of that the ball started rolling and lots of interesting projects happened one after the other. That’s what it’s like being in New York City, if you’re lucky.

SSR: When you were starting out with your firm and you had a couple employees. What are some of the takeaways or things you remember that you wish you’d known then what you know now that has got you through to the successful career that you have?

AC: Well, it’s a great question, but it’s very hard to answer, because starting out a new life and building a new company no matter where you are is going to be tough. If you are actually on your own with no capital, it’s even more tough. I think one of the most important qualities I know I have is tenacity and the ability to make things happen. I rented a one room office on Union Square. You probably went there, Stacy, at some point.

SSR: I did.

AC: It was one room only and then eventually I got a second room, and a third room, and a fourth room. I have a sort of fairly, I wouldn’t say humble approach, but a very grateful approach to things as they happen to me. I just thought, ‘Well, this is wonderful,’ and every day I appreciated the new developments that came my way and I always paid my rent and I always did the things that were supposed to be done. There was a lot of sacrifice. I remember many times working weekends by myself and producing projects, including another international competition, which was for my first project in Hong Kong. In the end, I came in second, which of course doesn’t count. But apparently, it reset the button and my work after that was just excelling and really being wanted and I was hired for many other projects after that.We have to have our design skills and the ability to deliver a beautiful product, but your personality matters, and your sense of commitment, and respect for your client, and to observe their goals too is very important for success.

SSR: I think it speaks really largely for you and your firm, is you have a lot of repeat clients, which isn’t easy to do all the time.

AC: Well, you’re right, we do. We have a huge amount of repeat clients. I have three partners. Two principals of the firm. We have 52 people. I am a leader, of course, but I inspire people. I know I do that every day. Our work is very sympathetic to the place where it exists, and what the objectives of the actual project is, and what have we got to achieve. We’ve developed a culture.We call ourselves social anthropologists in some ways. We dig deep and really create our own magic within this context of being right for the place. That also speaks to a notion that we very strongly represent, which this notion of how one lives and how people, no matter what their circumstance, or whatever type of hotel we’re creating, or residence, or office even, what is the end user going to expect of that place?What do they want? How do people really want to move through that space? What makes them happy? We tend to think that we’ve learned a lot about this and we kind of know the answers to many of these questions. Our work is fully representative of sort of where we are today and the way we live our lives and the needs that we all feel and the absence of, might it be privacy, downtime, quiet time, the invasiveness of technology, the sense of places losing their identity because they’ve all come to same. All these are points that we include in our big roster of thoughts that begin a project. From there, we do things individually and specially all over the world and that’s why our work can be so diversified and so different. I mean, right now we’re doing work at Raffles in Singapore, which is a two block huge old landmark hotel that is extraordinary and we have to observe and respect it entirely, but make it modern and make it functional.

Then we have sort of the Beverly Hills Hotel at the other extreme, an all-American beautiful icon. We’re doing all the bungalows and doing each one of these bungalows with enormous personalities and all the remarkable people who’ve spent their lives there. It might be Marilyn Monroe or Howard Hughes, the list goes on. All our bungalows are subtle reflections of their personality and I think it’s obvious in what I do. I mean, I don’t put a photograph of them necessarily on the wall saying, ‘This is so-and-so.’ That’s not what makes it happen. It’s the whole mood and how they lived and that’s expressed in those faces.

We’ve just finished a wonderful hotel in London, actually a couple weeks ago, called the Academy, which is in Bloomsbury. It’s a series of five Georgian buildings put together with a sort of network of public spaces, which are quite small and intimate. We’ve created a beautiful bar, a library, and a lovely restaurant that’s outdoors in London and in this garden with heat lamps and so on. It’s very usable way into the winter. It’s charming and the rooms are small and it’s very well priced, but it’s got a great vibe. It’s uber-English and feels just like you wanted to be there. Then we’re doing other ends of the spectrum. Work at the Berkeley in London and we’ve done the Dorchester. These are just a few, but I’m trying to think what else is ongoing.

SSR: Well, and you just finished Troutbeck, which would be nice to talk about, with your son Anthony.

AC: That’s one of my favorites, as you can probably imagine. My son, Anthony, used to run my firm a while ago. We’re a very, very close family and he’s been able to tell me what to do quite nicely over the years and I’ve learned how to accept them, because he’s often right. When he’s not so right, I try not to let him know that he’s wrong, because I have to protect his ego just a little bit. As a mom does teasing her son. But no, he’s extraordinarily good at what he does. He’s a developer and knows hotels well and bought this beautiful place in upstate New York, which is near Amenia. It’s called Troutbeck. It’s got this beautiful trout river winding through it. You can get there by train in two hours very directly, seven minutes from the station.

It’s this beautiful sort of 1919 building all done in stone with beautiful slate roofs with beautiful copper details, wonderful grounds, tennis courts, swimming pools, sort of a little bit eccentric and interesting. It’s a place where the owner was very intellectual and he had great friends who were readers, and politicians, and the NAACP was started there. There’s a great connection with many wonderful writers, including Thoreau and Hemingway, and it goes on. It’s a place of social discourse and it remained that way. There’s this beautiful connection of rooms, public rooms one after the other, which have fireplaces and sofas and are very relaxed. The restaurant is super inviting and it’s sort of chilled and happy and relaxed, but interesting. You see, it’s a great place to be.

SSR: You seem so involved in a lot of the details as the leader of the firm with 50 people. Are you still very involved and how do you balance that being pulled in many different directions I’m sure?

AC: Well, first of all, the company is very well run and the people there are all amazing. There’s a great team feeling and the way everyone works together is very complementary. We have a complete open plan, and apparently I’m still effective and useful, which is quite good. One of the things that we all suffer from I think is in fact the way technology has permeated our lives, both for the better and for the worse, and the shortage of time that we have. Producing projects on time, on budget, making them inspired, all of that’s possible. But what I try to do is remind people of the craftsmanship, the details, the emotional quotient. Just yesterday I spent time going to find flitches of incredible pieces of wood veneer that I need to have around me to inspire me on certain finishes. The same way I work with bronze and I have craftsmen who work with us. I seek out these people who do remarkable work and we bring it to the office, so that hopefully they’re used, but these details, these important tactile, emotional, real tools are used along with computers so we can satisfy our emotional side. I think it’s extremely important, and I do a lot of that. Of course, I often set direction on jobs. Culturally, I’ve traveled and lived in four continents. I’ve traveled extensively and I speak four languages, so you kind of start learning a bit about other people and that’s useful in my office. I think I inspire people, and I’m flattered by that notion, but I’m told so. I hope I don’t do any damage in the process, because I’m sure I can equally influence them both ways, but generally, it’s a very happy place to be.

SSR: No, I love that. I feel like with all this technology, like you said, we’ve lost a sense of almost going back to the craft and we need it even more.

AC: Oh my gosh, yes. I think it’s extremely hard to regain that. Of course, some amazing people are dedicating their lives to just doing it, and it’s our obligation, people like myself, to go and find them and work with them. These are the things that differentiate one project from another, is how you use these tools, these emotional tools. Then layer in tools and knowledge that we have of making things comfortable physically and lighting and quiet, and so on and so forth, and functionality. Those are important, of course, too. But it’s the soul and I believe we can create soul and I know we do. Some people might find it very hard. I don’t think we find it as hard as others to create the magic for each center for each project that we touch.

SSR: It’s easier said than done but you definitely do it well. Speaking along the same lines of craftsmanship and creation, you’ve started to really dabble into products as well.

AC: I hope it’s bigger than dabbling. It’s getting there. No, no, but it’s dabbling. It’s dabbling, because of course the world’s so huge. We’ve only just started. But we have incredibly beautiful carpets that we’ve done with the Rug Company, hand-knotted. Now we have a handtufted collection of wall to wall rugs that we are doing with them. They’ve just been launched and we’ve done a whole lovely, incredibly beautiful line of very practical jewel-like colors, but exceedingly well priced and exceedingly chic-looking fabrics for Holland & Sherry. We’re doing that. We also have other wonderful news on other fronts, which I can’t divulge until everyone else is ready. But we’ve also come back from something in London, which we’ve done a very wonderful launch of printed leathers with Bill Amberg in London. It’s very much a craftsman’s material, if you would. But the skins are very, very large, and they’re printed with a handpainted design that we did in the office and in the studio, and one I had a big hand in. That’s great because to have a printed pattern on leather is a very practical thing, so we’re using it in a couple of our projects now. There are many more things in the pipeline that at the moment I can’t talk about it, but it’s exciting.

SSR: What have you learned from working with products? Has there been something that’s been eye-opening about delving into the process that you might not have learned beforehand?

AC: I think it’s just an opportunity to do exactly what you want. There’s always, I wouldn’t say a compromise, but there’s always a lot of other factors when you’re doing interior design as an end result. This is a very selfish process. It’s all about me, me, me, me. This is what I like. This is how it’s done. These are the colors. These are the textures. But what we’ve done in terms of the fabrics, is that they’re super, super practical and they are super, super inexpensive relative to what they look like. We think that’s very, very important, because one thing that for sure we will have is budgets, our budgets in our lives and in designing hotels, for instance. We absolutely have a budget. Being able to create such useful pieces has been really helpful and really enjoyable, and different. As I said, it’s been a selfish experience.

SSR: And sometimes nice to do something for yourself.

AC: It’s good.

SSR: Talking back about repeat clients, what do you do or you think that you do well that makes for a successful collaboration? I think it’s something that is good to be able to teach to your next generation of designers and the people on your team. But what do you think you do well or your team does well for making a successful collaboration?

AC: Well, that’s a very good question. I think, first of all, I listen. We listen very, very, very attentively to the objectives of our client. We rationalize all their thinking. But I think the most important thing is that we have unbelievable creativity, unbelievable integrity, and we deliver, and we never fail. Those are hard things to achieve, but we achieve them more regularly. It goes without saying, it’s why we are where we are. I think that’s not easy to achieve, but you’ve got to do it if you want to stay current and be part of the future.

SSR: Looking back, did you ever think you would be where you are today? What would you tell yourself back then?

AC: Honestly, be careful what you wish for. Every now and then I would wish for a minor little bump in some version or the other along way. And every time there were slightly more fantastic. There was always something: Do you think this could really happen to me? And then it did. Do you think it really does happen to me? Then it did. I don’t know if this is called praying, or is it just hoping, or is it focusing in the end subliminally on things, but yes, did I ever think I would be [where I am?] I don’t think I really recognized anything in particular, except to say that I’m in an incredible city surrounded and working with amazing people. I have wonderful friends, an amazing life, incredible children. I’m lucky, and I have a wonderful career and a very good reputation. I think the future is extraordinary. I couldn’t wish for anything else and I don’t think one ever starts out wishing this sort of thing, because it seems so farfetched. But in fact, take little steps and make sure you deliver on those and you get there.

SSR: Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being here. It was such a pleasure to catch up with you, as always.

AC: Stacy, it’s always, always, always great seeing you. Thank you.

SSR: We’re going to have to do these little get-togethers more often.

AC: I’m ready any time. Thank you.