Bangkok-based architect Bill Bensley is the go-to guy for resort hotels that want something different and a little strange. Water nymphs, anyone?

Sleuth came across on a Forbes Magazine article on architect Bill Bensley who has create many South East Asian high end boutique hotels and resorts from Phuket to Bali, here goes...

Bill Bensley is bubbling with excitement. "I high-fived him," he says, one long arm swirling in a circle to show how, a few days before, he had pressed palms with the King of Malaysia. "It was spur of the moment," he adds, suddenly coming back to Earth. "I'm not sure. Is it okay to high-five a king?"

There is probably no rule about such treatment of royalty and, clearly, none governing the antics of one of Asia's most flamboyant--and accomplished--landscape architects. Recently Bensley and his Bangkok studio have moved into designing the buildings as well as the landscaping, and in March they sealed a deal to design a palace for Malaysia's king--one more career highlight for this 48-year-old, 6-foot-4 American.

Hotel chains chasing the Asian boom invariably fall under his spell, and that's allowed him to redefine resorts from Bali to Bangkok. His playful, often ostentatious style enlivens Four Seasons resorts in Langkawi, Chiang Mai and Ko Samui, and all four Anantara properties, as well as Jakarta's Grand Hyatt, Bangkok's Sheraton Grande Sukhimvit and Marriotts in Phuket and Bangkok. More than just adding greenery, he concocts exotic, Indiana Jones-style sets, jungle-laden walkways, lagoons festooned with statuary, vast "ruinscapes" filled with fountains, faux temples and intricate stone carvings. He's not above adding water nymphs or--in a bow to traditional Thai art--statues of penises. "My motto has always been, the odder the better, the stranger the better," he says.

Lately Bensley has applied that philosophy to a most unusual challenge-- designing a palace. Sitting on 865 acres in Kuala Terengganu, surrounded by forest, the 160,000-square-foot palace will feature a throne room for 1,200 people, plus a banquet hall seating 1,800 in a vast room without any columns. "There is so much space," he says. "It really gets my juices going." Completion is expected in 2009.

This project follows a string of high-profile commissions in Cambodia and Thailand. His art deco design for the Hôtel de la Paix in Siem Reap, gateway to northern Cambodia's Angkor temples, which inspire many of his ruin-filled gardens, more closely resembles Miami Beach than the area's French colonial villas of the early 1900s. Yet the interior sports ponds and statuary, plus a procession of gates and courtyards, reflective of the thousand-year-old temples.

A blend of modern and historic influences also permeates Indigo Pearl in Phuket. Spurning the luxury look of tropical resorts sprouting around the southern Thai island, Bensley opted for an industrial theme evoking Phuket's tin-mining past. Mining lanterns provide period lighting. Tables are old metal doors, rivets a chic accent.

His most elaborate project is the Four Seasons Tented Camp in the Golden Triangle, which opened in Thailand in January of last year. Guests pay $1,500 a night to bunk in rustic splendor tucked into a jungle overlooking Laos and Burma. They wake to the sound of elephants feeding in nearby thickets. Check-in is by river canoe. In the dry season guests arrive on the back of an elephant.

These three resorts signal a new phase in Bensley's career--he didn't merely design the grounds but was also the architect. Not that Bensley intends to call it quits as Asia's constant gardener, but at Four Seasons he did the interiors and even the uniforms for the staff. "The last few years Bill has been going way beyond landscaping," notes Neil Jacobs, who runs Asia-Pacific operations for Four Seasons. Architects are rarely given so much freedom or control, he concedes. "But the Tented Camp was very much his vision. His statement is huge."

Of course, Bensley has his share of sharp critics. His gardens are too kitschy, over-the-top and predictable, they say, and often don't mesh with the environment, though some agree that his recent work has grown more sophisticated and perhaps less crazy. "His gardens are Hawaiian-theme-park-derivative for the most part; I haven't seen one that isn't spoiled by overkill," says Made Wijaya, a rival landscape designer in Bali who popularized fantasy tropical gardens and laid out the first ruinscapes in Asia. "But he is a ravishing draftsman. This is what impresses clients most, his P.T. Barnum presentations."

Even Bensley's best friends and business partners say he could benefit from a better focus. "He really needs to be more selective," says William Heinecke, chief executive of Thailand's Minor International, which owns the Anantara properties, as well as the four Four Seasons in Thailand. "You go into his garage and you see all these marvelous models of projects that never happened. I keep telling him: 'There's only so many hours in the day.' He should focus on things that really have a chance of coming to completion."

Home for Bensley is a plot of land in northern Bangkok dubbed Baan Butanica. Along with three dogs and his 84-year-old father, he shares life--and work--with his longtime Thai partner, Jirachai Rengthong, a horticulturist. Teeming with foliage, the grounds--which are just under an acre--resemble one of his resorts, complete with watchtower gate and lagoon pool adorned with frog figures. "We've probably got 700 varieties of plants here," he says, in what is clearly an understatement.

A few miles away in the leafy diplomatic district is his Bensley Design Studios, headquartered in the deco-tinged former home of the Iraqi embassy. With a deceptively laid-back approach he's built his business into a powerhouse firm of 100 employees and a satellite office in Bali, offering everything from architectural sketches to interior fabrics and place settings. "A key to our success is that we can do everything, and that makes it easy for the clients," he says.

He says the firm has done probably 150 projects since it started in 1989, with 10 to 15 more under way at any one time. He won't discuss revenues and profits, but the business has soared along with the explosive growth of the resort industry. A comprehensive architectural plan for a new resort often costs $1 million now. "When I started, we used to do the master plan for $20,000," he notes. But that was before resorts charged $1,000 a night, and up, and up. Wijaya credits Bensley with a huge role in this: "He has really advanced the notion of spending big bucks for special effects."

His work in Indonesia has fallen off, as terrorism there has hurt tourism, but the Bangkok office is getting more jobs outside Southeast Asia, for instance in China, the Maldives and Europe. Staying on the road three weeks of every month, Bensley takes pictures of everything he sees: walls, tile roofs, arches, gates. Staff artists break this material into color schemes and textures, what he calls the DNA of design. He keeps eight artists on staff to craft models and work on presentations.

Such attention to detail has earned Bensley a huge bank of trust in an industry that's often fickle as it chases the latest trends. His friend Heinecke recalls how Bensley returned from Africa inspired by the bush camps there. "He was talking about bringing a little of Africa to Asia," Heinecke says. Four Seasons had never operated a camp, and nothing like this existed in Asia. Yet he was captivated by Bensley's enthusiasm. "Bill has this passion for creating phenomenal hotels," he says. Such aspirations don't come cheap. The Tented Camp, he confides, costs more per room--roughly $500,000--than any other Thai property developed by Minor up to that point. "But it's getting the highest rate, too," he adds.

Heinecke, not known for his recklessness, has learned to give Bensley plenty of artistic rope. That paid off at another Minor property, the J.W. Marriott in Phuket, which not only showcases some of Bensley's most elaborate ruin-themed gardens but also features daily fire-dance shows and period torches that light the entire property. Such embellishments keep the hotel busy on a highly competitive vacation island.

They also keep his critics groaning, but even they concede that Bensley--who speaks Bahasa and Thai--is a true scholar of Asian and tropical architecture. "His gardens are more burlesque and expansive than anything that has come before," says Wijaya, the landscape designer. He points to unusual influences on Bensley, such as filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille.

At times it seems that Bensley goes out of his way to revel in kitschiness. Take the garden of penis statues, which the Four Seasons' Jacobs caught Bensley assembling at the Tented Camp. "He tells me how important these carved stones are in Thai culture," chuckles Jacobs, who ordered them removed. "Then he tries to negotiate, to hide them in the woods where guests can just stumble upon them." Anthony Lark, manager of the Trisara resort in Phuket, recalls another Bensley brainstorm, for a private villa that never got built: "He wanted to hang ropes from the trees and make guests swing into their rooms."

Such flair is understandable, given that this onetime surf bum grew up in the shadow of Hollywood and Disneyland. Born in Anaheim, he studied landscape architecture at nearby California State Polytechnic University. He followed a friend to Singapore and a possible post at the National University. As it happened, he was too young for the teaching job, so instead he joined Belt Collins & Associates, which sent him around the region, designing gardens. After five years with the firm in Singapore and Hong Kong he left to launch his own studio in Bangkok. Bensley still sees nothing but upside in one of the world's largest industries, tourism. "It's escapism," he notes. "And there is really no limit on that."

Source: Forbes Magazine