The Mau­na Kea Beach Hotel is the result of a remark­able process of invest­ment and devel­op­ment by Lau­rance Rock­e­feller after a vis­it to remote Kauna‘oa Bay on the island of Hawai‘i in 1960. Pas­sion­ate about con­ser­va­tion and recre­ation, Rock­e­feller orig­i­nat­ed the Mau­na Kea Beach Hotel as the fourth of his series of inter­na­tion­al resort hotels in pristine­ly beau­ti­ful sites. Describ­ing the intent, he said:

“From the begin­ning, we planned and devel­oped Mau­na Kea Hotel as a resort afford­ing the vis­i­tor an expe­ri­ence in beau­ty as well as recreation…To com­ple­ment the spec­tac­u­lar nat­ur­al beau­ty of … [the] site, we sought out sim­plic­i­ty, spare ele­gance of form in archi­tec­tur­al design. We want­ed the Hotel struc­ture to enhance a flaw­less set­ting. We planned an open design to draw in and embrace the lush plant­i­ngs, the soft air, the warm sun­light of Hawai‘i…”

The archi­tec­tur­al firm engaged to achieve that “spare ele­gance of form” was the high­ly respect­ed firm of Skid­more Owings & Mer­rill (SOM) in New York and San Fran­cis­co. The inte­ri­or design of the Hotel was one of the most com­pre­hen­sive projects com­plet­ed by Davis Allen, known at that time as the dean of inte­ri­or design­ers. Opened in 1965, in 1967 the Mau­na Kea became the first hotel ever giv­en an hon­or award by the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Archi­tects. Two lat­er addi­tions to the Hotel were com­plet­ed by Wim­ber­ly, Whise­nand, Alli­son, Tong & Goo.

After clo­sure of the Hotel in 2006 for ren­o­va­tions fol­low­ing earth­quake dam­age, John Hara Asso­ciates Inc. was engaged to return the Hotel to the under­stat­ed archi­tec­tur­al ele­gance of the orig­i­nal SOM design.

The intent of Hara’s ren­o­va­tion design was not to cre­ate a new styl­is­tic design envi­ron­ment for the Hotel. Rather, its pur­pose is to reveal the essen­tial time­less prin­ci­ples and qual­i­ty of the orig­i­nal design, among oth­er ele­ments recon­fig­ur­ing most of the guest rooms to meet present expec­ta­tions and to upgrade their tech­nol­o­gy to con­tem­po­rary needs.

The inter­na­tion­al art col­lec­tion orig­i­nal­ly assem­bled by Davis Allen for the Hotel’s pub­lic spaces and the com­mis­sioned prints for guest rooms were essen­tial to the Hotel’s char­ac­ter and have been retained. This col­lec­tion is being sup­ple­ment­ed by new works by Hawai‘i artists, acquired by Hara on behalf of the Client in the spir­it of the original.