Designing DREAMS

Fairmont Peace Shanghai. Siam Kempinski Bangkok. The Westin Jakarta. Waldorf Astoria Shanghai. Four Seasons Singapore. The names read like a bucket list of places to visit on your next vacation. So, what do these luxury resorts have in common? The woman behind their design.

- MELINDA MURPHY

Not many people have their dream job, but PAULA O’CALLAGHAN really does. She’s a senior associate at Hirsch Bedner Associates (HBA), the top firm in the world for designing hotels and resorts.

“I remember one night, I was on a commuter train in Tokyo. I’d started reading interior design magazines on the train and I saw a huge spread on HBA – it was a big article about one of the hotels they’d done. I was so impressed, I decided right then and there that I wanted to work for that company; this was the type of design I wanted to do.”

From fashion to interiors

Paula didn’t always want to be an interior designer. In fact, she thought she was going to be a fashion designer, but one summer at the Parsons School of Design in New York convinced her otherwise. She instead got a degree in Studio Art from the University of California (Santa Barbara), but she really didn’t know what to do with it. With an Irish-American father and a Japanese mother, Paula grew up as a third-culture kid, living all over the world: Okinawa, California, Brazil, Scotland, and a boarding school (TASIS) in England.

“My high school advisor had been a curator at The Met. She asked me if I’d ever thought about interior design, but I dismissed it. I thought all interior design was Laura Ashley.” Who could blame her? It was the late 80s and Laura Ashley was everywhere.