...and Live Like This

In this modern Shangri-La, cinematic views span from here to eternity.

- By Olivia Hosken. Photographs by Michael Mundy

After 20 years, the view from the Kona Coast remained spectacular. It was the inside of the home that needed a refresh. That was the confession an elegant couple, well-traveled art collectors, shared with the interior designer Michael S. Smith about their spread in Kailua-Kona, originally conceived by the San Francisco architect Sandy Walker in 2001.

“It was still a gorgeous house, but a bit like a beautiful bespoke suit made for somebody else,” Smith tells T&C. The designer, who has something of a couturier’s touch, knew just how to correct the fit. He’d start, as any alum of the Obama White House would, with history, the area itself and that of its colorful residents over the years. There was Shangri La, of course, which Doris Duke conjured after her travels in North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, and also Geoffrey Beene’s modernist oasis in Honolulu.