The Man Behind Aman

Vladislav Doronin has developed more than six million square metres of real estate, commissioned Zaha Hadid to design his home and leads one of the most premium hotel brands in the world. But, in a landscape changed by a pandemic, will his recent risks pay off?

- Helena Madden

IT’S NO SMALL thing to work with Kengo Kuma. The architect has, among other things, designed Japan National Stadium, one of the main venues for the delayed 2020 Summer Olympics. Vladislav Doronin commissioned him to design a skincare bottle. It might seem too insignificant to matter, but it speaks to the Aman chairman and CEO’s ability to wave his hand and suddenly be working with one of the world’s biggest architects, even for something as mundane as the packaging of a branded body mist. But for Doronin these details – from the bottle’s curved shape to its soft, vein-like patterns – are all important. His go-to list of architects has taken time to grow; he has been adding names since his days developing commercial and residential real estate in Moscow in the 1990s. “I had to convince the mayor and the city planners to let me bring in foreign architects,” he says. “It was a bit controversial. They didn’t want it. I told them, ‘I’m not going to build for the moment. We can learn from the western architects’ process’.”