While he has constructed the Maldives’ most talked about new resorts, situated on three reclaimed islands in a private atoll — reclaimed using the lowest impact methods and comprising, at this stage, 190 villas as well as 20 studios in total — Evan Kwee is, in fact, the architect of a change that is not visible to the human eye. Not until you learn that the 25,000 trees at his Fari Islands development were all destined for clearcutting until he rescued and transplanted them. Not until you realise that the prefabrication construction techniques saved enough energy to power 300 homes for a year. Not until you recognise that of the 17 dining outlets available to guests at Fari Islands, it is Patina Maldives’ Roots — a plantbased, zero-waste kitchen — that Kwee is proudest of. While most hotel owners would be content to afford staff the minimal standard in liveable conditions, Kwee built a state-of-the-art staff campus, called the Fari Campus, on a fourth island, replete with the same-standard gym provided to guests and a theatre, and he will be offering a vocational training programme with the world’s most renowned hotel school, École Hôtelière de Lausanne.
What is clear is that the change required to save our planet from premature destruction is being perpetuated not by massive corporations or government institutions but by individuals. By people like my friend Alessandro Sartori and Gildo Zegna, respectively the artistic director and chief executive of Zegna, who have invested in technology to recycle wool at the highest level to minimise the dependence on virgin material. By leaders such as Jean-Marc Pontroué, the chief executive of Panerai, who created the world’s most recycled watch this year, the eLAB-ID, and openly invited the rest of the watch industry to follow his lead. (He is determined that in the near future, every Panerai watch will feature some level of recycled material.) And by Evan Kwee, who doesn’t see Patina Maldives and the Fari Islands so much as the region’s hottest new hotel development but the beginning of a movement in
