



“For 10 years I was dreaming about it, for five years I was looking for a spot for it, for two years working on it, for another two years building it, and finally here it is,” says Alexandre de Betak, luxuriating in the master bedroom of the house he has created, inside and out, in a small coastal village in the Tramuntana region of Majorca. Like virtually every other room, this one has devastating views of the Mediterranean Sea, oddly curvaceous white plaster walls and a surfeit of unpretentious, quirky design gestures. Consider a pair of shutters set in a rounded expanse — painted olive gray-green, a shade approved by the village’s strict building code — that open to reveal a view of, no, not the orange grove that forms a part of the property, nor the ancient terraces laid out by the Moors a thousand years ago, but a wide-screen TV.

But ask de Betak if the undulating surfaces — there’s hardly a right angle in the place — are meant to evoke the spirit of Antoni Gaudí, and he laughs and concedes that the influence is more like Barbapapa, the shape-shifting cartoon character from the 1970s. “I love ’70s organic architecture,” he says. “I am very influenced by the time when I grew up.”

Every piece of site-specific furniture, every matte-brass faucet custom ordered from Britain, every faux-vintage ceramic and olive wood light dimmer has been stage-managed by de Betak, 42, a renowned events producer, art director and designer whose work includes fashion shows and extravaganzas for clients from Dior to Rodarte to Tiffany. Among his memorable spectacles was Jennifer Lopez’s fragrance introduction, for which he sent up fireworks spelling out “J.Lo Glow” in the night sky. His company, Bureau Betak, has offices in New York, Paris and Shanghai.

The specially commissioned neon sculpture above the stairs featuring bright Chinese characters (its installation, according to witnesses, was no picnic) is an homage to de Betak’s recent flood of Asian commissions. “In a way, this is a house that China built,” he admits. When asked to translate the sign, which is inspired by so-called massage parlors, he laughs and answers, “Stone house by the sea.”

De Betak’s earliest days in fashion are directly responsible for his romance with the area, which has the charm and expat appeal of Amagansett circa 1960. His first client, the designer Sybilla, brought him here 20 years ago — a time when the village was so underdeveloped that many of the houses had no phone service. (De Betak remembers waiting for hours at the town’s sole phone booth for a call from Donna Karan.)

Though it is a tiny outpost — six square miles between mountain and sea; a scant 800 or so people residing in perfectly harmonious homes (thank those tough building codes) — it became a hugely stabilizing force in de Betak’s wildly peripatetic life. “I travel like a maniac, and the only place I stay a month is here. I’ve never accepted a job for August!” he says. “Sometimes I pick up my two boys from school in Paris [the model and actress Audrey Marnay is their mother], and we hop on the last plane to Majorca. Even just for the weekend, it’s a big life changer to come here.”





His refuge may be remote, but it’s certainly not intended for solitary contemplation. Today de Betak is hosting a luncheon under a canopy of olive branches for 20-odd visitors, among them many of the local people who worked on the house. Two little guests in glittery tutus (they wear school uniforms during the week, so they break out on Sundays) delight in showing off various amusing aspects of the house: the spigot in the kitchen wall — matte brass, of course — that dispenses wine; the three blob-shaped sleeping cutouts in the children’s room that require scrambling up a white wall, a maneuver that only a particularly dexterous 5-year-old can accomplish.

A secret door inside the children’s closet leads to a storage space crammed with what looks like hundreds of baskets of light bulbs. (“I always loved bulbs,” de Betak explains, “and I use light a lot in my shows. In my office in Paris I have 300 bulbs.”) Rows of duffel bags contain almost the entire stock of vintage linen from a military surplus dealer at Paris’s Porte de Clignancourt market. De Betak uses the fabric to create all the cushions and bed linens in the house. “It’s very practical,” he says, and indeed, stacks of beige pillows, saved from predictability by the one-of-a-kind sofas they enhance, are easily tossed in the wash if and when a tipsy guest splashes some spigot-poured wine.

De Betak wanted the place to be ecologically sensitive and in tune with the local culture, “but twisted in my way.” So a guest cabin that is nicknamed “Can Pitufo” — or “Smurf House” — has been built around a tree, which had the builders tearing their hair out. “Chop it down!” they pleaded, but de Betak, who strikes one as cheerfully compulsive and happily headstrong, insisted, and now a spa-worthy shower wraps around that natural wonder.

The techniques he employs as a master showman served him well in building the house, only now the results are meant to last 200 years rather than 20 minutes: “I rendered everything with mood boards, and then with 3-D drawings of specific ideas.” Which was a good thing, considering that these notions included projects not necessarily familiar to Majorcan craftsmen, like clay ashtrays in the shape of R2-D2 and Darth Vader, and Flintstone-esque iPod docks encased in stone. “There’s so much made of rock here — rock lamps, rock sinks, rock tubs, even a rock TV. Maybe I should do a line of rock accessories?” he suggests, only half-joking.

De Betak says he wanted the ambience to be “very minimal but warm,” and though he is not specifically referring to the fact that the compound has surround sound but no air-conditioning, he could be describing the blend of naturalism and witty modernism that is central to the endeavor. “It’s the most fun project I have ever done. I am a perfectionist, but you can’t make it perfect,” he says with a sigh, looking out over the pool with its glistening Nile-green glass tiles — locally sourced — to the sea beyond. “The house was made for life, and it should never be really finished. It’s a good lesson. What in life is ever really finished?”