Click here to view a gallery of images from this beautiful Caribbean home.

Christina  Rodriguez is the Spanish interior designer behind Barcelona’s Casa Bobo, the showroom styled as a ‘home’ which elevated her to international status. Since then she has been flitting between New York, Paris and her native Barcelona, but a winter sabbatical in the Caribbean led her unexpectedly to Saint Barthélemy.

It remains incongruous, that amongst the tropical greenery of this small Caribbean paradise ringed by turquoise and coral filled seas, there appears the distinctive timber of a 17th-century Normandy manor. In the early 1980s an entrepreneur had it transported from France and rebuilt, piece by piece, in St Barth.

Rodriguez discovered it as a small hotel; a rundown show pony playing on its Norman heritage. It was, afterall, France’s Normans and Bretons who essentially populated St Barth in the 1800s.

LIVING IN PARADISE

Timing is everything, and after a whirlwind career spent between Barcelona, Paris and New York, two young children made it the right time for Rodriguez to settle down, making the most of the location and the time required to raise a young family. “The moment was right to spend some time in paradise,” she says. “It’s rare I see a space and instantly know what I’m going to create,” confesses Rodriguez. “Here though, it was instantaneous. And the result is exactly as I’d imagined.”

Rodriguez removed the first floor of the manor creating a beautiful open living space containing the kitchen, dining, living room, lounge and library.

She designed four bungalows, all located around the pool – the children’s pavilion, the parents’ pavilion, the guest pavilion and the manor, which serves as the principal living area and contains the kitchen, library, lounge and dining rooms.

According to Rodriguez, the garden is integral to the concept of the interiors, with sliding shutters opening the rooms almost entirely onto the greenery, decks, and boardwalks between buildings. “I love the game here between inside and out,” explains Rodriguez. “I designed the garden to complement the interior because the garden is like the corridors between the principal living spaces.”

CREATING A RETREAT

Rodriguez points out that the image of a Caribbean life that is spent outside in the sun by the beach is one that is generated by tourism. “That’s fine when you are visiting for a week but when you live here, you are actually just looking for shade and respite from the sun’s glare,” she says. “My aim was to create interiors that invited relaxed shelter – somewhere you’d want to stay.” Importantly, the colour scheme in the living areas – greys and jungle green – plays on the reflected light from outside, providing a kind of relief from its constant intensity.

The bedrooms, however, use white on the floors or painted over the raked interior ceiling to promote a morning freshness; especially in this part of the world where the sun rises year-round at 6.30am. It’s nature’s wake-up call. “We live very much in the rhythms of the day here,” she explains.

The immediacy of nature complements Rodriguez’s long-time love affair with “the primitive”, represented by huge heavy pieces of wood furniture in abstract shapes and forms that she’s had commissioned over the years.

The sophisticated concept is realised with a lot of simple raw materials – heavy wood, concrete floors, and seagrass – giving a presence to nature but that also invites a relaxed ambience and easy maintenance. “Nothing is delicate here,” she insists and the children play with ease and a sense of exploration. 

There is a communication between the spaces but there is also an important sense of being in your own world. “The children for example, have entire adventures without ever encroaching on our space, which I think is very interesting.”

With varying degrees of occidental and the oriental thrown into the mix, Rodriguez defines the style as, “contemporary Caribbean. I don’t like contemporary cold. It has to represent the place. We can see elements from my other homes, but it’s here, in the Caribbean – so let’s call it ‘Caribbean chic’.”

THE INTERIOR DESIGNER

Cristina Rodriguez is a Spanish interior designer. Originally from Barcelona, her works can be found in Barcelona, New York and St Barth. Her style is defined by her skilful and stylish use of materials that stimulate the senses.

cristinarodriguez.com.es