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"View Slideshow\n\nNine years ago Donna Karan and Stephan Weiss celebrated 17 years of marriage by renewing their vows in a family ceremony on Parrot Cay, in the Turks and Caicos Islands. His gift to her was big love in a small box: an engagement ring. Hers to him was a wild, beautiful piece of land, next to the villa they had been renting. It was fronted by a strand of white beach that, at sunset, blushes like a bride.\n\nWeiss died of cancer six months later. \"He asked me to promise that I would build a house on the property for each of our three children,\" Karan says. \"He imagined it as a retreat where three generations could enjoy total privacy but be together. For the kids, it has become a miniresort. For me, it's a sanctuary where I go to create awareness. Three hours from New York, I have this amazing cocoon of serenity that reminds me of the two places on the planet where I feel happiest: Africa and Bali.\"\n\nIt took Karan a while to fulfill her vow. She struggled with grief, and two broken knees (\"I staggered around the site on crutches\"). In 2006, when construction was well under way, she started the Urban Zen Foundation, in Weiss's memory, to promote the integration of Eastern healing practices with Western medicine. (Three Urban Zen boutiques help to fund the work by selling soulful organic clothing and home furnishings; the interiors at Parrot Cay are a showcase for some of the overscale divans, tables, canopy beds and beanbag chairs from the collection. \"There is nothing in the place,\" she jokes, \"that you can't fall asleep on.\")\n\nYogis and perfectionists\u2014Karan is both\u2014meet obstacles on their true path with patience and a deep breath. \"A structure went up, then we tore it down and rebuilt it,\" she says. Her model for the architecture was Begawan Giri, a five-star Balinese health resort whose beauty \"blew me away\" (see Architectural Digest, July 1999). The architect, Cheong Yew Kuan, who is based in Singapore, was enlisted for the compound. \"Collaborating with Donna is an intense experience,\" he says, \"both visceral and cerebral. There was one constant in the flux of our ideas: the elemental way she wanted to live with nature. It was never about making a fashion statement.\"\n\nCheong was joined on the project by two young architects based in Manhattan: Enrico Bonetti, an Italian, and Dominic Kozerski, an Englishman, who had met as associates in the offices of Peter Marino. Kozerski had supervised the design of Karan's flagship boutique in London, and when he and Bonetti opened a practice in Nolita, in 2000, her penthouse on Central Park and beach house in the Hamptons were among their first commissions. They translated the Urban Zen aesthetic (21st-century holistic minimalism) to the Caribbean. Among the hallmarks of the style are dark woods, honed travertine, low seating, sensuous textures\u2014an East-West fusion of luster and luxury without slickness. \"Our goal,\" Kozerski says, \"was to create a sequence of calm, livable spaces that flow seamlessly from inside to out. The simplicity of the design leaves as much room as possible for Donna's personality and for the artifacts that she has collected on her world travels.\"\n\nPerhaps the most striking exotic \"artifact\" on the property is the authentic Indonesian bale\u2014a living and dining pavilion of ruddy bangkirai wood, with a rattan ceiling\u2014designed by Cheong. It was fabricated on Bali by local artisans, then reassembled atop the coral-stone-and-cedar-clad main house that also serves as the base for an elevated infinity pool lined with black volcanic stone. An adjacent villa houses Karan's master suite, private sundeck and sybaritic spa. (\"I can't live without my steam bath!\") Guests sleep in the main house and two self-contained villas and meet for meals or to watch films in the open-air screening room.\n\nWith multiple structures and a fragile ecosystem, the site plan, Bonetti says, \"was our greatest challenge.\" They built a series of scaffolds to study the views and floor levels from every potential angle. As in a haiku, no syllable of the design was wasted. The breezeway beneath the swimming pool became a \"magical\" dining area open to the beach. Karan had hoped to forgo solid walls in her living quarters (\"My ideal dwelling is a tree house\"), although she discovered, as Kozerski puts it, that \"paradise has its own reality\"\u2014in this case, humidity and hurricanes. Glass was a necessity, but to counter what Karan calls \"the fishbowl effect,\" they dimmed the interiors naturally with a cool palette and matte surfaces that minimize reflections. Even at night, when the house glows like an opal in the tropical darkness, the threshold between inside and out seems to dissolve.\n\nParrot Cay pays homage to the tranquil self-possession of Stephan Weiss, which served as a foil for his soulmate's famously kinetic drive. \"I'm a bit restless now that it's finished,\" Karan admits. \"I'm looking at another property on the island.\" Pick your sage, but they will all give you a version of the same wisdom: In every end is a beginning."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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