Aman broke ground in April on two cays in the middle of the Exuma chain. Thirty-six pavilions, a marina, a beach club, and a few dozen villas across four hundred acres of sand and scrub that had almost nothing on them.
The cays are called Williams Cay and Children’s Bay Cay. They sit in the Exumas, the long chain of small islands running south-east of Nassau, over water that turns from clear to the flat green people assume has been retouched. The property will be called Amancaya, and it is Aman’s first address in The Bahamas.
The plan is a thirty-six-pavilion hotel and a small run of Aman Residences alongside it, villas of three to five bedrooms with private pools and walls that open. Published figures put the residences at twenty-three, on plots of roughly two to five and a half acres, and the whole project above $260 million. Construction began on a Friday in April with OKO Group and Squircle Capital as partners.
The name is a compound, as they all are. Aman is the Sanskrit for peace. Caya comes through Taíno, the language of the people who were on these islands before anyone else arrived. Read together it comes out as peaceful island. Amancaya will be the brand’s third in the Caribbean, after Amanera in the Dominican Republic and Amanyara in Turks and Caicos.
The design
Architecture goes to Jacobsen Studio, the Brazilian practice known for long low houses that sit close to the ground and disappear behind their own overhangs. Interiors are Yabu Pushelberg. Landscape is Raymond Jungles, the Miami office that has spent forty years arguing for native planting in places that would rather have lawns.
Dona Bertarelli, the Swiss investor and philanthropist who brought the site to Aman, has said publicly that what drew her was a design approach guided by the landscape rather than imposed on it. On two cays with no infrastructure and no history of building, that is less a philosophy than a constraint.
Aman Residences, Amancaya — rendering, courtesy of Aman
Two islands, four hundred acres, thirty-six rooms. The arithmetic is the whole proposition.
The Splendid EditThe water
The Exumas are more than three hundred cays and rocks, most of them uninhabited, threaded with sandbars that appear and vanish with the tide. Divers come for the blue holes and the wall on the eastern side. Amancaya will have its own marina, which in this archipelago is the difference between a resort and a base.
Everything else is spread across the two islands rather than stacked on one: an Aman Spa and wellness centre with trails cut through the interior, a beach club at the waterline, and several dining rooms. Guests staying in the pavilions and owners in the villas share all of it.
The terms
Aman has not given an opening date, which for a two-island build with its own marina is reasonable. The developers have committed to LEED certification and say the environmental targets are aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Both are standard language on projects of this size, and both are checkable later, which is the point of saying them out loud.
What is unusual here is the ratio. Thirty-six rooms on four hundred acres, split over two islands, with a limited number of houses attached. Aman has built this way before at Amanyara and Amanpulo. Doing it in the Bahamas, an hour by air from Florida and within helicopter range of most of the eastern seaboard, is the newer part.
The renderings show pale stone, dark timber, deep eaves, and pools cut level with the horizon. Whether the islands still look like this when the machines leave is the only question worth holding on to.
Amancaya, Exuma is under construction on Williams Cay and Children’s Bay Cay, The Bahamas. Details at aman.com.
Photography courtesy of Aman — © Aman, Amancaya, The Bahamas