Luxury has traditionally been easy to recognize. Expansive rooms, exceptional materials, bespoke furnishings and an enviable address have long signaled that a home occupies the upper reaches of the market. But Bobby Berk believes the next evolution of luxury is about something less immediately visible: how a home makes the people inside it feel. The design expert, Emmy-winning television host and author has built much of his career around the idea that good design can meaningfully affect everyday life, and his latest collaboration puts that philosophy to the test on an unusually ambitious scale.
Luxe Getaways recently traveled to Holladay, Utah, to tour the newly completed LivingWell concept home firsthand and speak with Berk about the project and his vision for the future of wellness-driven design. Created by Tri Pointe Homes in collaboration with Berk, Bassenian Lagoni Architects, PKJ Design Group, and a collection of building and design partners, the 7,772-square-foot residence anchors Pavilions at Holladay Hills, an exclusive collection of six luxury estate homes at the base of Mount Olympus. LivingWell is designed to take the idea of residential wellness beyond dedicated amenities, integrating light, flow, comfort, adaptability, and a connection to nature throughout the home experience.
Rethinking What It Means to Live Well
For Berk, the premise is surprisingly straightforward. “LivingWell is about how the home makes you feel and enhances your life,” he tells Luxe Getaways. “We think about the way people live in their homes to build this.”
That distinction gets to the heart of the project. Wellness has become ubiquitous throughout the luxury world, particularly in hospitality, but it is still frequently expressed through individual amenities: a spa, a fitness center, a meditation space, or an elaborate bathroom. LivingWell takes a broader approach, considering how architecture, interiors, landscaping and behind-the-walls systems can collectively influence everyday life. Tri Pointe describes it as an extension of its existing LivingSmart program, which emphasizes sustainability, energy efficiency and responsible building practices. Where LivingSmart considers how a home performs, LivingWell expands the conversation to how it feels.
“Good design should support our routines while making space for the ways we evolve,” Berk says. “LivingWell brings that balance of comfort and freedom into wellness-oriented spaces that are deeply connected to the people who live there.” For Berk, that broader view also separates the project from wellness concepts conceived primarily around a current design movement. “This project is exciting because it doesn’t view wellness as just another trend. LivingWell is a platform for imagining where residential design can go next.”
Inside Bobby Berk’s LivingWell Design
Experiencing the residence firsthand reveals how extensively that thinking has influenced its design. Architecturally envisioned as a contemporary English manor, the three-story home surrounds a private interior courtyard, with its orientation and extensive glazing designed to bring natural light deeper into the residence while establishing sightlines toward the outdoors. Berk gives the interiors what the project calls a “Cotswolds Rustic” aesthetic, drawing inspiration from the English countryside through natural materials, layered textures, sculptural furnishings and warm finishes.
The result is luxurious without relying solely on grandeur to make an impression. There are certainly plenty of conventional markers of an estate home, including six bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a four-bay garage, and a separate carriage home, but many of the project’s most interesting decisions concern how those spaces relate to one another. “The connection and flow between the indoors and outdoors is always thought about,” Berk tells Luxe Getaways. “We had to do everything perfectly and strategically to feel like it was connected.”
That connection is especially apparent in the central courtyard. Oversized sliders open the interiors to a private outdoor environment with a pool, spa, fire pit, orchard, raised garden beds, and a cabana equipped with a cooktop, refrigerator, and sink. Dwarf apple trees, grapevines, sage and lavender are incorporated into a landscape that includes both edible and pollinator-friendly plantings. Rather than treating the exterior as a separate amenity, the architecture repeatedly draws attention back toward it, allowing the courtyard and surrounding landscape to become part of the visual experience from inside the home.
The Details That Change Daily Life
Berk is particularly interested in the decisions that might not immediately command attention during a tour but become meaningful through repeated use. “There are little details that you don’t see in a production builder with this home,” he explains. Those details can be found throughout the residence, from the organization of its gathering spaces to areas dedicated to fitness, restoration, guests and even pets.
The finished basement, for example, incorporates light wells that bring daylight into a level that could otherwise feel disconnected from the rest of the property. Planted exterior areas remain visible from below, while the floor includes a recreation room with direct access to the courtyard, a wellness room and gym, a kitchen area, flexible bedroom space, storage, and dedicated cold storage. A separate carriage home above the garage adds a kitchenette, living space, bedroom and private bath for guests or multigenerational living. There is even a dedicated pet station with an integrated pot filler and feeding area, along with a built-in dog wash and feeding cabinet.
Flexibility is another recurring idea. Several spaces are intentionally designed to shift among work, wellness, and additional living uses as a household’s needs change. That adaptability reinforces Berk’s broader point that successful design should not simply photograph well upon completion. It has to continue working as the lives unfolding within it change.
Wellness Beyond What You Can See
Some of LivingWell’s most consequential features are almost entirely invisible during a walkthrough. Behind the interiors is a collection of systems that address air quality, energy efficiency, temperature, sound, and connectivity. The model incorporates high-efficiency air conditioning, a whole-home humidifier, MERV 13 filtration, and a heat recovery ventilator that provides filtered fresh-air exchange while recycling up to 90% of heating and cooling energy. Low-VOC materials are used for elements such as paint and flooring, while insulation between floors and walls contributes to thermal performance, comfort, and sound control.
Technology is similarly integrated into the background. Home-control automation, automated lighting and roller shades, Wi-Fi thermostat integration, remote monitoring, structured wiring, generator prewiring and conduit for future solar installation are among the systems incorporated into the residence. The significance lies less in having another screen or connected device than in creating an environment that responds more intuitively to the people living within it.
That thinking represents an interesting shift in the meaning of luxury itself. Materials, craftsmanship and aesthetics still matter enormously, but LivingWell argues that comfort can also be found in cleaner air, better acoustics, abundant natural light, intuitive circulation and spaces that change with their occupants. As Berk puts it, the goal is not simply to create a beautiful home but to consider “the way people live in their homes” from the beginning.
Why Utah?
The project’s location is an important part of that equation. Pavilions at Holladay Hills sits at the base of Mount Olympus, approximately 20 minutes from downtown Salt Lake City, putting residents close to an urban center while maintaining easy access to hiking and outdoor recreation. Nearby destinations include Mount Olympus itself, along with the Lake Blanche and Donut Falls trails.
Berk points to the unusual combination of neighborhood walkability and mountain access as one of the setting’s greatest strengths. “What is unique about this area is that it is walkable to shops and restaurants right out of the back door, and you’re also close to ski areas,” he tells Luxe Getaways. “You can leave your house and have boots on at the slopes within 30 minutes!”
For a project built around wellness, the location makes sense. LivingWell’s emphasis on outdoor connection does not end at the property’s courtyard or garden. The broader environment encourages an active lifestyle, with the mountains forming a dramatic backdrop to a home intentionally designed to engage with its surroundings.
A Concept Designed to Travel
The Holladay project may be the showcase for LivingWell, but the ideas being explored here are not intended to remain within six multimillion-dollar residences in Utah. Pavilions at Holladay Hills includes six half-acre home sites, with residences ranging from approximately 6,811 to 9,800 square feet and pricing beginning in the high $3 millions. Tri Pointe says LivingWell is intended to serve as a benchmark for concepts and features that can influence future homes and communities across its national portfolio.
Berk sees the philosophy as something that can extend far beyond the scale of the concept home. “We are adopting this concept nationally as we go,” he says. More importantly, he rejects the idea that wellness-driven design belongs exclusively to sprawling luxury properties. “You don’t need to have a large luxury home to have the design and to incorporate LivingWell.”
That may be the most compelling takeaway from our conversation with Berk. The nearly 7,800-square-foot home in Holladay provides an impressive canvas for exploring these ideas, but its size is not really the point. Natural light does not require an estate. Neither do thoughtful circulation, adaptable rooms, a stronger relationship with the outdoors, or design decisions made around how people actually live.
For Berk, the future of luxury appears to be moving in a more personal direction. A spectacular room can still impress, but a successful home must accomplish something more difficult: it must support the people who inhabit it. After touring LivingWell and seeing those ideas brought together under one roof, it becomes clear that wellness-driven design is not necessarily about adding more. Increasingly, it may be about designing everything with greater purpose.