How Aston Martin Residences Defines What It Means To Be Ultra Luxury

Alejandro Aljanati, the marketing mind behind Aston Martin Residences Miami, pictured alongside a scale model of the 66-story luxury tower

Romain Maurice for G&G Business Developments

“Ultra luxury is a separate word from luxury. It’s another scale in the luxury market,” Alejandro Aljanati, chief marketing officer of G&G Business Developments, told me as we enjoyed the Biscayne Bay view from the 51st floor of Aston Martin Residences Miami. “The relation between the products and the customer is totally different from any other product.”

If I may paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, let me tell you about the ultra rich. They are different from you and me. Marketing to them is entirely different from marketing to the merely very rich. While the pursuit of luxury will always be an emotional endeavor, maneuvering the emotions of the ultra rich requires subtlety applied depth psychology. These are people who can have nearly anything in life.

First and foremost, they want beauty.

This is why Art Basel and its multiple spinoffs continue to grow. It’s also why automotive brands make the kind of concept cars only seen at Pebble Beach Concours and The Quail, where I recently ran into Marek Reichman, Aston Martin’s Chief Creative Officer and the man responsible for designing every Aston Martin from the DB9 to the latest Valkyrie (including every James Bond vehicle for the past three decades). He was at Monterey Car Week introducing the launch of the new Aston Martin hybrid, Valhalla.

Reichman and I spoke over Zoom months earlier when I was first formally introduced to The Residences developed by G&G. Founded and led by the Argentinian Coto family, G&G is a property developer who understands the minds of the ultra rich. These minds don’t understand “no.” Yet when Reichman was asked to lead design in this partnership with Aston Martin Lagonda Group to build G&G’s Aston Martin residential property, “no” was his first response. And when asked again, his second.

“Aston Martin is nothing to do with residences,” Reichman said of his initial reaction 14 years ago. “Why would we want to do that?”

But for the Coto family, “no” wasn’t an option. They were determined to capture the full essence of the Aston Martin brand and only Reichman’s involvement would ensure this. “They finally came over to see me, the entire family, all of them, with the passion they have for this project. And I saw in their eyes the passion and the feeling and the belief, and I switched from fear to excitement. From fear, ‘no, no,’ to ‘wow. This is really going to be exciting.’”

This is how the 66-story Aston Martin Residences fundamentally altered Miami’s skyline and luxury real estate landscape. Miami is home to 11 branded residential towers like Porsche Design, with more on the way, including Pagani, Mercedes-Benz, and Bentley. Unlike the Aston Martin Lagonda partnership with G&G, these branded properties are mostly through licensing agreements, whereas Aston Martin’s UK design team conceived “every single centimeter of the building,” Aljanati confirmed.

That diligence earned the tallest residential tower south of Manhattan eight International Property Awards from International Property Media, the global authority on real estate excellence since 1993. It also helped sell 99% of its 391 units before completion.

“Our design language is based on beauty and the honesty and authenticity of materials,” Reichman expressed. “It’s simple and pure and it has an elegance attached to beautiful proportions.”

The Aston Martin Man with the Golden Plan

“Aston Martin’s brand is ultimately a lifestyle brand,” Rob Bloom, CMO of Aston Martin Formula One, previously told me over a dinner during the Miami Grand Prix. “We were born on a hill, Aston Hill in Buckinghamshire. We’re on this hill and the hill has no summit. We’re going to be constantly climbing because that’s just the way we exist.”

Reichman embodies this sentiment, describing himself as “an artist working in the world of physics,” sketching from intuition while bound by material and structural limitations. “A car is a physical object. It has gravitational constraints, material constraints, manufacturing constraints,” he told me. “My sketches begin as intuition, but they must become something usable, functional, and desirable.”

Working alongside architect Rodolfo Miani, principal at Buenos Aires-based Bodas Miani Anger, the two developed a shared creative language through collaborative sketching sessions. Reichman drew buildings, Miani drew cars. “From the weight of his pencil, the accuracy, the flow, the motion, I could see we were like-minded. The building would truly represent the feeling of Aston Martin.” Together, they recast the poetry of motion into architecture at rest, giving Miami its first residential construction with a soul.

In Aston Martin’s Gaydon, Warwickshire studio, Reichman’s design team spent months translating 112 years of automotive DNA into residential structure. Materials integrity was paramount: wood had to be wood; leather had to be leather; plastic could never be allowed to masquerade as something else. Door handles were forged in England using the brand’s same Scottish leather supplier. Even the garage ramp was geometrically angled to precisely accommodate an Aston Martin’s ground clearance. The building, quintessentially, in every way, is Aston Martin.

Reichman understood people “fall in love with a building from a distance, just like you do inside. You should feel more at home, more even, more equal with your space. That’s the same with our cars. You spot them from a distance, and you fall in love, but you spend 99.9% of your time driving them from the inside.”

Aston Martin Residences: From Miami With Love

The Residences has amenities every real estate agent I spoke with described as the very best in all of Miami, with 42,275 square feet of comforts across four full floors connected by a monumental glass staircase. Highlights include an infinity pool on the 55th floor, two movie theaters, virtual golf, a full spa, and downtown Miami’s only deep-water superyacht marina. But for G&G, this wasn’t enough.

“We said that’s not the way. Anyone with money can do the same,” Aljanati recalled. “We’ll start a race where the next building puts a rocket to go to the moon.”

G&G commissioned international artists Fabio Mesa, Robi Walters, Julian Lennon and Miami’s own Aaron Schwartz, amongst others, to interpret Aston Martin through their creative brush strokes.

“Alejandro saw something in my art that was very unique,” Schwartz shared over Zoom. “I remember we had a conversation just like you and I are now, very candid, where he’s like, ‘You understand what it means to be original and unique and attention to detail. And that’s kind of what the branding of Aston Martin is on an upscale level.’”

For his rendering, Schwartz transformed automotive photography into abstract expressionism. He began by photographing the Aston Martin Vulcan supercar in elaborate detail. He then painted over the images with highlighters and markers on photo paper backing, transforming automotive curves into fractured, colorful abstractions vibrating with motion in a kaleidoscopic vision he called “a modern interpretation of Picasso.”

Schwartz continued, “He [Aljanati] was trying to make the idea of living at Aston Martin Residences a style of living in art. And he says, ‘I want you to do your style of art as a Miami artist, taking into account where you are and what you do and do an interpretation of how you feel Aston Martin and the Aston Martin Residences would relate to art.’”

His and other artists’ interpretations populated The Residences’ virtual gallery, a website conceived by creative director Daniel Arabia as a solution to the pandemic lockdown restricting sales visits. The digital space allowed global buyers to experience artistic narratives before the building’s completion, offering a preview of the beautiful lifestyle awaiting them in Miami. More than floor plans or amenities, the art held their gaze, making the gallery the most visited within The Residences’ website.

“We sold 20 to 30 percent to people from Europe,” Aljanati noted. “That amount is not common in the Miami market. The virtual gallery allowed people worldwide to experience what we were creating before they ever stepped foot in Miami.” When the Aston Martin Residences opened, a physical gallery with rotating exhibitions of contemporary art covered the 52nd floor. “The Art of Living” became the official lexicon of The Residences.

“We created a different language that was a crucial thing related to marketing. When you create this language, your competition cannot speak it. You are really unique and different. That was exactly the success of this building. At the moment of completion, it was 99% sold.”

Winning the Ultra Luxury Casino Royale: 6 Takeaways from Aston Martin Residences Miami

“It’s almost the lifestyle that goes with the Aston Martin brand,” Jason Karr, official representative for the Aston Martin Owners Club Central London, told me during Miami Grand Prix Week at a welcome reception for his group, Area 00, held in the Residences’ expansive 54th-floor ballroom. “This is what the cars are designed for. Creating lifetime memories. Unforgettable experiences.”

Area 00 had just completed their third transcontinental trip, starting at Ian Fleming’s London residence and continuing to international locales inspiring Bond novels. This final North American leg began by shipping their cars from London to Halifax, Nova Scotia, then driving about 2,500 miles to finish at the Aston Martin Residences Miami. Well, not quite finish. The cars were being shipped to Jamaica the next day, where the three-month odyssey would conclude at Ian Fleming’s Goldeneye Estate. The members would board American Airlines Flight 007, naturally, to reunite with their Aston Martins.

“Growing up watching James Bond films and seeing him drive his Aston Martin on amazing adventures, for us, this is exactly how that feels,” Karr said. His manual 2009 DBS coupe was built to the same specifications as Bond’s car in Quantum of Solace. “We’re one big family. We all have something in common, which is our love of the Aston Martin brand. You join the owners club and stay for the cars, but you stay to be part of the family because of the people you meet along the way.”

This is ultra luxury as emotional connection: not what you own, but how deeply you belong to a rarefied group enjoying once-in-a-lifetime events. For Karr, it’s that feeling you only live twice—once behind the wheel, and once in the spectre of everything else. With no time to die, the world is not enough for the busy ultra rich, yet for CMOs seeking to impress their living daylights, here are 6 takeaways—for your eyes only:

1. “We don’t want advertisement. We want you to feel,” Aljanati emphasized. “Every single render was intervened with different artists. We don’t show renders of the building. We show pieces of art.” Eschewing copy-laden advertising campaigns, the artists’ renderings became double-page spreads in prestige magazines with just the logo and website address. Luxury may whisper, but ultra luxury doesn’t say anything at all. The ultra rich don’t want to be told what to think.
2. For the ultra-luxury buyer, “more” is meaningless. What matters are rare moments making them pause, shift focus, and feel something. Aljanati understood this, branding Aston Martin Residences as “The Art of Living” and using excellence through beauty to arrest the attention of the world’s most time-pressed minorities.
3. While the merely rich may buy into a name, the ultra rich look for fidelity. They expect an entire property to echo the brand name it bears. The Coto family understood anything less would be unacceptable and refused Reichman’s Dr. No stance. For the building name to carry value, only the engineer of the name’s legend could adequately deliver.
4. When obstacles such as the pandemic arise, lean into the virtual world. Technology offers a stage without borders. It can expand reach while deepening intimacy, transforming buyers into participants who feel they’re shaping the narrative. Offering a fluidly creative platform and some sense of control is a goldfinger on the pulse of what moves ultra luxury.
5. Authenticity can’t be faked. The Residences’ partners insisted wood be wood, leather be leather, and plastic should never be a faux substitute because the ultra rich instantly spot imitations. While mass luxury may pass off plastic handbags or interior car seats as leather, such compromises cheapen the value perception in the eyes of those who know better. Just as diamonds are forever, so too are first impressions.
6. Scarcity has no worth unless the object is truly worth it. True scarcity is in value, not volume. Some luxury brands regularly release limited editions to spark consumer frenzy, but the ultra rich are never frenzied. When the object speaks to them, they claim the first piece before the launch is even announced. At 99% sold before completion, G&G knew how to communicate the value of ownership. And it had absolutely nothing to do with amenities.

An Aston Martin View to a Kill

When we ended our three-hour interview and building tour, Aljanati presented me with a 20” x 20” hardbound book, the word Unique scripted on the cover. I’m now one of only 150 people worldwide who will ever own a copy of this book, albeit I humbly acknowledge I’m not its intended audience, however deeply passionate I am about art and cars.

The remaining 149 owners will be people of means who might potentially buy the $59 million Unique triplex penthouse rising from floors 63 to 65. It awaits that one ultra rich soul who can’t resist the siren song of absolute ultra luxury. From a private elevator and custom-built climate-controlled garage to terraces with sweeping views of Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic’s endless horizon, this 27,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom crown jewel offers a lifestyle measured by inimitable experiences, including a private pool to be enjoyed at leisure and butler service to maintain it.

Owners of the 47 Signature residences on floors 46 to 51 received their choice of a personally customized Aston Martin Vantage or an Aston Martin DBX Miami Riverwalk Special Edition SUV to complete their new lifestyle. The destined owner of Unique, however, will claim one of the last remaining 24 ever produced Aston Martin Vulcan, a $3.2 million, 7.0-litre V12 820bhp hypercar meant only for a racetrack. In Miami white, of course.

The book is a physical expression of the virtual gallery that launched more than 300 sales. It’s a subtle whisper to the possessor that buying the Unique triplex is living in a story of your own creation, where you hold a Tibaldi Fulgor Nocturnus writing instrument to script your own destiny. On the 63rd floor of the 818-foot Aston Martin Residences tower, the triplex is Mount Olympus suspended above Miami. This is the seduction drawing the ultra rich. What is $59 million when you can live among the gods?