Umé Studio is a multi-disciplinary design practice in Oakland and New York City, founded and led by architect Mei-Lan Tan. We focus on hospitality: hotels, spas, wineries, retreats, bath houses—and the materials, furniture, interiors, and landscapes inside and outside them.

Each of our projects is conceived as a cohesive whole, from the building down to the door handle, the lintel, and the stone underfoot. A single object can shape a room. Furniture and finishes are not selected from a catalogue, they are designed and made—the result of nearly a decade of fabrication relationships built at UMÉ, the design goods practice Mei-Lan founded in 2017.

Every project begins with a site read across many layers—physicality, history, culture, and future. The work that follows is research-led and fabrication-deep. What we build carries the values and specificity of its place.

Services

Architecture

Each project begins with exacting research—balancing the past, present, and future of a site, its geography, and culture—until a distinctive philosophy emerges. Whether reusing existing structures or working from the ground up, we design across all scales.

Interiors

Umé Studio aims to create spaces that feel rooted within the continuum of time, celebrating handcraft, patina, and imperfection. Approached sculpturally, rooms are balanced, layered, purposeful, and designed to feel good for the people in them. We craft custom furniture and finishes in support of these aims.

Landscape

Umé Studio’s landscapes are meticulously planned as both seamless extensions of our architecture and interiors and spaces in their own right. Plant species are carefully selected for scale, texture and color, and sustainability—and appreciated for the unexpected quality that living things bring to design.

Planning

Umé Studio plans sites and properties as experiences of delight and discovery. Architecture, landscape, program, and movement are layered together into a rigorously functional and cohesive composition.

Programming

Every project demands its own program. Through thoughtful typological and market research and a deep analysis of a client’s unique style and brand, Umé Studio identifies the precise mix of uses that gives a place character, and ultimately, makes it a success.

Hospitality

Umé Studio approaches hospitality spaces as immersive worlds. Every layer, from architecture to objects, answers to a single design sensibility—producing places of total authorship that feel irreplaceable and impossible to leave.

Spa Design

Combining research on historic cultures of bathing and cutting-edge wellness practices, Umé Studio arranges temperature, light, water, and air to create spa environments that are natural and enduring.

Mei-Lan Tan

Founder of Umé Studio

Mei-Lan Tan is an architect, designer, and founder of UMÉ and Umé Studio.

Raised in California and of Indonesian and Chinese heritage, Tan brings a well-traveled, global perspective to her work, where a deep resonance with the sublime elements of nature informs her vision. Effortlessly refined, her style is relaxed and casual. An avid classic car collector, she channels the spirit of a life well-lived with quintessential California cool—open air, winding roads, and a sense of freedom.

A Forbes 30 under 30 honoree, she holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University, where she was recognized with the prestigious Charles Goodwin Sands Memorial Award and the Baird Prize.

Her work has been published in Architectural Digest, Vogue, Dwell, Surface Magazine, Dezeen, Forbes, Bloomberg, Domus, and T Magazine, and exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Paris, Milan, and Tokyo.