Inside Diplo’s Private Jungle Paradise

The preeminent German poet-philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe famously described architecture as “frozen music,” opining that “the state of mind produced by architecture is similar to the effect of music.” Over 150 years later, Frank Zappa—a somewhat less august personage, perhaps, but nevertheless prescient—reframed Goethe’s meditation on the corporeal and the ethereal: “Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance space is sculpted into something,” Zappa professed. One wonders what type of music might be frozen in the bold volumes and interwoven planes of the Jamaican pleasure dome created by Grammy-winning celebrity DJ and producer Thomas Wesley Pentz, better known as Diplo. Given his penchant for genre-bending and -breaking, mixing and remixing, the property reflects not so much a specific kind of music but Diplo’s approach to music and creativity in general. With its three dominant notes of concrete, wood, and lush greenery, the house feels like a mash-up of its rainforest setting, the land reconfigured and refined in ways that parallel the sampling and refashioning that are hallmarks of the musician’s practice. The rhythmic interplay of the artificial and the natural, the different pitches and textures of the various spaces, all offer a glimpse into Diplo’s dexterity as a songwriter and his intuitive grasp of what makes a project work.

Jamaica has loomed large for Diplo as an artistic lodestar and haven of inspiration since the beginning of his career. “For a little island, this country has had such a powerful cultural impact around the world. There’s magic here,” the musician insists. Roughly 10 years ago, he took a leap of faith and purchased 50 acres of land on the northeast side of the island to create an ambitious, off-the-grid retreat for family and friends, far from the madding crowd. (In 2023, he added a neighboring 12-acre plot to the compound.) “It was a crazy place to build,” he confesses, citing the myriad challenges of construction, power, and access to the Edenic plot. “This project was all about patience. There were so many ways that it could have failed, but we kept finding solutions. I thought that, if nothing else, at least I own a bunch of banana trees.”

To tackle the herculean project, Diplo did what he does best—he assembled a team of inspired artists and artisans and set them to the task at hand, in this case taming the jungle while still preserving its wildly exotic sense of place. Looking beyond predictable boldface starchitects, he commissioned Lauren Crahan of the Brooklyn-based practice Freecell Architecture, a firm known for its experimental investigations of volumetric relationships and material tectonics. Architectural designer Gia Wolff, a frequent Freecell collaborator who focuses on the performative aspects of architecture and the reciprocal relationship between the user and the environment, was an integral part of the team. Diplo tapped Sara Nataf, his longtime creative director, to outfit the home, ably abetted by Katelyn Hinden, Diplo’s indefatigable assistant and first lieutenant. “I had these four awesome women controlling my life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. They get shit done,” he avers.