The Hotel That Got Joshua Tree Right
Shipping containers, starlit tubs, and the most hypnotic view in Joshua Tree. Proof you can touch the edge of nature without taking anything away from it.
Calling this work feels like a stretch. Reset isn’t just another hotel in the desert, it’s the one everyone’s been waiting for. In Joshua Tree, nothing else even comes close. This is high design meets high desert, and it’s been a long time coming.
I’ve been watching it rise from the sand for over a year through my friend Ben Uyeda’s Instagram. He’s one of those maddeningly gifted people who can pull something out of raw rock, seriously go look at his epic rock work, and make it feel like it’s been here for centuries, could possibly be something from the future, and most emphatically, like it belongs in your house. His eye is forensic. He’s at the helm of a tidy team of visionaries behind Reset, like Gry Space, who all brought their own precision and obsession to the table. We’ll get to the design in a minute, because there’s so much to talk about. But back to Ben, who’s literally moved mountains here. I’ve been a fangirl the whole build. Every post a little drip-feed tease. Reset is my ideal hybrid: precision-minimal but welcoming, local desert getaways, and irresistible cool-guy-hot-tools-build porn. By the time the doors opened, I was ready to move in.
To make it even better, I didn’t go alone. I rolled with a bestie, Kelly Atterton, Beauty Director at C Magazine, Beauty Curator Covet by Christos, founder of Rile on assignment for C. Two journalists, one car. We left LA at the wrong time and paid the price. By arrival: ride-or-die status unlocked. And wow, did we made the traffic tax work. LA to Joshua Tree = hours of real catch-up. No meetings, no hustling all over town, just miles of talk. In LA that kind of uninterrupted friend time is a miracle, like snow. Fine, we took a few calls, or ten, because beauty journalism doesn’t sleep. One minute: thug deep dissecting life. Next minute: spa bookings and serums on speaker.
My official Instagram reel because of course.
Rolling up to Reset feels like driving onto the set of a post-apocalypse design film. Rows of sleek silver shipping containers, spaced with unnerving precision, all steel lines, shiny finishes, linear perfection. Apocalypse-core, architecture porn, whatever you want to call it, you half expect an armed survivalist to appear, only to realize it’s the hotel attendant, in a deconstructed Rick Owens uniform, handing you the keys. Maybe it’s Maison Margiela.
Walking into a Reset suite is a lesson in restraint. Remember these are shipping containers! Long, lean, and narrower than your typical hotel footprint, but somehow they feel bigger because everything is built-in, flush, and obsessively considered. Not a single detail is throwaway. The cotton muslin desert-toned robes are exquisite. I had to stop myself from accidentally taking one home. The bathroom is stocked with Flamingo Estate everything. Of course, a copy of The Creative Act by Rick Rubin is casually stacked under the lantern you use to get around at night. Dim walkways by design, so the dark desert sky stays as it should: unbothered.
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There’s a hideaway desk (the Murphy bed of workspaces) that folds out when you need it, then disappears. I can’t stop dreaming about making this for my house. A big, chic tote hangs by the door, ready to haul your Turkish (I think?) towels to the pool. Being in here makes you want to go home and throw out 90% of your belongings. In my case, 99%.
And then there’s the pièce de résistance: the bed. A massive, cloud-like thing pressed right up against a floor-to-ceiling glass wall. With the tap of a button, the automated shade lifts and it’s just you, the desert, and the mountains, framed so precisely it feels like the landscape was commissioned for the room.
As Ben puts it:
“Let’s just make great built architectural infrastructure and let’s bring it right to the very edge of nature and then just leave it raw from there.”
The real star of the show is the view. And the view is Joshua Tree National Park.
But the magic doesn’t end inside. Step out to your private deck and there’s a fire pit, perfect for late night s’mores and another headline act, the outdoor tub. I took a bath out there every night, staring up at the desert sky, watching it do its thing.
I texted Kelly next door at 12:30 a.m, (just on the other side of me, really, since all the decks open right into the desert. You can walk straight out, turn around, and see your room and your neighbors’, which feels less isolating and more like you’re part of a little desert community) “OMG SHOOTING STARS! She shot back: SAME!”
One thing I noticed and talked about a lot - is what felt to me like a cognitive dissonance in the shift from the austere, almost fortified arrival to the endless openness beyond your private deck. It messes with your sense of place in the best way, and you can almost feel your brain recalibrating. That tension between the outside’s hard lines and the inside’s infinite horizon ends up becoming part of the experience.
By day, the pool is the center of gravity, long, quiet, and framed by just enough desert landscaping to blur the edges. Outdoor showers with good water pressure was off to the side. At night, it’s a vibe shift. Glowing water. Air’s cooled. A quiet drift of guests chillin’ in what is for sure, the chicest backyard party in the high desert.
There’s a small outdoor bar where you can wander up for cocktails, coffee, snacks, and enough ice to keep your drink chilly AF in the desert heat. It’s low-key at the moment as the food and beverage menu’s still coming together. We ended up eating in town and bouncing around for coffee, poking through dangerously cute shops, and coming back with beautiful things no one needs, but whatever.
If you’re not leaving, the rooms have little fridges so you can stash whatever you’ve picked up, aka: cottage cheese, makeshift charcuterie, mineral water, whatever. They’re also planning a gym, and knowing Ben, it won’t be a row of treadmills, but some visionary, sculptural space that makes you want to move just to be in it. Or at least photograph it. And Reset’s basically begging to be booked out for events. picture the pool lit at night, fire pits going, music carrying across the desert. I’m already picturing myself as the resident desert DJ and don’t think I haven’t pitched myself 100 times already.
Some places you visit, and some places stay with you. Reset is the latter. I can’t wait to see how it evolves over the next few months, but even now, it’s already got its hooks in me.