One on One With 2025 Million Dollar Pool Design Challenge Winner, Kirk Bianchi

This year’s Million Dollar Pool Design Challenge at the PSP/Deck Expo in Las Vegas delivered one of the strongest fields the competition has seen to date. Drawing a full house, the event brought together five talented finalists tasked with interpreting a complex, emotionally rich design scenario set in the hills of Napa Valley.

The homeowners in this year’s fictional brief—Lyle and Katherine Jackson—represent a compelling duality. Lyle gravitates toward Rocky Mountain rustic architecture and envisioned a wellness-driven retreat rooted in fire, stone, and rugged materials. Katherine, on the other hand, favors Palm Springs Mid-Century Modern and yearns for quiet spaces for meditation, intimate outdoor cooking, and a tranquil atmosphere that blends softly into the natural terrain.

With the couple having recently acquired an adjacent property, designers were challenged to unite these contrasting design languages while planning a full retreat that included private and public zones, rental-ready guest structures, and an amenity-rich outdoor environment. The brief required a spool and cold plunge off the master suite, a recreational pool, an oversized spa, a swim-up bar, outdoor dining for twelve, multiple covered structures, a koi pond, bocce ball, a yoga space, and incorporating features by Ledge and Fire by Design. All of it needed to feel authentic to Napa—its rolling grasslands, its live oaks, and its serene rural setting.

The judging panel reflected the gravity of the challenge. Returning winners Brad Holley and Moses Campos were joined by renowned designer Danny Wang, industry-leading photographer Jimi Smith, and PSN & Aquatics International Deputy Editor Rebecca Robledo. After the judges offered their commentary, the audience cast the final vote—turning this already technical competition into a true showdown of vision, execution, and storytelling.

When the dust settled, it was veteran designer Kirk Bianchi whose concept resonated most powerfully with both judges and audience, earning him the top honor in this year’s Million Dollar Pool Design Challenge. Judges responded to the clarity of intent and the cohesiveness of the layout. Audience members gravitated toward his handling of divergent aesthetics—a challenge many designers struggle with.

Kirk Bianchi’s Winning Design Entry in 2025’s Million Dollar Pool Design Challenge

From the moment Bianchi reviewed the scenario, he saw a rare opportunity: a pristine Napa hillside, unobstructed views in every direction, and a modernist home with a clear architectural voice inspired by Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House. “It had a really clear language to the house,” he explained. “A glass box levitating off the land… it already had a beautiful language, and the setting was magnificent.”

Rather than approaching the brief as a checklist of amenities, Bianchi responded to it as a composer. His entire design philosophy—taught to him by his mentor decades earlier—revolves around thematic consistency. As he put it, “Everything has to have a motif. Architecture calls it a parti. You must have an overarching theme, and then it runs through your entire program like writing a piece of music.”

This became his guiding principle for blending the homeowners’ divergent aesthetic tastes. The home itself set the “melody,” and Bianchi refused to dilute it. Instead, he found opportunities for Lyle’s rustic sensibilities in the landforms: terraced retaining walls using Napa’s native basalt, log-inspired seating, and natural stone that grounded the modernist structures. “We’re going to speak to his language in the retaining walls and how we terrace the land,” he said, while allowing all elevated architecture—the guest houses, yoga pavilion, and pool pavilion—to float lightly above the stone just as the main residence does.

This decision unified the built environment while allowing the landscape to carry the rugged notes Lyle wanted. It was an elegant solution to one of the scenario’s biggest challenges.

How the Setting Shaped the Design

From the outset, Bianchi worked from the outside in—placing architecture, trees, and view corridors before drawing a single pool edge. The existing landscape featured mature live oaks and sweeping grassland valleys, and he refused to interrupt those natural compositions. “I like to focus on landscape architecture and place trees early,” he noted. “They were framing views of peaks and corridors in the distance… everything had to nestle into what was there and not look manufactured.”

This approach created a design that feels inevitable, as if the property itself whispered where structures should go. The pool pavilion, for example, landed along the western edge because placing it elsewhere would have blocked views from the office and living room. This, in turn, dictated the orientation of the pool and swim-up bar. “All of those lines were projected out into the lot,” he said. “There’s this magical framework you don’t see, but you perceive.”

Those alignments are central to Bianchi’s design identity. “You feel like you’re walking through a poem,” he said. “Lines travel the length of the property… you don’t know it until you stand there, and then the alignments reveal themselves.”

Creating Emotional Impact Through Sequencing

One of the most striking elements of Bianchi’s concept is how he orchestrated the experience of moving through the property. Drawing from art history and photography, he designs every space with foreground, middle ground, and background acting in harmony. “The impact of any space is how those three layers align,” he said. “When they do, it’s riveting.”

From the front entry, a reflective water surface becomes the first emotional cue—a shallow, oversized flooded deck that frames a circular spa carved within it. Bianchi intentionally split the spa into two entities: the heated seating zone and an expansive unheated mirror deck that extends the water’s visual weight without creating impractical heating demands. “Who said the inside of a spa has to match the outside?” he said. “You can use a very shallow body of water to make a reflective plane.”

This approach gave the design a cinematic quality, drawing visitors through the home and straight to a dramatic water tableau that anchors the landscape.

The Thoughtful Use of Fire

Fire played a significant role in the scenario, but Bianchi treated it with the same restraint he brings to all sensory elements. “It’s easy to overdo it,” he explained. “Think of it as salt—you want just enough.”

Instead of scattering decorative fire bowls throughout the yard, he integrated fire only where it supported human interaction: a polished, floating linear fire element subtly revealed between the spa and a stone wall; a sculptural double-sided fireplace anchoring the outdoor kitchen pavilion; an elliptical fire bowl at the yoga pavilion for meditative ambience; and a long rectangular fire pit flanked by refined log-inspired seating to bring people together.

“All of the fire lived where people would be,” he said. “Not as distractions, but as companions to the activities happening around them.”

Balancing Private Retreat and Airbnb-Ready Function

One of the brief’s major challenges was creating spaces that support quiet personal retreat while functioning seamlessly for small event gatherings and luxury rentals. Bianchi responded with transitional sequencing that draws from a formative architecture project in his college years.

He created privacy through orientation, topography, and carefully placed screens rather than fencing or bulky structures. The master suite, just eight inches from the public zone, gained privacy through landscape elevation changes and a custom louvered gate designed to disappear visually when viewed head-on but block oblique sightlines.

Guest structures, located along the far perimeter, each received a private micro-garden—a nod to Japanese courtyard design, where miniature landscapes deliver immense psychological separation even on tight footprints.

Bianchi credits transitions as the secret ingredient: “You need these transitional moments. They change your emotional state, just like a commute decompresses you before you walk into your home.”

Finalist Entries in This Year’s Design Competition

While Bianchi took home the win, this year’s competition showcased exceptional work across the board. Each of the finalists brought a distinct perspective to the Napa scenario, delivering interpretations that spanned a broad spectrum of styles, priorities, and creative problem-solving. It was fascinating to see how differently each designer approached the same topography, the same architectural language, and the same programmatic demands. The diversity of ideas on display underscored the strength and versatility of today’s design community.

Looking Toward Next Year: Bianchi Joins the Judging Panel

With this year’s victory, Bianchi will return to the Million Dollar Pool Design Challenge next year — this time as a judge. His perspective, grounded in decades of disciplined design thinking, will add an invaluable dimension to the panel. As he explained, what he’ll be looking for aligns with the same principles that guided his winning entry: thematic consistency, architectural alignment, and thoughtful reconciliation of divergent ideas. “You must have a theme. You must have a concept… It’s the belt that ties everything together,” he said. Next year’s competitors can expect him to look for designs that demonstrate a clear conceptual through-line rather than a simple accumulation of features.

Bianchi is also launching a new mentorship program through his website KirkBianchi.com, offering designers the kind of guidance he received early in his own career. His goal is to help elevate the industry by cultivating stronger design literacy and giving professionals access to structured critique, case studies, and conceptual development frameworks. The program will function much like a design studio, where participants can bring work, receive critique, and refine their process. “Let’s shave a decade or two off your learning curve,” he said, emphasizing his desire to help designers achieve clarity and coherence in their work.

As the design community looks ahead to next year’s Challenge, Bianchi’s transition from competitor to mentor and judge sets an exciting tone. His emphasis on theme, alignment, and emotional choreography will undoubtedly shape the standard for the next generation of entries — and raise the bar for the competition as a whole.

Ready to take a deeper dive?

Listen to our entire conversation with Kirk Bianchi on the Pool Magazine Podcast.

Photo Credits: Informa Markets