Robert Couturier made design history in 1987 when the billionaire financier Sir James Goldsmith, who could have engaged any architect and decorator in the known world to do his bidding, followed his legendary instincts and entrusted the 32-year-old Couturier with what would amount to the single greatest private commission of modern times: the re-conception, execution, and continuous embellisment – down to the last gilded detail – of Goldsmith’s 20,000-acre kingdom on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. Crowned by a 60,000-square-foot vaulted-and-tile-domed hilltop palace called La Loma, the estate, before the designer was through, would come to include vast satellite villas and assorted guest pavilions. He would later complete the grandiose picture by decorating Goldsmith’s Boeing 757 (”a flying carpet with a motor”), double-width Manhattan townhouse, and historic French chateau.