At Rick Ross's Miami Beach House, 35 Tons of Marble Set the Elegant and Audacious Tone

A platinum-selling rapper builds a nearly 15,000-square-foot dream house on Miami Beach’s Star Island, with security at the gate and frequent Maybach arrivals. The home is designed to feel futuristic yet calm, emphasizing relaxation and stillness. The interior pairs elegance and audacity through custom furnishings, including a creamy curving sofa, and bold artwork such as a glass-painted panel above a burgundy bed. The pool features a mosaic of two faces by artist Shira Barzilay, and the rapper personally proposed the pool concept. The designer, Kai Williamson, worked closely with him on most decisions while occasionally rejecting ideas, including a request to recreate an ornate Vegas bidet.

"Rick Ross is like all of us: He just wants to have a cafecito on the lawn with his bare feet tickled by grass. He just wants to wake up at 5:45 a.m. to the Miami sunrise. He just wants to exhale and watch lions and cheetahs prowl and growl on the 120-inch TV in his sunken lounge. His home, however, is not like all of ours. Unless you have a waterfall and fleet of koi fish that swish hello when you walk in? Thirty-five tons of marble that enrobe you like a mink coat? (Also: Seven mink coats.) A pool that reveals a stunning mosaic of two faces by artist Shira Barzilay? And your neighbor is come-on-baby-do-that-conga Gloria Estefan?"

"“I wanted it to feel somewhat futuristic, but so calm,” says the rapper and entrepreneur whose new album, Set in Stone, is out June 12 and whose memoir Renaissance of a Boss published this month. “I knew I just wanted to be able to be totally relaxed, totally calm.” Williamson saw the six-bedroom house as a symbol of the 50-year-old rapper's career culmination, and the goal was to pair “elegance with audacity.” Elegant: A creamy, curving custom sofa by Kreiss. Audacious: The beautiful glass-painted Solomon Adufah panel painting of a woman obstructed by blooming flowers, above the boss's burgundy bed."

"Rick Ross, the platinum-selling rapper whose lyrics center around his Miami upbringing-and who made "everyday I'm hustlin'" a way of life-built his nearly 15,000-square-foot dream house on Miami Beach's Star Island, where Maybachs often pause at the security-guarded gate. He couldn't have done it without the help of designer Kai Williamson of Studio 7 Design Group. Ross was intimately involved in every design decision-the pool mosaic idea was all his-and Williamson was game. Well, most of the time."

"When Ross wanted to recreate an ornate bidet he saw at a hotel in Vegas, she shut it down. “She embarrassed me on that one,” he"

Read at Architectural Digest