Elmar Benavente
CEO, Be Design Associates, Inc.
Elmar Benavente is the Founder and owner of BE Design Associates – an Architectural and Interior Design Firm headquartered in Boca Raton, FL. His work is well known for high-end residential architecture and yacht interiors. Born in Guatemala, Elmar’s family sold its pharmacy business and moved to New York to start a new life when the civil war took place. Once there, Elmar was determined to adjust to a new environment, life, and language.
Benavente discovered his talent for sketching and drawing in junior high. A very special teacher (his angel as he refers) would give him artistic tasks to do at school while she was compiling a portfolio in secret. This portfolio ended up being his ticket into the High School of Art and Design in New York City. Throughout High School, Benavente was surrounded by fashion designers, artists, and more, which inspired him to continue on with this path and apply to NYTC to study Architecture. He later was accepted into the Pratt Institute School of Architecture.
Elmar, after a few years, decided he wanted to start his next life in Florida where he opened his design firm BE Design Associates in 2001. Benavente has more than 30 years of experience in exclusive high-end home design, including 25 years of experience in design and management at his own firm. During his diverse years of practice and leadership, Elmar has been involved in a wide range of project types, size, complexities, and budgets. He was honored with the 2020 Contemporary/Modern Architecture Luxe Red Award in Palm Beach and is a member of Luxe’s Gold List. His role as a designer is to capture the essence of his client’s ideas and transform them into reality through the application of personal experience, training, imagination, creative skills, artistic talent, technology, and graphic illustrative abilities.
Elmar’s own life philosophy is to “live in the moment” because “when you live in the present, you start to appreciate everything so much more. It’s about being at peace, and when you take care of the now, the future will take care of itself.”