Heather Miller
You could say Ben Uyeda is the definition of convergence. After a highly successful career as an architect and sustainability lecturer at Cornell University, he took a leap to focus on both architecture and product design. Along the way, he built successful media businesses, from free, sustainable home designs available online to HomeMadeModern that features accessible DIY projects and now boasts more than 1.65 million subscribers on YouTube.
Just recently, Uyeda finished one of his most ambitious endeavors yet. Deep in the California desert, RESET Hotel is the first hotel built near Joshua Tree National Park in 15 years. This isn’t your typical destination. He and his collaborators with design firm Gry Space had a radical vision for a desert retreat.
The 180-acre property transports visitors to a natural experience that many compare to visiting Mars right here on Earth. The accommodations deliver their own otherworldly, modern experience. Designed with Autodesk Revit and Autodesk Fusion along with Naya Studio, the 65 modular units showcase a minimalist aesthetic defined by clean lines and a seamless connection to the desert landscape. A stunning saltwater pool, restaurant, communal lounges, and an evolving collection of outdoor art installations encompass the property, encouraging guests to explore and connect in the surrounding desert.
Sustainability and impact were imperative for design and operations. The team used Columbia Forest products, specifically domestic low VOC sustainable sheet goods, and employed local manufacturing for furniture and millwork. Passive solar design was integral, and a ground-up package sewage treatment plant brought an entirely new infrastructure to the region.
One YouTube series inspires an entire desert escape
RESET didn’t happen overnight. And it certainly didn’t start with the scope of a traditional built project. The first venture was a YouTube series on how to convert a shipping container into a residence. For that project, he used Revit for the design and Fusion to model different details.
“That series had about 20 million views across 10 episodes, which is about three times more than what an HGTV show gets,” Uyeda says. “It actually led to the hotel because investors saw that and they said, ‘Hey, let’s scale this up.’”
RESET was designed with Revit, from the steel modular units to an entire sewage treatment plant. Fusion played a key role in the details, such as custom surface windows for the outdoor bar.
“Our fabrication team designed these windows from scratch in Fusion and were able to model them completely to where everything was working,” Uyeda says. “We were able to test the counterweights and damping systems. We could take these design files right to the laser cutter to cut out parts. The Fusion model and detail can go directly into the Revit model, so that’s really cool.”
Bespoke furniture is a hallmark of RESET. In fact, Uyeda and his small team designed more than 200 pieces of furniture with Fusion. Throughout the design and construction phases, Uyeda regularly released social media updates and DIY videos. Anyone visiting RESET can know the experience of how that sofa or bed in the room was designed and made.
Elevate your design and manufacturing processes with Autodesk Fusion
Creating even more design experiences for RESET
Now that RESET is open doesn’t mean the design is done. Just recently, they finished the “Moonpad,” a 20-foot diameter circular lounge chair designed in Fusion. Uyeda documented and shared the entire process through YouTube and social media.
“This project cost us about $3,500 to build, but even just this one Instagram video got two million views and has generated about $50,000 to $60,000 in room bookings,” Uyeda says. “What we’re finding is if you actually do something real and build something completely unique that only exists in one place in the world, the draw and call to action is natural. You can educate people while you’re doing really effective marketing, too.”
Every quarter, Uyeda is planning a new art installation at RESET. To rapidly bring these new designs to life, they are using Fusion with Naya, an AI-powered project development platform that streamlines design workflows, strengthens collaboration, and is the connective tissue that accelerates development from initial concept through design, estimation, fabrication, and final installation. Within Naya he brings together sketches, research, visualizations, manufacturing details, along with every Fusion file, to create a unified view of the entire project. As a result, any stakeholder can easily review this single source of truth and provide feedback in real time.
Integration between Fusion and Naya is multi-faceted. Fusion models automatically sync within Naya, giving teams unified access, contextual version control, and a real-time documented project history. Beyond Fusion, Naya also connects 150+ integrations including Google Docs, Figma, and Miro, so the full project journey lives in one place. Designers, engineers, collaborators, and marketing teams can all view models, review project files, leave comments, track changes, and build clear product narratives from one platform.
“What I love about Naya is how it centralizes all my tools and visualizes the entire development of a project,” Uyeda says. “Having the visual legacy of the rest of the work behind a final result is vital for product storytelling. Designers, business partners, and collaborators can easily track exactly where the project is, see what decisions have been made, and what still needs attention. This documented project history eliminates excuses, keeps momentum going, and saves me weeks of work.”
Uyeda and his team are currently working on a new installation at RESET called Sky Table. This 40-foot-long reflective dining table designed with Fusion is an ambitious project from the design to materials. With their Fusion models syncing directly into Naya, the team was able to leverage Naya’s powerful AI Cost Estimator and Sustainability AI tools early in the design process, gaining visibility into how design decisions affected cost, material quantities, and environmental impact. This data gave them a foundation for more transparent vendor conversations and value engineering discussions.
“Having cost data instantly rather than waiting days for a quote was amazing because it helped us move fast, and the real-world results validated Naya’s cost estimates—they were spot-on,” Uyeda says.
Convergence in a single place
In many ways, RESET is more than just a hotel. It’s what happens when architecture, product design, fabrication, and media come together into one integrated experience. For Uyeda, it’s a total connection across everything he does.
“If you can share the process, you’re not just designing and making a place or a product,” Uyeda says. “You’re building an entire community.”
Learn more about the Naya Workflow add-in for Fusion here and try Naya’s Estimation AI Fusion add-in here.