Dr. Denise Joseph and Dr. Louis Joseph, founders of Open Sea Institute (OSI), live at the intersection of intellectual rigor and sensory beauty. The internationally respected psychiatry and executive advisory practice serves a rarefied clientele of senior leaders, founders, investors, and institutions, offering proprietary methods focused on psychological optimization, leadership resilience, and cognitive-ecological, prosocial approaches to performance and well-being.
Throughout the year, the Josephs rotate among a bevy of private residences in distinctive luxury enclaves. But winter in Palm Beach holds a particular kind of magic. Here, on a private stretch of beach in West Palm’s most storied corridor, the couple has created a residence that is equal parts sanctuary, gallery, and living philosophy.
We sat down with Denise and Louis to talk about art, nature, design, and the meaning of home.
A Study In Green
Dr. Louis Joseph in his Island Green Study (Photo by Fabian Alicastro)
Louis, what is your favorite room or area in your Palm Beach home?
Louis: “As a purist and student of history, I have a natural affinity for interior environs that are historically reflective of their geographical settings. My home office is just that. The walls are a vibrant tropical green that seamlessly transition to the vibrant tropical green foliage lining the canal adjacent to my large office window. My office walls joyfully display fine art in the Afro, Anglo, French, and Spanish Caribbean motifs. I find my office simultaneously exhilarating yet soothing, and reflective of the exhilarating yet soothing work I perform in the same setting.”
The Influence of Island Green Continues Throughout the Joseph Home (Photo by Fabian Alicastro)
The Influence of Island Green Continues Throughout the Joseph Home (Photo by Fabian Alicastro)
Designing as Devotion
Denise Joseph in an Art-Filled Hallway (Photo by Fabian Alicastro)
Denise and Louis, despite interiors that rival professional showhouses, you have never enlisted outside designers. Tell us more.
Denise: “Louis and I are proud to have designed each home ourselves. At times, this process has felt like another full-time job, but it is always a labor of love. Each residence is an act of self-expression and, just as importantly, an intentional reflection of what luxury, peace, and order mean to us. As highly sensitive individuals entrusted with the mental health of influential clients, we approach design as a responsibility. Every choice serves balance: equal parts stimulation and calm. Our homes are not simply beautiful. They are psychologically engineered waking dreamscapes.”
The Joseph’s “Joyous” Cabana Wall (Photo by Fabian Alicastro)
A Catchall in the Dressing Room (Photo by Fabian Alicastro)
Nature and Address — Both, Always
Denise Joseph on a Balcony Overlooking the Community Marina (Photo by Fabian Alicastro)
Denise, you live on a private beach on West Palm Beach’s most prestigious street. What is more important to you in choosing a place to live—the “right” address or natural surroundings?”
Denise: “Both are of utmost importance to us, and we are firm in our conviction to always choose both. As the original author of OSI-type Eco Medicine and an expert practitioner of plant medicine, my passion for ethnobotany, legal ethnobotanical considerations, and sustainable ethnobotanical research is well established. I am grounded in my firm conviction that people do not exist in isolation from the natural world.
I have been quoted as saying, “As we move into the future, there can be no realistic conversation around human healing without the meaningful incorporation of environmentally informed therapies.” To me, intercourse with the natural world is as vital to the human being as the ingestion of food-form nutrition, shelter from the storm, or interpersonal love.
Here in West Palm, we live on a private beach, waterfront garden, and mega yacht marina, which is its own intriguing subculture of man, animal, plant, and machine. Day in and day out, we enjoy the constant serenade of lapping waves in a marine ecosystem where animals from birds to small land mammals, dozens of species of butterflies, lizards, snakes, eels, manatees, dolphins, and whales live, side by side. Our home here is a living conversation set against a backdrop of boats and open water. Choosing to live like this was fully intentional.
At the same time, Louis and I value art, culture, and a diversity of people and experiences equally as much. We would atrophy without them. For this reason, we chose to live only 5 minutes away from the world-class dining, commerce, and culture of the city center. Palm Beach County is uniquely endowed with accessible natural beauty and metropolis activity. There are few places like it in the world.”
A Window Overlooking the Ocean (Photo by Fabian Alicastro)
Living with Art
A Painting by Friend and Artist, Sara Moreira (Photo by Fabian Alicastro)
Denise, you and Louis both have professional backgrounds in art advisement, and it shows. How does this expertise play into your design schemes?
Denise: “Earlier in life, I was trained as a professional appraiser of fine art in New York. That path brought me tremendous pleasure, adventure, and satisfaction. Louis is a born connoisseur, and we are entirely grateful to live art-filled lives. We choose to invest ourselves in important local institutions like the Norton Museum of Art here in West Palm Beach, where we are sitting as Council members. Certainly, some of the Joseph Family Collection is maintained at appropriate facilities of storage.
At home, however, we also strive to create museum-quality spaces because one of the most rewarding aspects of my professional education in art is the expertise I use to cultivate gallery spaces for our own personal enjoyment. Art is never far from me or my thoughts. It is a grounding and modulating force in my life.”
A Display of Indian Idols (Photo by Fabian Alicastro)
Where Is Home?
Denise and Louis Joseph in a Family Room (Photo by Fabian Alicastro)
Louis, you and Denise travel extensively throughout the year. Where is “home” to you? What does “home” mean to you?”
Louis: “Having a father who was an international businessman, I was born into a family where home was wherever the family was at a particular moment in time. As I reflect upon my present-day perception of home, I realize that it has not changed much in this respect. However, I do have a particular fondness for Palm Beach. The serene nature of the setting provides a balance to the frenetic professional spheres that Denise and I occupy. It is a truly magical feeling stepping off the plane in Palm Beach and feeling the ocean breeze and humid air on my skin in the middle of January. As Denise says, “Snow is for skiing. South Florida is for living.”
Denise, I have to ask you as well. Where is “home” to you, and what does it mean to you?
Denise: “Like Louis, my childhood was characterized by diverse environments. However, my experiences were different: my family was not continuously traveling but actually relocating. With no control over my circumstances, I did my best to find stability without continuity. Thankfully, I was born with an indelibly rich life of mind. As a young adult, I continued to relocate for schooling and then quickly began to cultivate residences in diverse geographies entirely by choice. My mental adventures continue, enriched. “Home” to me is wherever my intellectual and spiritual signature is. This signature translates directly into the love, texture, and color with which I adorn our residences.
As Louis said, our homes are always designed to reflect something of the surrounding environment, but there is a sense of magic we bring that transcends even pride of place. Each home, in essence, is an expression of the fantasy that is very much alive, well, and ever-evolving inside me. The fantasy becomes both a set and a lifestyle. Nowhere is this more possible and encouraged, for an American at least, than our precious, sunny, storied Palm Beach, Florida.”
A Closer Look (Photo by Fabian Alicastro)
The Philosophy of the “Unbirthday”
Denise and Figaro Joseph Take Tea (Photo by Fabian Alicastro)
Denise, it sounds like you’re describing your “sense of life.”
Denise: “Yes, absolutely. For years, Louis and I would travel to a particular relative’s home during the holidays. This relative had a particular talent for baking the most extraordinarily delicious Christmas cookies, which were supplemented by the most extraordinarily delicious baklava. However, regardless of how much we applauded, pled, or begged, all present were limited to one tray of ordered baklava, origin forever undisclosed, and one, what I have come to call in my own mind, “stingy tin” of delectable sugar cookies. Anyone who knows Louis and I knows that we are as passionate about our food as we are about our surroundings. A few weeks ago, Louis bounded into my bathroom (as he does), proclaiming that he had solved the mystery of my stingy tin. I was pleased and, after so long, finally able to put to rest an issue that had plagued me. As my clients tell me after session, “a tight knot inside was uncurled.”
“Our home is built on decidedly different foundations. In this home, we breathe the air, swim the sea, kiss the fish, hug the shark, climb the mountain, then ski it down. We wake up and do it all over again. In this home, we pile the cookies high for the occasion of any old Tuesday. We eat them. We delight in them. We wake up and do it all over again. Optimal mental health requires the internalization of the promise of any old Tuesday. Anyone who knows me well would tell you that I am a big believer in Unbirthdays. We two Josephs have forged the little or lot we have in love, sweat, and our radical sense of life.”
Denise Joseph Looks Out on the Beach She Calls Home (Photo by Fabian Alicastro)
Denise Joseph Prepares a Bath for Figaro Under their Royal Palms (Photo by Fabian Alicastro)
I have to ask, what is the secret of the “stingy tin”?
Denise: “That’s probably a subject for a different interview.”
OK. Thank you.
Denise and Louis: “Our pleasure.”
In Partnership with APG
