Check Out Time
The design hotel heads in new directions.
Words Jen Renzi
“These days, people use the phrase ‘design hotel’ purely as a marketing vehicle,” says Marcel Wanders, who just completed his first such large-scale property, the Mondrian South Beach in Miami. “But you can’t just put a fancy sofa in the lobby and call it a day; a design hotel is an experience that goes beyond—it’s a place to pour your ideas and your dreams.
Wanders is not alone in his sentiment. Industry professionals may be the design hotel’s most insatiable audience, but they are also the genre’s harshest critics—the first ones to call out colleagues on watered-down schemes or savvy marketing plans masquerading as high design. For all the talk about newness and reinvention, few designers truly rethink how guests live in these spaces. Indeed, the basic design of hotel rooms has not changed in decades, according to Raefer H. Wallis of Shanghai’s A00 Architecture. “Bath next to the entrance, bed in the middle of the room, desk wedged in a corner. Add Thai decoration and it becomes a Thai-themed room; add curtains and designer furniture everywhere and it becomes a Philippe Starck,” he says. So much for novelty.
When asked about their favorite destination hotel, designers are as likely to cite Japanese Ryokans or old-world classics such as the Paris Ritz or Claridge’s in London, as they are the Mercer in New York City (which gets a lot of votes). They know to look beyond funky furniture and clever trickery to less overt qualities of mood and authenticity, and to an experience that truly captures the surroundings—be it Beijing or Bali. No, it’s not a formula, but it’s not quite accidental, either; a good hotel is purposeful yet alchemical. Intent gets you only so far. Too often you check in to a self-described design hotel and have the same questions: Where’s the service? Where’s the sophistication? Where’s the soul? (Hint: probably not at Dellis Cay on Turks and Caicos, currently the most heavily promoted piece of architecture porn on a tropical island—and it hasn’t even been built!)
The players behind some of the industry’s most memorable properties are shifting allegiances. Philippe Starck and Ian Schrager—who arguably invented the genre—no longer work together. Starck is busy making waves for upstart hotelier Sam Nazarian. Schrager left his Morgans Hotel Group to build luxury apartments and launch Edition for Marriott. W Hotel mastermind Barry Sternlicht abandoned his baby to invent a new brand, the upscale eco outfit One Hotels. Is such flux a symbol of fatigue, a hint that the category is dying? Or is it a harbinger of exciting new developments? We checked in to six new or soon-to-open properties, and sussed out four new trends.
Design as Cultural Propaganda
For today’s brand of international traveler, it’s important for each property to capture its cultural context; when guests wake up, they want to know where in the world they are.
—A00 Architects
Beijing Mandarin Oriental
www.mandarinoriental.com (Opening in August)
LTW Design Works
www.ltwdesignworks.com
For spectators of the sport of high design, the best seat in the house is in the soon-to-open Beijing Mandarin Oriental. The hotel overlooks Rem Koolhaas/OMA’s love-it-or-hate-it Chinese Central Television (CCTV) headquarters from the media complex’s northernmost building, a shorter, smaller structure that houses various cultural facilities. Equal parts plush and progressive, the hotel interiors by LTW Design Works offer stunning views of OMA’s gymnastically limber loop-de-loop while capturing Beijing’s singularly mixed-up, postmodern sensibility. “We work with each owner/developer to produce a unique design that’s emblematic of its location,” explains Byron Wong, Mandarin Oriental’s Regional Director of Technical Services, Asia. “For today’s brand of international traveler, it’s important for each property to capture its cultural context; when guests wake up, they want to know where in the world they are.”
Creating a sense of place is one thing; doing so within a piece of signature architecture is quite another. Rather than compete against OMA’s assertive form, the hotel design goes along for the ride. “Rem’s radical architecture captures the hopes and ambitions of a future China,” Wong says. “Guests are looking to experience the iconic architecture within the building, too.” Thus the facade’s zinc cladding wraps into such public areas as the reception lobby and 34th-floor Chinese restaurant; meanwhile, south-facing corner guestrooms offer front-row views of the CCTV building through full-height windows.
Rooms mirror the architecture’s futuristic stance with directional touches, including marble-topped bathroom vanities that are open to sleeping areas and high-tech on-demand TV and radio systems. “Guests can access content to suit any cultural preferences—you can pipe in music from Hawaii or from Africa as desired,” says Wong. Finishes are more deliberately Asian, such as wood-veneer wall treatments stained Mandarin red, while furnishings filter foreign touches through a local sensibility. “There’s a lot of new wealth in Beijing, people who’ve lived or traveled extensively abroad and returned to outfit their homes in a contemporary, multicultural mix,” Wong says. “We wanted that quality here.”
Guestroom
Accessories
“We avoided Chinese clichés like panda bears and bamboo floors in favor of familiar materials used in unfamiliar ways,” explains Wong. “Most of the ‘Asian’ identity will come through artworks and accessories.”
Wall
The wall anchoring the bed is paneled in a wood veneer stained Mandarin red. “The material treatment evolved during the design process,” says Wong. “We were initially going to use lacquer or paint, but a colored stain proved the best solution.”
Vanity
Vanities were crafted from a marble common to the region to avoid the cost—and the fossil fuel expenditure—of importing.
Cladding
The design takes cues from the architectural envelope, Wong explains. “Inside, you can feel the expression of the zinc cladding—especially from within the corner rooms. We embraced the material by having the interior scheme complement it.”
Flooring
A nod to nature, the wall-to-wall carpet’s oversized, abstracted plum blossom print was conceived to soften the otherwise severe architecture.
Ballroom
Seating
To counteract the lofty ceiling of the expansive ballroom, LTW sunk the eating area four-and-a-half-feet below the floor level and encircled it with a water-filled moat.
Lighting
LTW envisioned the space as a secret garden, complete with magnolia-print carpeting and a chandelier comprised of a grid of spiraling crystals that cascade in a stylized floral pattern.
Images LTW Design Works
Hotel Urbn, Shanghai
www.urbnhotels.com
AOO Architecture, Shanghai
www.azerozero.com
A different spin on Chinese nationalism is offered in the design of Shanghai’s Hotel Urbn, where the guestroom experience has been rethought to better suit an Asian sensibility, while also reflecting the country’s green aspirations. Indeed, Hotel Urbn is not only the city’s first boutique design hotel, it’s also China’s first carbon-neutral one. “Hospitality is a notoriously hard industry to green,” says the hotel’s designer, Raefer H. Wallis of A00. “Properties typically max out mechanical services while pushing for minimal use of the rooms themselves—notably by designing them around the bed, which discourages guests from using the rooms for anything but sleeping. It’s a huge waste of resources.”
A00’s guest-room layout instead centers on a conversation pit that comfortably accommodates a range of activities from working to entertaining to lounging. “Encouraging people to really use the rooms makes them much less wasteful,” Wallis says. Such multi-tasking pragmatism, he adds, is a particularly Asian quality: “It was a way to say ‘Shanghai’ without being literal.” Encouraging guests to take off their shoes further intensifies the Asian experience, while also keeping rooms cleaner—thus reducing the volume of water and detergents used during housekeeping.
Guestroom
Building
The ceilings of the guestrooms feature a low-VOC red paint.
Finishes
A wall of stacked local slate serves as a decorative accent. Other walls are paneled in reclaimed Shanghai mahogany.
Fabrics
The upholstery fabric in all the guestrooms is made from local hemp.
Layout
To encourage guests to use their rooms for more than sleeping, they feature a conversation pit with compact fluorescents beneath the built-in seating. Many furnishings play double duty: here, the bed becomes a backrest for the lounge.
Decoration Returns
The Royalton, New York City
www.royaltonhotel.com
Roman and Williams, New York City
www.romanandwilliams.com
No doubt, you’ve already heard: the recent redo of Philippe Starck’s landmark public rooms in the Royalton Hotel by Roman and Williams signals a whole new era for the boutique genre. But while observers have reveled in the blood sport of pitting old against new, late-’80s irony against today’s multicultural sensuality, a more radical shift went under-acknowledged: the return to old-school decorating. Note the lobby’s louche, button-tufted leather sofas, Venini chandelier, sculptural steel fireplace surround, and vaguely 1930s glam. The new design eschews set pieces and puns—Philippe Starck signatures—in favor of nuance.
“It’s exciting to have caused controversy,” says Roman and Williams partner Robin Standefer, who, nine months after the big reveal, is taking the continued hullabaloo in stride. “The reaction speaks to a cultural shift. I think people have become fatigued by spaces that are cerebral rather than tactile. We went mad at the opening of the Royalton, how Starck totally busted it open. But 20 years later that audience—including us—has matured.”
What that audience wants, apparently, is a little less wisecracking cleverness and a little more comfort—the kind that comes with plush mink throws and vintage table lamps in steel and bronze. “We’ve always been optimistic that people love warmth and layering, and we’ve pushed our clients to shift their perception of what constitutes luxury today,” says Stephen Alesch, the other half of the Roman and Williams duo. Hotels, he observes, have strayed from what used to be their chief concern: “making us feel good.”
Here, feel-good coziness becomes a cannily effective device for negotiating the opposite needs of two very different hotel guests: the solo traveler, who wants to have a drink in the lobby without feeling weird sitting alone, and the more extroverted type who comes to seek out the scene. Plush, cosseting textures can perform as cocoons or social lubricants as needed.
The touchy-feely approach is also a rejoinder to the cooler-than-thou stance of yore. “The original Royalton had an exciting aura of exclusivity, whereas we strove for a more inviting and inclusive glamour,” Standefer says. Midtown, she explains, is a place where many demographics merge, and where those lounging in the lobby are likely to encounter a broader mix than in their neighborhood bar. The layered design both supports and reiterates the many layers of interaction that unfold within.
Lobby
Furnishings
The lobby with its button tufted-leather seating was designed to be inviting and cozy, “like hanging out in some cool guy’s living room,” says Standefer.
Sourcing
A 1940s aluminum screen from Paris became the touchstone for the room’s design. Other metalwork for the furnishings and fireplace was custom-fabricated by craftspeople in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Arizona. The room’s crystal sphere chandeliers were designed by Alison Berger (see “Fabricator“).
Restaurant
Lighting
The brasserie is lt by blown-glass pendants fabricated by Brooklyn artist John Pomp. “The lighting lends a mysterious quality to this primarily windowless space,” says Stadefer. “You don’t quite know if it’s day or night when you’re in there.”
Detailing
Embellished with ropework crafted by a Canadian artist, the millwork throughout is teak. “We wanted the design to be restrained and speak to the tradition of grand old hotel dining rooms, which we always find so peaceful and quiet,” noters Alesch.
Photos Nikolas Koening
The Tides South Beach, Miami
www.tidessouthbeach.com
Kelly Wearstler, Los Angeles
www.kwid.com
If Roman and Williams’s design is about nestling in—with either your own musings or a cute foreigner, Kelly Wearstler’s new look for the art-deco era Tides Hotel South Beach is about kicking back and looking back. It’s “a classic example of streamlined, minimalist 1930s design,” Wearstler says. “I paid homage to its history by carefully respecting Miami’s culture and Art Deco roots—it’s 21st-century luxury, juxtaposed with casual elegance, while honoring the city’s inherent beachfront spirit.”
There’s button-tufted leather seating here, too, and animal fur: the 45 guestrooms feature lush driftwood-hued travertine scattered with zebra skin rugs. It’s all softly colorful, with a palette of corals and peaches and lemon, and distinctly pretty—an adjective Wearstler has never been distrustful of.
The property is the flagship for the Kor Hotel Group’s newest brand, The Tides, focused on waterfront properties. The South Beach location is one of three renovations, the other two are in Mexico. There are also new properties planned for sites in Vietnam, Mexico, and Anguilla. As such, Wearstler’s task was not just reinventing one of the more quietly luxe properties in South Beach (a place not know for being quietly luxe), but kick-starting a brand. Each Tides resort will be injected with a unique residential spirit that reflects its location.
Indeed, the guestrooms in the Tides feel as if they were assembled over time. There’s a mismatched quality to the furniture, as if it had been picked up at flea markets abroad and then refinished and upholstered for a design enthusiast’s home. There are clever design details too, such as swapping the solid walls between the living and sleeping areas for airy wood screens. More signature Wearstler is on show in La Marea, the ground floor restaurant: tortoise-shell wall art, vintage brass palm tree sculptures, and dining chairs that look as if they were made from rope. Settling in to one of her baroque porter chairs in chocolate leather, you feel all the comforts of home—and all the glamour of escaping it for awhile.
Guest Room
Palette
The color and materials palettes—from weathered woodwork to soft pinks and yellows—derive from and play off of the oceanfront surroundings.
Furnishings
In each of the Tides’s 45 guest rooms, one-off vintage furnishings intermingle with custom pieces.
Dining Room
Accessories
A pair of vintage brass palm tree sculptures in the ground-floor restaurant, La Marea, recalls the building’s art deco heritage. So too do the hanging lamps of alabaster and brass.
Wall Treatment
In lieu of artwork, rows of faux-resin tortoise shells—a Wearstler signature—animate the upper walls.
Guest Room
Accessories
Many of the custom furnishings and accessories featured throughout are based on ones in Wearstler’s personal collection.
Rugs
Hide rugs embellished with a zebra pattern serve as room accents.
Flooring
Floors are tiled in travertine the color of sun-kissed sand. “I find stone to be so cool and fresh after a day at the beach,” says Wearstler.
Seating
Nature inspired many of the furnishings like the hand-carved leaf-backed wood chairs modeled on ones found at a French flea market.
Surface Depth
Mondrian South Beach, Miami
www.mondriansouthbeach.com (Opening late August)
Marcel Wanders Studio, Amsterdam
www.marcelwanders.nl
Count on Marcel Wanders to dream up a fantastical design that has nothing to do with focus-group research, marketing plans, or even perceived wisdom. His scheme for the Mondrian South Beach takes inspiration from the building’s castle-like form as well as its essential function. “People go to a hotel to sleep, so we based the design on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. Not in a literal way, though,” he says. “We wanted to create the feeling of being in a royal theatrical place.”
Theatrical it is. Each of the 335 suites offers bedrooms livened by zingy damask-print wallcoverings, kitchens clad in Delftware-style porcelain tiles, painted with Floridian imagery like crocodiles and beach scenes, and sculptural soaking tubs enveloped in blue-and-white mosaic murals based on a blown-up photograph of the Miami sky scattered with puffy white clouds.
Such emphasis on skin-deep surfaces and two-dimensional patterning begs the question: is Wanders cheekily alluding to the city’s, um, superficial side? “You can call it surface or you can just call it design,” he says. “It’s all to make the rooms as fabulous and sophisticated as possible, while providing the necessary guestroom requirements. The surface patterning actually keeps the space itself quite architectural.” Flatness, then, in the service of volume.
Limiting the pyrotechnics to the walls and floors helps maximize square footage—an especially important consideration given the property’s hybrid “hondo” status. Further enhancing the perception of loft-like proportions, Wanders kept floorplans as open as possible and created spatial continuity with continuous flooring that run throughout, even onto the open-air balconies. In the bedrooms, only a clear pane of glass separates sleeping and bathing areas; a billowing white curtain is the sole concession to modesty.
Signature Wanders whimsy—the huge columns that look like turned-wood table legs, and the enormous blow-up images of beautiful women—is matched by tongue-in-cheek cleverness. Indeed, his most fanciful design detail is also the most functional: showerheads in the form of crystal chandeliers that double as operable lighting fixtures. “We just combined two ideas—water and light—it was very simple. In Dutch we call it vanzelfsprekend: it speaks for itself,” says Wanders, inadvertently summarizing his strategy for the entire property.
Guest Room
Layout
In lieu of solid walls, Wanders separated sleeping and bathing areas with a full-height pane of clear glass to create a loftlike bedroom suite; a curtain offers privacy if desired.
Finishes
The tub enclosure is clad in custom-glass mosaic tiles from Bisazza patterned on a photograph of the Miami sky. Wanders designed the tub, called “Soap Bath,” which is also available from Bisazza.
Bathroom
Lighting
In each bathroom, a crystal-like chandelier plays double duty as a showerhead. Wanders designed similar fixtures to hang over the outdoor swimming pool.
Images Marcel Wanders Studio
“Just Be” High Style
SLS Beverly Hills, Los Angeles
www.slsbeverlyhills.com (Opening late August)
Philippe Starck, Paris
www.starcknetwork.com
L.A. nightlife impresario Sam Nazarian hopes to bring the A-list aura he has cultivated in his buzzy clubs and restaurants to his hospitality debut, the SLS Hotel Beverly Hills, which opens this summer. His renegade style and celebrity connections have drawn the inevitable (if as yet undeserved) comparisons to the original party animal/boutique hotelier, Ian Schrager. And, indeed, Nazarian has a lot going for him: a chief creative officer plucked from W Hotels, a retail partnership with tastemaker Murray Moss, and a 15-year design exclusive with Schrager’s old bud, Philippe Starck. (An arrangement that seems not to preclude Starck working on extraterrestrial projects like the Virgin Galactic space port.)
The SLS concept explores familiar boutique hotel turf. Namely, how to redefine luxury for today’s been-there, done-that, own-it-all jet-setter while delivering a design that is at once unique yet eternally replicable. This is where Moss fits in. As he tells it, Starck came to him with the idea of curating “a contemporary Bazaar to flow in/around/and literally through the main floor of his new, ‘grand hotel’ like a Venetian canal.” How could Moss say no? “Philippe’s scenographic thinking is so akin to mine, as is his love of grand hotels, and those beautiful vitrines which float through magnificent public spaces in 19th-century European grand hotels,” he continues. The SLS Bazaar will offer some 35 custom-designed vitrines, each different from the next, and each containing a unique set of offerings, including vintage Sèvres busts of Marie Antoinette and Napoleon, hand-painted Lobmeyr tumblers, German chocolate birds and monkey-shaped candles.
Striking a balance between one-off and mass-producible is a challenge for which the accessibly artsy Starck is well suited. He sees his job as more conjurer than designer. “To me, a building is not made of steel and glass,” he says. “That’s just a shell. My job is to create life within. The only acceptable style is the freedom to choose.” Smartly, SLS offers guests freedom to choose between two lobbies: one for check-in, and a second one that serves as the property’s more public face, encompassing lounge area, Moss’s boutique, and bars and restaurants featuring organic food. “The SLS will be elegant and eco—we’re even working on an organic laundry,” Starck notes. The emphasis on health and wellness doesn’t end there; the hotel will offer seven fitness suites with custom-designed training equipment by Italian manufacturer Technogym.
As for the interiors, don’t read too much into the surprising emphasis on clean lines, the custom Cassina furnishings, the lobby’s commingling of communal tables and wacky chandeliers, or the Mies-inspired guestroom’s window seats—a clever alternative to an underutilized armchair. Style is not a concept that concerns the oh-so-poetic Starck. In the press materials, he says, “Style? What is it, really? I have no taste, but I know my life.” He even dreamed up an acronym for the meaningless but open-to-interpretation hotel name: “Some Little Secrets”—one of which, tellingly, is “Beauty is an opinion.”
Starck speaks—and conjures—with the confidence of someone who is at the top of his game, and the top of his industry. If anyone can revolutionize the design hotel, it is Philippe Starck.
My general comments on the magazine: smart, well-written, visually appealing and overall, very well done. Fulcrum fills a necessary niche in the marketplace. Congratulations.