Unconventional Wisdom

The Making of Hotel St. George: How a group of creative visionaries is challenging the way a hotel is made.

It’s a clear day in September, and Mirkku Kullberg is looking out over the leafy Vanha kirkko puisto, a park in the center of Helsinki, from one of the luxury suite balconies of the still-unfinished Hotel St. George, a new ambi tious property set to open its doors several months from now, in March of 2018.

“It is so exciting for me that something I was just imagining a few months ago now exists,” says Kullberg, the project’s creative director and guiding force, turning back to survey a room filled with construction workers and equipment. “There used to be nothing here.”

Kullberg, who has large expressive eyes and usually dresses in flowing black, is new to the hotel industry. After almost a decade heading Artek, the iconic Finnish furniture brand cofounded in 1935 by design legend Alvar Aalto, she walked away from the company. She began work on the St. George in 2016, at that point a project still in its infancy.

Building a world-class hotel is, unsurprisingly, a remarkably complex endeavor. It requires the ability to unite countless different elements — design, food, wellness — under one central concept. And even by those standards, the St. George is an especially daunting project. The building is a historical landmark that once housed the presses for Finland’s first newspaper and the Finnish Literature Society. Its oldest section dates back to the 1840s, while the rest was designed at the end of the 19th century by noted Finnish architect Onni Tarjanne. And the hotel is emerging at a moment when Helsinki is coming into its own as a tourist destination.

The city, which is nestled in a scenic archipelago of bays, inlets, and forested islands, is known for its high quality of life, innovative Nordic cuisine, and passion for sleek, avant-garde design. Its central boulevard, the Esplanadi, is lined by elegant, streamlined architecture, including by Alvar Aalto, and although the city remains a more under-the-radar destination than other Nordic capitals, that seems likely to change. In the past decade, the number of annual overnight visitors to the city has risen by almost one million. In 2018, Helsinki will be opening a daring new art museum, the Amos Rex, as well as a new central library that aims to reinvent the concept of the library for the 21st century and looks like an elegantly warped coffee table.

Helsinki’s Pohjoissatama Harbor.

Characteristic architecture in central Helsinki.

St. George’s Winter Garden under construction.

Kullberg at her office in the city center, surrounded by St. George plans.

“It’s becoming Helsinki’s time,” says Laura Aalto, the CEO of Helsinki Marketing (no relation to Alvar). “This is the most exciting period for the city.”

But what makes St. George truly extraordinary is the unconventional way it’s been created — not by a team of seasoned hoteliers, but by an eccentric group of visionaries with no experience in hotels — guided, in part, by an esoteric wellness concept called Hintsa Performance.

The story begins, though, when Laura Tarkka, the CEO of Kämp Collection Hotels, Finland’s most reputable luxury hotel group, took the first step outside the box by tapping Kullberg for the project. The St. George was already in its planning stages, but they wanted someone to take a more ambitious approach. Kullberg had never considered working in hospitality, she says, but the opportunity was too good to resist: a historic building on a historic square and the chance to assemble her dream team for the project.

It also marked a natural progression from Kullberg’s years at Artek, a company known for its minimalist, forward-thinking ethos. Under her direction, the company embarked on projects that bridged the gap between art, architecture, and sustainability, such as a 2007 pavilion designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, made of recycled waste material from a Finnish paper company. A similarly ambitious, boundaryblurring sensibility has driven the creation of the Hotel St. George — as well as its rigorous cultural approach.

“I thought, if we bring in art, we need to do it properly,” she says. “Artek wouldn’t have existed without art.” Partly because of her years of work with Artek, Kullberg seems to know almost everybody in the art, design, food, and fashion worlds of Helsinki. “Mirkku has a lot of energy, a lot of ideas, and, unlike other people who just talk, she actually does things!” says Maija Tanninen-Mattila, the director of the Helsinki Art Museum. “I almost feel like making this hotel has been a culmination of my lifetime of connections and friends,” says Kullberg.

In just 20 days, she came up with a new concept for the hotel, based around the changing nature of luxury, and aimed at a new generation of travelers interested in high-end, design-led hospitality that eschews tradi tional five-star trappings in favor of a more personalized, holistic experience. “It’s clean air; it’s beauty,” she says. “It’s the four elements, which I call solitude, serenity, silence, and security.”

Kullberg climbs up some stairs in the construction site and looks over the monumental lobby space, which is currently still a hulk of bare concrete dotted with rolls of electrical cabling, but will soon become the hotel’s soaring entryway and home to its most iconic piece of art.

“This will eventually be the pop star entrance,” she says. When Kullberg first came on board, she was passionate about finding the right piece for the space. Kämp had organized a competition among Finnish artists but, Kullberg says, “the caliber just wasn’t there.”

So in spring of 2016, she walked across the park to Galerie Forsblom, which was showing a piece by internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, called Tianwu. The three-dimensional bamboo-and-silk con struction, shaped like a dragon with several human heads, towers over the ground like a ghost. White bulbs light it up from within, giving it an aura of simultaneous lightness and magnitude.

The Helsinki Art Museum had hosted a hugely popular Ai Weiwei retrospective in 2015 and Kullberg was thrilled by the possibility of offering a permanent piece of the artist’s in Helsinki. “I’m very fond of craftsmanship,” she says. “I don’t necessarily think art needs to be that provocative.” Of course, buying an Ai Weiwei doesn’t come cheap (“the finance department didn’t like me”) and Kullberg had to meet in person with the artist about the piece’s long-term durability. But in the end, she won out.

Each guestroom will feature individualized, handselected local artwork and textiles.

Finalizing a mock-up guestroom.

As a nod to the building’s literary history, the hotel will have a poetry room offering a vast assortment of poetry books from around the world in their original language.

“We want to have a spectrum of lights in every room, because one color helps you wake up and another helps you fall asleep,” says Pekka Pohjakallio of Hintsa Performance.

The oldest section of the building dates back to the 1840s, while the rest was designed at the end of the 19th century by noted Finnish architect Onni Tarjanne.

The St. George will also feature an official shop by Monocle, as well as a small store selling essential products selected by tastemakers, like the influential Berlin-based fashion retailer Andreas Murkudis. As a nod to the building’s literary history, the hotel will have a poetry room offering a vast assortment of books from around the world in their original language. It will be a phone- and computer-free zone where guests will have the opportunity to reflect, as well as a meeting space for weekly poetry readings, part of St. George’s cultural programming. Kullberg also plans to work with Marko Ahtisaari, the former head of product design at Nokia and the current CEO of the Sync Project. A groundbreaking venture developing music as precision medicine, Sync Project will be included in the hotel room experience to improve guests’ relaxation before sleep.

Figuring out the hotel’s culinary offerings was an altogether more complicated endeavor. Kullberg steps into what will become “Andrea” — like the rest of the building it’s a bare, dusty space for now, its windows looking out onto Lönnrotinkatu, a street abutting the park, but it will soon be a bustling restaurant with a brick oven and adjustable partitions so it can be shrunken down during the day.

“In Finland, the hotel restaurants had been developed from the fact that they first and foremost need to serve breakfast,” she says. “I said, ‘I don’t get it.’ We need to think about it not as a breakfast room but as a restaurant that somehow serves breakfast.” Kullberg envisioned a culinary hotspot that could stand out in Helsinki’s increasingly discerning food scene, which now has four Michelin-starred restaurants — a concept in line with what Laura Aalto, the Helsinki Marketing executive, describes as the city’s desire to bridge the divide between visitors and residents. “The project is something that we don’t have here,” Aalto says. “They’ve understood the importance of creating something that’s really well connected to the city, with services that are meaningful for the locals.”

Kullberg turned to an old friend of hers, Antto Melasniemi — an outsize figure in Helsinki known for having played in the gothic rock group HIM, one of the most commercially successful Finnish bands of all time, and for running several of Helsinki’s most beloved restaurants. “He acts in plays, does restaurants, music, harpoon fishing,” says Kullberg. He’s also made a name for himself through his many culinary happenings, for example his Solar Kitchens, in which he made dishes using only the power of the sun, in Helsinki, Sweden, and Alaska. “I asked if he would want to see this restaurant concept, and he said, ‘I’ve got one hell of a hangover, but show me’,” says Kullberg. Before long, she had charged him with overseeing all food and drink for St. George.

“I think she knows me better than I know myself,” says Melasniemi, sitting in the basement of his crowded nearby restaurant, Putte’s Bar and Pizza. “As a traveler, I love this idea of creating an international space within the city, and this project has the nice feeling of bringing the world closer to the city, and the other way around.” The Winter Garden, located under a bright glass cupola in the center of the hotel, he explains, will serve cocktails and a “light but substantial” Japanese-inflected menu, while the hotel’s bakery will focus on producing the city’s best bread. The hotel’s culinary centerpiece, however, will be the restaurant “Andrea.” Kullberg consulted with friends of hers from Sweden’s Fool Magazine, who recommended Mehmet Gürs, a Turkish-Finnish chef best known for running Mikla, one of Istanbul’s most famous fine-dining restaurants. “He is the perfect counterforce to me,” says Melasniemi. “He likes the sunshine, and I like the night.”

“I’m half-Turkish, half-Finnish, and Finland is where I was born, so it’s like I am going back home,” Gürs explains. Together with Melasniemi and Kullberg, he set about creating a restaurant that would serve up authentic Anatolian food with an emphasis on sharing and local ingredients.

Tianwu, a three-dimensional bamboo-and-silk construction by the internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, will tower over the lobby like a ghost.

Marko Ahtisaari, former head of product design at Nokia and current CEO of the Sync Project, provides music and sound consultation.

Kullberg consults with celebrated Finnish restaurateur Antto Melasniemi.

Kullberg’s desk.

The St. George team is briefed by Pekka Pohjakallio of Hintsa Performance.

The hotel’s culinary centerpiece will be the restaurant, Andrea.

Antto Melasniemi is an outsize figure in Helsinki known for having played in the gothic rock group HIM and running several of Helsinki’s most beloved restaurants.

Mehmet Gürs, the other half of the St. George culinary duo, is a Turkish-Finnish chef best known for running Mikla, one of Istanbul’s most famous fine-dining restaurants.

“The food we do is very bold, and we want to keep that boldness,” explains Gürs.

“The food we do is very bold, and we want to keep that boldness,” he explains. He plans on flying the staff down to Turkey in the run-up to the opening, though he and Melasniemi already started some early test-runs.

“We made a dinner for 70 people when it was cold outside,” says Melasniemi. Gürs had brought some lamb from Istanbul, and they decided to barbecue in the open air — a bit too close to the window. “There was so much heat, it broke the glass. It was so cool.”

One of the St. George’s most unique qualities, however, will be among its least visible. In developing the hotel, Kullberg turned to Hintsa Performance, a holistic concept invented by the late Finnish doctor Aki Hintsa, that hinges on the idea that a person needs to focus on six elements in order to improve their well-being: general health, physical activity, nutrition, recovery, bio mechanics, and mental energy.

“I thought we should make this holistic element part of the customer’s journey,” Kullberg says. After years of commuting between family in Finland and Berlin, and a job in Basel, the mother of two was aware of how draining it is to always be on the road. “I had been thinking about my life, and reading articles about Aki Hintsa, who believed that if you know your core, everything is better.”

“This is a passion project,” explains Pekka Pohjakallio, Hintsa Performance’s business development director, “because this is exactly what I would have liked as a traveling businessperson.” At Kullberg’s request, he and his team worked to make the experience of St. George’s guests as re-energizing as possible. “She wanted us to use the Hintsa model to help people make their stay in the hotel more meaningful and energetic than it would otherwise be.” In a practical sense, this meant ensuring that the hotel offers healthy food, placing elastic bands in rooms so that people can exercise and improve their flexibility, and a host of other tweaks. “We want to have a spectrum of lights in every room, because one color helps you wake up and another helps you fall asleep,” says Pohjakallio. “I thought, let’s be a bit crazy and brave and try things nobody has ever thought of.”

The hotel’s Hintsa-inspired gym, the Playground, will focus on “bodyweight training,” says Pohjakallio, and offer guests a prepared set of exercises depending on what they want to accomplish with their workouts. “If they are tired and want to refresh, we have a training regime for that,” he says.

I asked if he wanted to see the restaurant concept, and he said, ‘I’ve got one hell of a hangover, but show me’.

Already, the Hintsa experience has improved Kullberg’s life. “I decided we should walk the talk,” she says. She and the St. George staff have begun working with the Hintsa team to transform their lives, and she claims it’s already helped her recover from an old waterskiing injury. “I can run three miles without breaking a sweat now, that’s not something I used to be able to do.”

This spirit of transformation has animated the creation of the Hotel St. George, just as it has Kullberg’s remarkable second act — one that will soon be on display to the world when the hotel opens in spring 2018.

“This process is an endless series of miracles and small disappointments,” she says, “but we’re getting there.” As Kullberg sees it, the St. George is the culmination of many of her life choices — her time at Artek, her friendships, her deep understanding of Helsinki. Now she has the opportunity to shape the city that has done so much to inform her life, at the cusp of its moment in the spotlight.

“Helsinki has the momentum,” she says, smiling out over the lobby. “Now it’s up to us.” ■

“Helsinki has the momentum,” says Kullberg, pictured here at St. George. “Now it’s up to us.”

St. George’s main staircase incorporates original architectural elements of the heritage building.

Text Thomas Rogers

Photography Stephanie Füssenich