9 minute read
LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL
In a world in which global travel has all but come to a standstill, escapism in hotel design has never been more necessary. The role of the designer in a new hotel’s LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL conception encourages us to imagine, escape and anticipate a new age of travel.
WORDS MARTIN JACOBS
THIS PAGE AND
RIGHT Celebrity designer Ken Fulk’s concept for The Goodtime Hotel channels the aesthetic of mid-century Central American resort towns like Havana and Acapulco. The pastel palette extends indoors, making a fantasy space of the library
GOODTIME. IN MULTI-HYPHENATE
Pharrell Williams’ lexicon, there’s an important distinction to be made between good time and goodtime. ‘It’s one word, by the way,’ the celebrity says of the name of his newly opened Miami Beach venture, The Goodtime Hotel. ‘Why? Because there’s just one vibration: good. You’re gonna come here one way, and you’re going to leave another.’ The idea of a transformative hospitality experience isn’t a novel one, but it has been elevated to new heights by the role design plays in a global array of new hotels. Since the start of the pandemic, a number of memorable and visually arresting luxury hotels have opened. Their collective common denominator? A sense of escapism and fantasy inherent to their design.
While many of these projects were planned prior to Covid-19’s onset, their aggrandizement of escapist design isn’t simply fortuitous. We live in dark times. Right-wing extremism, floundering world leadership and climate change have marked the start of this decade. The positive vibrations the name The Goodtime Hotel stokes are indicative of a world desperate for optimism. And where better to find that than when entering doors that lead us from one reality to another? Be it through an evocation of the past, capturing a sense of place, or appealing to the personal, hotel design has never been this escapist, nor the role of the designer so appreciated.
LEFT AND BELOW Key for Jacu Strauss, when establishing the design identity of the Riggs Washington DC, was honouring the building’s past. By marrying whimsical design with showstopper architectural detailing, Strauss injects modernity into the space
AMERICAN BEAUTY
From Miami Beach’s Art Deco buildings to the historic facades of Washington’s architecture, American hotels pay homage to their past. ‘I have such a romantic notion of Miami and what it might have been like,’ says celebrity designer Ken Fulk in an interview with Forbes, of his design for The Goodtime Hotel. Channelling resort towns like Acapulco and Havana in their mid-century heyday, Fulk’s vision celebrates Central American and Caribbean design. Nowhere is this more apparent than poolside. The Strawberry Moon restaurant and pool club is a throwback of note, a modern embodiment of the Slim Aarons era of poolside hedonism. Two parallel pools separated by a ‘catwalk’ run almost the length of the roof deck and are surrounded by cabanas, loungers and palm sculptures. ‘Public pools have insane restrictions around what colour they can be. But, we got through that hurdle and we got a pink-and-white-striped pool, which may be my favourite single silly thing,’ says Fulk of the Instagram-worthy fantasy space. Pastel pink dominates, and characterises everything from the broad-stripe tiling and pinstripe awnings to the scalloped bar stools.
Its signature status is prevalent indoors too, from the guestrooms’ rotary-dial phones to the library; a saccharine-sweet room decorated with tasselled sofas, offbeat wicker animal lamps and coffered ceilings. ‘I wanted it to be evocative of the past, but also something that people have never seen or experienced before, and that is the secret sauce,’ comments Fulk. ‘When you’re able to have people come somewhere and feel comfortable yet take their breath away.’
A nod to America’s golden ages equally characterises creative director Jacu Strauss’s design of the Riggs Washington DC. Built in 1891, the landmark building formerly housed the city’s Riggs
National Bank, famed for being the bank of 23 American presidents. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the building is one of the last remaining Richardsonian Romanesque Revival-styled buildings. Its dazzling historic interiors include a barrel-vaulted lobby, oversized chandeliers and ornate ceilings. For Lore Group’s South African-born Strauss, who admits to having a soft spot for Cape Town’s grande dame Mount Nelson Hotel, recognising this literal goldmine was key to his vision. ‘Rather than erase the past, I wanted to celebrate the wrinkles of another grande dame,’ he says. ‘I feel certain that a sense of escapism is going to become more important to guests. Post-pandemic, experience will be greater than just ticking boxes and seeing a hotel as a bed for the night. If done correctly, a hotel can provide a genuine, confident and thoughtful experience,’ says Strauss of his vision.
ABOVE The rich jewel tones, tasselled seating and mythology-inspired collectibles of Bar Marilou in Maison de la Luz hotel are a quirky nod to New Orleans’s mystical past and French roots. Studio Shamshiri and Atelier Ace conceived the design
‘Many visitors I talked to when they came to look at Riggs came because they had a relative who worked for the bank, and there was a sense of pride about that. So I wanted to be sensitive to its heritage and at the same time inject modernity and fun into the interiors.’ Strauss drew on the parallels between the golden era of banking and hotels – both being public places for private affairs. His designs for the guestrooms reference this past. The billowing robes in Baroque artworks inspire the patterns on headboards and wall coverings. Minibars take on the form of bank safes. The four First Lady suites are inspired by visits Strauss made to the White House to learn more about how past first ladies added their decorating stamps to the building’s legacy. ‘I describe the rooms as safety deposit boxes, full of surprises that are not necessarily related to banking, but more about something precious and sentimental.’ Downstairs in Café Riggs, a bespoke two-storey glass display case is home to supersized paper flowers. ‘I collaborated with paper art studio Mio Gallery to make this happen – the arrangement is based on a still-life painting.’
Design surprises like these, that reference the past, are part of the appeal at New Orlean’s Maison de la Luz too. The first foray into luxury properties by Atelier Ace (the design team behind the youthful Ace Hotels), Maison de la Luz is a creative collaboration partnering the atelier with Pamela Shamshiri of multidisciplinary Studio Shamshiri. Referencing not only the city’s history but also its maritime significance on the Mississippi River, the hotel is a
LEFT Multi-disciplinary designer Luke Edward Hall lists Wes Anderson’s films as an influence on his vision for Hotel Les Deux Gares. He imagined the interiors as a riotous explosion of colour in stark contrast to the stony palette of the Paris streets beyond
visual personification of the word madcap. ‘It’s almost like a quirky residence; there are aspects of it that really, truly do feel like a home,’ Shamshiri says of the offbeat collector-like approach to decorating, which draws inspiration from Southern folklore and mysticism, from all things astrological and from 99-year-old style icon Iris Apfel.
PEOPLE PLEASERS
The creative starting point for Adrien Gloaguen, the French hotelier behind Hotel Les Deux Gares in Paris, also began with an eccentric personality, English designer Luke Edward Hall. Gloaguen’s appointment of Hall as both interior designer and art director (the latter including designs for the logo, stationery and uniforms) reflects the hotelier’s conviction that a hotel can be strongly personalitydriven. Whilst the scale of this project is far smaller than its American counterparts, Hall’s loyal following and popularity act as a pull for the design-savvy who can’t get enough of his colour-rich work, which includes interior design, fashion collabs,
escapist antiquity and Riviera-inspired ceramics. ‘I think we need fantasy more than ever. Of course we have to be present in the real world, but I do believe that my job is to create spaces that take us away from the mundane and the grim,’ Hall says. ‘A good hotel should be a fantasy, a universe that feels complete and all-encompassing, and that gives consideration to the small things as well as the big.’
Similar to Shamshiri’s approach, Hall conceived of Hotel Les Deux Gares as the home of an eccentric Parisian collector. ‘I’ve never been a slave to a particular look; for me the best interiors are layered and multifaceted,’ he says of his juxtaposition
of bold colour, vintage posters, contemporary lighting and geometric, animal-print and Toile de Jouy patterns. He cites as influences on the project his design hero David Hicks as well as film director Wes Anderson (‘He’s my favourite director so of course I had to take inspiration from The Grand Budapest Hotel’s reception desk when thinking about our own little lobby’) and in doing so pays forward the myth of the personality.
Across the globe, Kuala Lumpur’s Kloé Hotel adopts a different approach to the significance of the persona in design. The property offers five unique lofts, each outfitted to celebrate a creative pursuit – art, gardening, music, food and
ABOVE Tailored to plant-loving guests, Room To Grow in Kuala Lumpur’s Kloé Hotel offers a guest-centric experience that includes a potting station with pots, soil and plants, terrariums and botanical-themed books and art books – and the guests they’re likely to attract. The Kloé team appointed a well respected thought leader, particular to each field, to conceptualise each loft. Room To Draw, conceived as an art studio complete with paints, brushes, sketchbooks and canvas (designed by artist Joee Cheong), and Room To Grow, with its array of plants, potting equipment and floral artworks (designed by botanical artist Ronnie Khoo) are the standouts.
Personality-themed suites, like the Book Collector’s Suite and the Music Collector’s Suite, are part of the offering at Amsterdam’s Pulitzer Hotel too, another of Jacu Strauss’s creative visions. ‘Discovering a place is a journey and there should always be thought given to the rhythm of a guest moving through, and stopping in, various spaces. Light to dark, loud to calm, expressive to reflective,’ he says of the key considerations that factor into his designs. Appealing to a design-savvy clientele and prioritising the guest experience take centre stage in the conceptual thinking of designers like Strauss, Hall, Shamshiri and Fulk. Their involvement in these hospitality ventures, and their design surprises both public and private, become the appeal of these luxury escapes. If this is the future of hotel design, let the ‘goodtimes’ roll.
