Guestroom Design: History In the Remaking
In this era of authentic luxury, old buildings give guestroom designers a helpful starting point.
By Adam Kirby, Associate Editor -- Hotels, 5/31/2009 11:00:00 PM
Cramped quarters and inescapable historical back-stories can be a burden on designers charged with creating luxury guestrooms in adaptive re-use projects. On the other hand, unlike the limitless blank slates offered by new-build hotels, the challenges posed by old buildings force designers to be creative in ways they might otherwise never consider.
Here are four recent examples of historic structures that house contemporary guestrooms, melding modernity with the past while maintaining a definitive sense of place.
The Augustine, Prague
Seven monks still live in the 13th-century monastery that reopened in May as the newest member of The Rocco Forte Collection. The roof has been raised on the top floor to make the rooms tall enough for today’s guests, and in many cases, multiple monastic “cells” have been combined to create the guestrooms.
Olga Polizzi, director of design for Rocco Forte, gave each of The Augustine’s 101 guestrooms its own unique look while playing up interesting architectural characteristics, like vaulted ceilings with exposed timber beams.
“We want our hotels to mirror where they are,” Polizzi says. “This is a particularly nice place, and I wanted to do it very, very simple and monastic—but it has to be a 5-star hotel and very luxurious. But I have kept in mind that it is a very old monastery.”
Polizzi references the hotel’s religious history in subtle ways. Beds are adorned with heavy linens and velvets reminiscent of the Medieval Age, in papal hues of purple, red and orange. The color palette features green with purple accents and grey with pops of orange. Some bathrooms have a sculpted angel wing, while Czech posters circa the 1930s decorate guestroom walls. Furnishings are a mix of simple, unvarnished wood pieces and some sleeker, modern fixtures.
Polizzi was careful not to go over the top with monastic theming. “It is not too kitsch,” she says, “but simply a reminder of where one is.”
The Iron Horse Hotel, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Built in 1907 as a furniture factory and used for decades thereafter as a cold storage warehouse, The Iron Horse is not shy about showing off its urban industrial setting. The hotel’s loft-style guestrooms take full advantage of the building’s heritage, with exposed ductwork, timber ceilings and barren, unfinished exterior walls made of Milwaukee’s signature Cream City brick.
The industrial touches give the Desires Hotels-managed property an air of authentic edginess, says designer Michelle Olsen of The Kubala Washatko Architects, Cedarburg, Wisconsin. “It’s part of the history of those kinds of buildings, leaving that natural look,” she says. “We let the beautiful appearance of the Cream City brick become a textured part of the room.”
Metallic neutrals dominate the guestroom palette, broken up by rough hues like rust and patina. Most beds feature oversized leather headboards, and luggage benches are playfully upholstered with cowhide prints. Interior walls are dominated by floor-to-ceiling sepia-toned renderings of local models in provocative poses.
The Iron Horse is the first foray into hotel design for Olsen, who typically designs retail spaces for motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson; not coincidentally, the Harley-Davidson Museum is next door to the hotel.
“We look at authenticity of materials at Harley-Davidson. Their bikes are like that, too—none of the stuff is covered up,” Olsen says. “It’s exposed—you see the materials, you see the inner workings of the bike. In a dealership design, we try to do the same things, and I would say a little bit with the hotel as well.”
Doubletree Arctic Club Hotel Seattle-downtown
The Arctic Club debuted 101 years ago as an exclusive social lodge for Pacific Northwest explorers, and noted adaptive re-use designer Candra Scott set out to preserve the property’s rich, fascinating history in the luxury 120-key boutique hotel that opened in the space last July.
Guestrooms are designed in a “clubby” campaign style, with striped coach cloths and bedding accented with monogrammed blankets. To give the guestrooms an authentic early 20th-century aesthetic, Scott sourced furnishings from independent dealers throughout Europe. Pieces are intentionally mismatched, Scott says, as if collected by club members during their travels.
Sunken armchairs are outfitted with soft leather in darks and creams; combined with the soft yellows of the walls and boldly stained moldings, they give the rooms a subtle sepia tone. Hanging artwork is a collection of native Eskimos photographed by Edward Curtis, an early member of the Arctic Club. Lampshades are repurposed maps from Klondike gold routes, and desks are original chart tables.
While many of the guestrooms once served as lodging for club members, some rooms served other purposes, like office space and storage. Those rooms were renovated in the style of the lodging rooms, using duplicate copies of original moldings.
“We do really pay homage to the original architecture, so when you walk in, it looks like the original architecture, but once you get in it can be something that’s fun and hip and cool,” Scott says. “It’s the European philosophy that something can be 500 years old and have something very modern put into it.”
Le Meurice, Paris
When this Dorchester Collection property tapped French designer Charles Jouffre to redesign the renowned 174-year-old hotel, he was asked to give the guestrooms a flair of modernity without losing the hotel’s 18th-century classic luxury. Wall-mounted flat-screen TVs would need to look perfectly natural beneath gilded crystal chandeliers.
The revamped rooms, which debuted in April, feature refurbished furniture and light colors with bright accents in a contemporary couture approach. The architecture of the rooms proved to be a blessing to the design process, Jouffre says—intricate 18th-century framework and moldings largely negated the need to extensively decorate the walls. Similarly, by removing heavy window blinds and replacing them with pastel silk draperies, Jouffre gives the room a light and airy feel while staying true to the period style.
The key to an effective design modernization, Jouffre says, is to understand what the guests want and deliver on it.
“It is important to always breathe in the space and to live within the premises of the building by trying to understand the expectations of the loyal clientele which comes to the hotel and respects the building itself,” he says. “Only then can the creative phase of work begin, with in-depth design work to integrate itself harmoniously with the site and its architecture.”
Direct comments to: adam.kirby@reedbusiness.com
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