Discussion: Beautiful Dreamer - Current Trends in Hotel Design
For many years identikit hotel formats have been one of the main culprits in the demise of a sense of place. The only variation in style was between classical, bourgeois or "country". In recent years, however, more and more hotels are impressing with innovative concepts and contemporary design. Amidst this upsurge of ideas, one or two main trends can be picked out. The first one is individuality, the trend towards a more personalised style. Faceless monoliths are passé, business travellers and tourists alike want to feel at home in a hotel. And so hoteliers are looking to design as a way of creating the atmosphere to match these wishes - and of staying ahead of the competition. Colour concepts are a popular tool, both inside and out. Hotel Wedina in the St Georg district of Hamburg, for example, consists of four adjacent buildings. The façade of each block is painted a different colour - red, yellow, blue and green - hinting at the differences that continue in the interior design. Red is for a standard guest-house style, yellow for a Mediterranean touch and blue for minimalism (ill. 4), while the green building is divided into modern apartments. (Each room in the blue building, the "Literature Hotel", is devoted to a different writer). In Berlin's Goethe 87 apartment hotel, lime-green, wine-red or coffee-brown mark out the different levels inside. A similar concept is taken up by the Ku'damm 101 hotel in Berlin (ills. 1, 3), decorated in Le Corbusier's polychrome colours. Individually designed rooms are another way of adding a more personal touch. In the Hotel + Künstlerheim Luise in Berlin, each room is unique, designed and fitted out by a single artist. Propeller Island Lodge, also in Berlin, goes one step further. One of its rooms is even fitted out as a prison cell; another looks as if it has been turned upside down, as the bed is fixed to the ceiling.
