A second main trend is towards creating a work of art, the whole building being dedicated to a single design idea. A prime example is Hotel Q! in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin. From the outside this pale grey building looks just like an ordinary block of flats. But as you enter the lobby, you feel like you’ve stepped into a trendy bar. Linoleum the colour of ox blood spreads across the floor and up the walls, folds in the material forming seating (ill. 9). Curves, raking lines and rounded contours continue in the rooms themselves. With the dark wooden surfaces and the cream-coloured imitation ostrich leather, the colours here are much more discreet than on the ground floor (ill. 2). Like Hotel Q!, The Hotel in Lucerne, with its grey Jugendstil facade, looks quite unprepossessing from the outside. One thing you do notice, however, is that the mullioned windows have been replaced by plain glass. At night these windows turn into giant peepholes and passers-by become involuntary voyeurs. Unless occupied, each room is brightly lit, revealing giant-sized stills from films by Wenders, Almodóvar or Fellini (ill. 5) painted on the ceilings. The interior design and the furniture in the rooms take their cue from the paintings on the ceilings. The cinema idea is continued in the public areas, too.
Rest and relaxation is a third trend. Guests don’t just want to sleep, they want to feel comfortable and to relax. For this reason more and more attention is being paid to “wellbeing”. Swimming pools, saunas, steam baths, relaxation and massage rooms often take up whole floors in hotels. The Grand Hyatt Hotel in Berlin boasts a roof-top spa, pool and terrace with views over the city. Recognising that many business travellers want to use their precious free time for rest and relaxation, the hotel is becoming an experience in itself with a wide range of services for beauty, health and fitness. At the Vigilius Mountain Resort in the Italian Alps, perched on a 1,500-metre high peak (p. 68ff.), guests can ski or hike in the fresh mountain air, or simply stay in and be pampered with a whole array of treatments.
A fourth trend is bathroom design. The purely functional wet room with no natural light or ventilation is out. Bathrooms are now bigger and more comfortable. In the Lux Alpinae hotel in St Anton, architect Georg Driendl separates the bathroom from the lounge/bedroom area with only a glass panel, so that even when sitting in the bath, guests can enjoy the view of the mountains (ill. 6). At the Vigilius Mountain Resort Matteo Thun places the bathtub right by the glass facade, separated from the rest of the room only by a free-standing heated mud-brick wall. In Hotel Q!, the bathtub, bed and washstand are combined in a single, prominent unit (ill. 2). A basement “wellness zone”, in black slate and pale walnut (ill. 7), provides for that extra pampering.
Fifthly, there are target group concepts. The Cube, a sports hotel in Carinthia, Austria, is designed for the young. It has rough screed floors, finished only with sealant, exposed concrete and metal beds, all creating an atmosphere that is very simple and functional. Rooms and dormitories have adjacent stor-age areas to put sports equipment and dry clothes. Down in the basement, there is a disco with lots of space for dancing.
The 25hours Hotel in Hamburg also addresses a young clientele. Great emphasis is placed on creating an easy-going atmosphere. The young employees don’t wear suits, but jeans and T-shirts. In the lounge, guests can chill out on large sofas to watch TV, eat sushi from the bar, or sit and chat. Orange and pink patterned curtains, globular lights, thick flokati mats and curving plastic chairs all conjure up a 60s/70s look. The rooms are retro, too, but have more discreet colour treatments (ill. On the ground floor, behind the lobby, is a big events space which is let out to generate additional income.
Street appeal is a sixth main trend. No more the faceless, lifeless facades, the interior is opening up to the street. At the Radisson SAS hotel in Rome, for example, the façades are fully glazed; broad steel beams mark out the divisions between the rooms. Each window is lit up in a different colour, making the façade look like a colourful paintbox of green, blue and violet light (ill. The Arcotel Velvet in Berlin pursues a similar concept. Here, too, the rooms on the street side are also fully glazed. When the red-patterned curtains are not drawn, passers-by on the busy Oranienburger Strasse can see right inside (ill. 11).
To sum up, hotel design is now departing from the standard mould. Interesting contemporary interiors are attracting a broader audience, not just architecture or design tourists. Amazingly, many of these modern hotels are not as expensive as might be thought (100 euros a night, for example). Costs are saved elsewhere – in the Ku’damm 101 hotel there are no minibars and no room service, just a vending machine on the ground floor. Modern technology, however, such as an Internet connection and flat-screen TV, is now very much standard. When it comes to star-ratings, therefore, contemporary hotels don’t tick the right boxes, but that’s not what attracts the clientele.
