Jennifer Rubell, Peter Schweizer, Doug Herrick: "It’s got to be comfortable"

Art Design Publicity magazine 2(2): Micro | Re-published 29 July 2010.
Page 4 of 4

Can the design be too personalised and go too far? Jennifer Rubell feels that "it’s got to be comfortable. Our new hotel has almost nothing to do with architectural design. Architects don’t create warm, comfortable interior spaces. The new hotel is totally cushy," she stresses. ’What makes something design-orientated is the attention involved, the consideration. It’s not vital for the finished product to have that flashy, designy look. I’m an avid spectator of what’s going on in the fashion industry. While it’s fun to see what Gaultier is doing this year, there’s a reason why Armani is so popular. People actually wear Armani. It suits them. It’s their life." For Doug Herrick of Ace Hotel, "You can embrace someone’s vision, and it might be absolutely fabulous. But if it’s not comfortable, what good is it? A hotel needs to be based on an awareness of how we travel and what we need—if you don’t lose sight of the essentials, then your concept is bound to work. But sometimes design forces people, and it doesn’t work."

Will designer hotels remain a very ’80s and ’90s phenomenon, or are we at the threshold of something huge? According to Peter Schweitzer, "It has to be a good hotel. It can’t be just a chair in the lobby. In our case, the difference is that we’re promising the guest a whole lot more—service and style—and we’ve got to deliver. We’re marketing our hotel in terms of the client’s perspective and lifestyle. We also function as a source of information about the local community—we help the traveller to become to an immediate part of the local scene."

Jennifer Rubell injects her final thought, "I don’t think that there is such a thing as a ’designer hotel’. Contemporary hotels are what they are–lodgings in tune with the way people’s lives look and feel today. Different hotels occupy different roles."

"I wouldn’t class ours as a ’designer hotel’," Doug Herrick concludes. "We didn’t set out to come across as one. We perceive the Ace as a healthy and clean environment, and as far as I can see, there’s no ’design’ stigma attached to it at all."

ads by artdesigncafe

© 2009-12 artdesigncafe.com. All material contained within artdesigncafe.com is the copyright of its respective owners. This article may not be republished, rewritten or redistributed without their permission.