No reservations: new hotel designs that don’t hold back

Text by Peter Smisek
08.01.19

Not sleeping on the demands of today’s travellers, the latest hotel projects offer guests more experiential stays without skimping on amenities.

Each of the 29 rooms of Sydney's Paramount House Hotel designed by Breathe Architecture feature a completely unique design so guests can have a new experience with every stay. Photo: Katherine Lu

The rise of peer-to-peer accommodation rental has had an enormous impact on the hotel industry. Where once a comfortable bed and efficient facilities would be deemed perfectly sufficient, today’s travellers – for business as well as pleasure – increasingly seek the authenticity of city living. Reflecting a facet of the local character has become an imperative in hospitality design, and these projects successfully demonstrate how architects conceive their projects within their unique context while providing every luxury expected of hotels.

The minimalist timber panelling throughout the interior of Montreal’s Hotel Monville designed by ACDF Architecture creates a welcoming atmosphere without the need for more elaborate decorative touches. Photos: Adrien Williams

Similarly, there is a growing number of design-conscious travellers looking for good value. Montreal's Hotel Monville, designed by ACDF Architecture, is aimed at precisely that clientele. Featuring a minimalist, monochrome palette inside and out, a cavernous lobby space adorned with vintage photographs of the city and basic, yet elegant rooms, this hotel epitomises minimalist, contemporary glamour.

The copper accents in the Arkkitehtitoimisto Teemu Pirinen-designed Jávri Lodge in Finnish Lapland lend a welcoming atmosphere to the hotel. Photos: Marc Goodwin

Boutique hotels are springing up in the countryside too. In Saariselkä, in Finnish Lapland, Arkkitehtitoimisto Teemu Pirinen renovated and extended an old skiing lodge that once belonged to the country's longest-serving president. Now featuring a copper roof extension with four new rooms and a dining room with vaulted ceiling clad in dark timber slats, the Jávri Lodge is a hotel that combines worldly sophistication with the rustic charms of Lapland.

The light-filled interior of Breathe Architecture’s Paramount House Hotel in Sydney showcases features of the original warehouse building, such as exposed bricks and steel columns, while copper accents add a sophisticated, warm touch. Photos: Katherine Lu

Sydney's Paramount House Hotel, designed by Breathe Architecture, combines an 80-year old warehouse with an extension clad in copper panels arranged in a chevron pattern. Featuring 29 rooms complete with their own loggias, the architects have endeavoured to create an environmentally sustainable hotel by using reclaimed wood and locally-sourced, low embodied-energy materials throughout, as well as installing solar panels on the roof to supplement the building’s energy needs.

John Pawson's careful renovation of the buildings that comprise the Jaffa Hotel in Israel exposes the building's history and deftly adapts it to its present day use. Photos: Amit Geron

In Tel Aviv, John Pawson converted an old convent into the new Jaffa Hotel – keeping and restoring many of the original features, such as vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows, as well as adding a vibrant pastel palette and furnishing the spaces with bold and colourful design pieces. The lobby is a more muted, modernist affair that features an exposed 13th-century bastion wall, while the hotel's restaurant is located in an airy, 19th-century chapel.