The European hotels redefining luxury leisure


Cutting-edge design is being applied to new hotels and restorations throughout Europe, bringing leading establishments firmly into the 21st century.


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If luxury in the second half of the 20th century was defined by how much stuff people surrounded themselves with, luxury in the 21st century has come to be synonymous with the quality of an experience and a connection made at an emotional level that is beyond the day-to-day. For designers, this means digging deep to create designs that are truthful and thoughtful, that are beautiful and also work, which are new yet embrace the best of the past and which are sustaining - in the case of hotels, for guests, staff, the business and the local community - as well as sustainable.

One of the most outstanding examples among new hotels for a seamless blending of tradition, innovation and local authenticity is The Peninsula Paris. This has set spectacular new standards in design, luxury and comfort in a stunning celebration of French savoir faire and art de vivre - a combination of the past and the contemporary, giving back a very special piece of Paris's heritage.

The Peninsula Paris. Photo: The Peninsula Paris: Peninsula Hotels
The Peninsula Paris. Photo: The Peninsula Paris: Peninsula Hotels

Over the course of six years, the century-old classic building has been meticulously restored and modernised to create the latest example of Peninsula excellence, working in partnership with a collection of France's top craftsmen and experts in restoring spaces and interior design details.

A deluxe suite at The Peninsula, Paris. Photo: The Peninsula Paris: Peninsula Hotels
A deluxe suite at The Peninsula, Paris. Photo: The Peninsula Paris: Peninsula Hotels

The objective and challenge from the outset was to marry a Haussmann soul and body to a modern building - to preserve the soul and the spirit of this unique location, while respecting each area and material. The result is that the architectural and design integrity of the original building has been restored and preserved, while simultaneously offering contemporary facilities, technology and other trappings of a 21st-century hotel.

The ‘Dancing Leaves’ bespoke chandelier in The Peninsula Paris lobby. Photo: The Peninsula Paris: Peninsula Hotels
The 'Dancing Leaves' bespoke chandelier in The Peninsula Paris lobby. Photo: The Peninsula Paris: Peninsula Hotels

The property was one of Paris's most celebrated 'grands hotels' when it first opened, but decades of use as an office building had led to its steady decline. With interiors designed by The Peninsula's in-house team in conjunction with Henry Leung of Hong Kong-based Chhada Siembieda Leung, and the ground floor architectural restoration spearheaded by Richard Martinet of Affine architecture & interior design, the building has now been restored by teams of French master craftsmen, many of them working in family businesses going back generations and all of them utilising traditional techniques.

For stonemasons, for example, who replaced the missing stone sections to the facade, each flower cascade represented three weeks of work; specialist gilders applied 40,000 individual pieces of gold leaf, and a master glass-craft company restored and replaced stained-glass ceiling panels and created a magnificent new skylight, spending two years doing it.

The Tiepolo suite, at Venice’s Aman Canal Grande Photo: Aman Canal Grande: Aman Hotels

However, The Peninsula Paris is very much a 21st -century palace and the interior has been reconfigured and discreetly modernised to create a contemporary hotel. Part of the modernisation of the heritage building was the excavation of three basement levels to provide a number of unique facilities to ensure the hotel remains at the cutting edge, including a spa, a 20m swimming pool, fitness centre and a private car park with direct access to guest floors, together with extensive back-of-house areas.

The Peninsula's guest rooms and suites are truly bespoke - fully customised interactive digital bedside and desk tablets are preset in one of 11 languages and full control of all in-room functions is just a touch away, enabling access to restaurant menus, hotel services and TV channels. There are also LED touch-screen wall panels which feature valet call, weather details, thermostat, language and privacy options.

The Palazzo splendour of the Aman Canal Grande Piano Nobile lounge, Venice. Photo: Aman Canal Grande: Aman Hotels
The Palazzo splendour of the Aman Canal Grande Piano Nobile lounge, Venice. Photo: Aman Canal Grande: Aman Hotels

The Peninsula Paris's collection of art pieces further enhances the contemporary feel. A bespoke chandelier installation featuring a cascade of 800 crystal 'dancing leaves' - a modern take on the plane trees lining Avenue Kléber outside, and with each leaf delicately hand-blown and individually hung - creates a luxurious sense of arrival in the lobby. Meanwhile, the entry signage for the Chinese restaurant LiLi is a world-first - the large fibre-optic hanging at the entrance is a portrait on nylon webbing and net fabric, woven through with optical fibre to produce a glowing, flowing effect never seen before.

Another beauty has just joined Europe's collection of the finest hotels - the Aman Canal Grande in Venice, a 16th-century palazzo which is still home to the descendants of the family that has owned the house for generations.

Now it has been respectfully and lovingly reimagined for one of the world's premier resort operators as a 24-guest room hotel by Jean-Michel Gathy, founder and creative director of Denniston International Architects and Planners.

Guest room at Miss Clara in Stockholm, named for the first headmistress of the 1910 girls school building the hotel now occupies. Photo: Miss Clara: Nobis hotels
Guest room at Miss Clara in Stockholm, named for the first headmistress of the 1910 girls school building the hotel now occupies.Photo: Miss Clara: Nobis hotels

Each of the suites and the communal areas is an artwork unto itself. The textures of the original features - ornate cornicing, carved marble, intricate murals and wood panelling - is quietly complemented by opalescent fabrics and smooth-lined furnishings, creating a clever reflective palate for the historic splendour. The majesty of the interiors evoke bygone style with contemporary brilliance.

Artfully restored, the soaring ceilings, sweeping staircases, gilded ballroom, 300-year-old leather-walled library and original Murano chandeliers sit effortlessly alongside modern furniture, innovative technology and ambient up-lighting ensuring views just as spectacular inside as those of the Grand Canal and city beyond. The palazzo, as well as Venice, remains the star.

'As the designer working with such an historic property, you have to remain humble,' says Gathy.

'You don't want to show off what you can do by crowding the rooms with items that would compete with the magnificence of the space. That would be stupid. Restoring such a venerable old lady and adapting her to act as a hotel is complex, but we worked with really exceptional artisans.' The Aman Canal Grande remains in spirit a breathtaking private palazzo that guests can share.

The reception at Miss Clara showcases the design’s translation of the building’s historic past with contemporary treatments. Photo: Miss Clara: Nobis hotels
The reception at Miss Clara showcases the design's translation of the building's historic past with contemporary treatments. Photo:Miss Clara: Nobis hotels

Elsewhere, one of Stockholm's most treasured art nouveau buildings has also been reborn as a luxury hotel, transformed from a former girls school into the Miss Clara, the latest hotel from Sweden's dynamic Nobis Group. Taking its name from the school's first headmistress, the hotel is a symbiotic study in art nouveau and Scandinavian design. Built in 1910, the building has been lovingly restored under the direction of Gert Wingårdh, of architecture firm Wingårdhs, with a palpable sense of heritage at its core. All 92 rooms follow the Swedish architect's concept of an outward-facing property, where the windows looking on to the boulevard below are treated as 'centre stage'. At street level, a vibrant restaurant and bar thrive on the urban buzz of the evolving Stockholm City district, welcoming guests and savvy locals alike. Conversely, the gym, sauna and relaxation lounge cocoon guests from the bustle of the neighbourhood outside.

There is liberal use of Swedish materials with limestone, oak and bentwood alongside parquet flooring, arched windows and high ceilings. And while the design largely translates the building's historic past in a contemporary manner, modern innovations and specially designed and crafted furniture pieces abound. The result is a seamless incorporation of soft and graceful organic lines, as well as the integration of more classic features like wood panelling.

The Regent Hotel and Residences in Porto Montenegro, designed by Reardonsmith
The Regent Hotel and Residences in Porto Montenegro, designed by Reardonsmith

Ed Freeman, director of ReardonSmith Landscape, echoes this sentiment: 'Even where the hotel site is within a tight urban fabric, we believe it needs to respond, interact and improve the public realm. This has benefits for both the hotel and the local community and may be required by planning.' The ReardonSmith-designed Regent Hotel, newly opened in the superyacht marina destination of Porto Montenegro, on the Adriatic coast, is one such example. While on a site between sea and street, the architects have nevertheless created a small garden area with benches to the street facade and a colonnade that wraps around the building, inviting the public to walk under its shade to the sea-facing side of the hotel where more benches allow them to sit and enjoy the sea views.

Such intermediate spaces are helping to achieve another trend in the luxury hotel experience - the blurring of conventional barriers between indoors and out as the design transitions seamlessly between the two. This has been helped on its way by the development of new products and materials that are both aesthetically stylish and able to withstand the elements, but the rediscovered privilege of connection with the natural world as an exclusive experience has much to do with it.

The bar lobby at the OD port portals in Mallorca, a member of design hotels
The bar lobby at the OD port portals in Mallorca, a member of design hotels

The new Mandarin Oriental resort in Bodrum, Turkey, for example, offers its guests a world 'where inside and outside feel as one'. With interior design by Antonio Citterio, the resort includes a wide choice of restaurants and bars, a spa on three levels and a range of rooms and suites where the outdoor area and the view is as much the story as the elegantly designed interiors. The resort cascades down the hillside towards the Aegean Sea. Much of the outdoor construction has been sunk into the terrain, with the hotel at the summit and additional buildings in carefully considered locations to provide zones of different activities and a journey of discovery for guests as they move through a series of outdoor spaces - cascading pools, cabanas, lush gardens for sunbathing and intimate niches.

Scape Design Associates was responsible for the outdoors. 'A well-designed landscape plays a key role in shaping the guest experience,' says Scape's managing director, Phil Jaffa. 'Our job as landscape architects is to work with the natural environment and elevate the experience of it. It is also to break down the boundaries between inside and out, enabling guests to enjoy the best of both. Visitors to luxury resorts today expect virtually as high a spec in the furniture and amenities outside as they do indoors.'

It seems that at least some of Europe's coastal resorts that historically have focused on hotels for mass tourism are recognising that there is also value to be gained from luxury resorts and a dash of boutique chic. A recently opened hotel on the island of Mallorca, a member of Design Hotels, is a case in point. OD Port Portals may be only a few kilometres along the coast from the heaving resort town of Magaluf, yet it is a world apart.

The hotel was originally built in the Seventies, a rather unprepossessing construction with a relatively busy road outside, but Estudio Rahola Vidal and Mayte Matutes have transformed it. Now, the interiors take their cue from the era of the original building but translate this into retro glam, conveyed through design classics, colour palette and modish patterns. Warm colours offset cool white, producing playful variations of light and shadow, both inside and out.

 The Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Bodrum, in Turkey
The Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Bodrum, in Turkey

The guest rooms offer clean lines and soothing hues, accented by the warmth of wood, stone and the leather detailing. Next year, the large rooftop area will open as the hippest destination space in the neighbourhood with exclusive views of the Portal Nous superyacht marina below.

The luxury hotel experience is also being dramatically reinvented and extended in Europe's alpine mountains. As reviewed in the FX Hotel Focus last year, The Alpina Gstaad was the first new luxury hotel in Gstaad for more than 100 years when it opened at the end of 2012 and it has since gone on to garner a treasure chest of design awards. Since then, W Hotels has made its first Alpine foray - in Verbier. The Continent's highest ski resort above Val Thorens has been treated to a new five-star hotel and there is more to come, with a new Six Senses resort due to open in Mont Blanc next year and the Bürgenstock Resort scheduled to reopen after a complete redevelopment in 2017.

Meanwhile, a jewel has been completed in the Swiss Alpine resort of Andermatt - The Chedi, which has been hailed as the symbol of reawakening for this quaint hamlet, now poised to rival any world-class mountain hideaway and jet-set hot spot. Once again, it was Jean-Michel Gathy and his team at Denniston International (see next page for Gathy in Conversation) who wove the architectural and design magic, this time with SPIN Design Studio from Japan which designed the restaurants and bars.

The Chedi, Andermatt, has the comfort of a five-star chalet and the aesthetics of a contemporary design
The Chedi, Andermatt, has the comfort of a five-star chalet and the aesthetics of a contemporary design

Motivated by the location and the destination experience, Gathy has honoured local heritage while balancing this with his extraordinary design vision and celebrating the awe-inspiring nature of Andermatt. A tribute to traditional Swiss architecture with local materials used throughout, the design at the same time elevates the concept; the ruggedly luxurious mountain hotel is cosy yet chic, comfortable yet classy.

The exterior echoes established Swiss-chalet style, imbued with contemporary graces - the timber facade, pitched roof and stone embellishment provides a classic frame for the generous incorporation of glass, reflecting and illuminating the inner social scene and outer natural beauty through all the seasons. Warm and welcoming, the 30m-long check-in bar transforms a traditional reception into a place to meet, mingle and mix drinks and, likewise, the feature fireplace and large loungers depart from a formal lobby and instead create an inviting shared space in which to relax and refuel.

In the 104 guest rooms, striated woodwork is boldly juxtaposed with striking 4m-wide monochromatic Rubens-inspired murals and the authentic timber-clad walls behind the beds are dotted with antique lanterns to emulate a starry night sky. The concept of 'adjustable living' is in harmony with the setting - the double shutter windows accommodate in-and-out fireplaces, allowing guests to enjoy the ambient heat in their room and on their terrace.

The Gemstock suite at the The Chedi
The Gemstock suite at the The Chedi

Radiant light, a sense of space and a perception of place exude throughout the hotel. With the open-plan approach, lofty ceilings, timber pillars and carefully positioned light-magnifying glass surfaces - augmented by the tapestry of wood, rich earthy hues and layered, tactile soft-furnishing - The Chedi is inviting and aspirational.

'The Chedi Andermatt has the comfort of a five-star chalet, the energy of a sporty destination, the aesthetics of a contemporary design and respect for local values and architectural language,' enthuses Gathy. 'This project is a major position strike for the industry where all Swiss service values are expressed and respected, yet in a contemporary environment, having lost nothing of the traditional comfort.'








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