Hot air
City-hopping columnist Boyd Farrow on all that’s wrong with the world
illustrations by Rose Barton
Everyone who has picked up a lifestyle magazine since they fell under PR control in the late 1980s will have been urged to visit hotels, restaurants, bars and spas that are either “inspired by” somewhere totally different from where they actually are or are “redolent of” a different (usually freer-spending) era. Whether guests are seeking Spanish fincas in Iceland, Scandinavian understatement in Buenos Aires or rustic serenity in the heart of Tokyo, their hostelry requirements are inevitably met by a “modern spin” or “an innovative take”.
This will mean mix-and-match architectural themes, cuisines “fused” with other cuisines and a Baskin-Robbins-length menu of edible spa treatments. Often, guests will be too bewildered by the “modern interpretation” of “refined elegance” – a chandelier made out of the wing mirrors of an Alfa Romeo, say, or a chaise longue made from granite – to tell whether they’re in the breakfast room or the waxing salon. In fact, the hospitality trade’s visual karaoke is now so commonplace, the planet’s most authentic destination is Disney World.
Yet the pretensions of a bunch of stylistically promiscuous hosts pale into insignificance when it comes to the starchitects and big-name designers who blight the travel scene. It is as rare as a normal-sized showerhead to find a hotel that does not feel obliged to boast signature touches, no matter how illegible, of some overpaid attention-seeking doodler. This is even though everybody knows the more minimalist a hotel’s interiors, the more outrageous its tariff will be; and that the more designed an object looks, the less comfortable it will be to use. Surely Scandinavians cannot be only people in the world to appreciate that the very point of design is to improve on an existing object.
Sadly, it appears so. The craze for over-designed accommodations has reached such epidemic proportions that hotels the world over are morphing into galleries. Presumably this is happening because hoteliers can then qualify for arts grants, which is the only way they can afford to pay the designer’s fee.
The guest’s requirements, on the other hand, are given much less thought. This is why, when you arrive, invariably bleary-eyed in the small hours, you so often mistake the reception desk for the nightclub entrance, the elevator for the aquarium and the concierge for a rock star. Once in your room, you are likely to pierce your shins on your angular bed, go hurtling over a transparent occasional table, lose yourself in the Versailles-like hall of mirrors that apparently is your wardrobe and helplessly open and close the blinds several times – probably when you are wearing only your socks – trying to switch on the reading lamp. The next morning you will miss your vital meeting because you have to call reception for detailed instructions on how to activate the shower. This is after you eventually suss out that the TV remote is actually the phone.
There is one piece of good news though: Philippe Starck, the man behind countless design hotels, now acknowledges that design is far less important than the natural environment. He is no longer designing conversation pieces for lobbies but eco friendly boats and, albeit more weirdly, furniture that is “comfortable during sexual intercourse” – presumably to safeguard the survival of the human species. Even more heartening is the declaration by Starck, who is also designing a spaceport for Richard Branson (who knows: a giant lemon squeezer might just work) that he is not at all interested in designing hotels for ‘space tourism’. This potential market may be a big step for mankind, but resisting the temptation to get involved with something so futuristic is an even bigger one for a designer.
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