Hospitality Design - March/April 2015 - 58

perspectives

places miami

7

6
Motel has been refashioned as the Vagabond
Hotel, retaining not only its terrazzo floor but
its retro hipness. "We completely gutted it, but
didn't exactly want to restore it," says locally
based designer Stephane Dupoux. "We were
guided by trying to reach a true understanding
of how the '50s style came about." The 45
guestrooms are offered in several configurations
(dubbed Electra, Catalina, Galaxie, and Skylark),
but all sport midcentury palettes of turquoise,
red, and yellow. Iconic shapes, such as the gently
parabolic swoop of the headboard and the steel
mesh of an Eames-like side chair, complete a
spot-on recreation of the atomic era.

Brilliant Hotels

A trifecta of recently opened hotels has garnered
significant buzz in particular. Consider Ian
Schrager's Miami Beach EDITION, which
Marriott recently sold to the Abu Dhabi
Investment Authority. The latest installment
in his growing collection of modern, designforward properties, the urban mid-beach
resort designed by Yabu Pushelberg features
oak-paneled guestrooms with upholstered
teak armchairs; Jean-Georges Vongerichten's
Matador Room; and the BASEMENT, an
elaborate entertainment nexus sporting a
nightclub, bowling alley, and ice skating rink.
Further up Collins Avenue is the Thompson
Miami Beach, where Martin Brudnizki Design
Studio took a post-modernist approach, uniting
concrete breeze-block walls in the lobby
with hacienda-style flooring in its speakeasy,

058

March/April 2015 hospitalitydesign.com

1930s House. Elsewhere, "the 1950s concept
really set the palette, so we went with a lot of
playful and stylish colors, with yellow hues
featuring quite strongly in the guestrooms and
greens in the restaurant space," Brudnizki
explains. Observing that the party scene once
infiltrating South Beach has paved the way to
a more refined one, Brudnizki says he wanted
to reference the comfort of the tropics along
with the city's resort-style heyday, appealing to
a creative community "drawn to the city's new
golden age."
Starwood Capital Group's highly anticipated
new 1 Hotels brand made its debut in South
Beach last month. Set in the former Gansevoort
Miami and Perry South Beach, the 1 Hotel
& Homes South Beach was meant to "feel
composed of materials that had washed up on to
the beach. We wanted to have a different point
of view present on Collins Avenue, something
more airy and residential-a breath of fresh
air," says Gray Davis, co-founder of Meyer Davis,
the New York-based studio that handled the
interiors. This translates to an abundance of
linen, burlap, and driftwood. Here, reclaimed
waterlogged wood gets a second wind as a
concierge desk and old boardwalk decking
morphs into planter cladding on a pool deck.
"Miami is incredibly multifaceted, full of life,
and bubbling with creativity. As a resort city,
it's a place people come to relax, bask in the
sun, the ocean, and the tropical landscape, but
also to enjoy the wonder and fantasy of hyperdesigned hotels," explains Liubasha Rose,

6. Exhale Spa in the
Loews Miami Beach
Hotel incorporates
bronze lighting and
wirebrushed wood
floors.

7. An Electra guestroom
at the Vagabond
Hotel sports a bright
midcentury palette.

designer at Starwood Capital Group. "It's a
super interesting location for a brand whose
aesthetic foundation is to highlight the vibrant
beauty of nature and whose cause is to protect
it. In a way, 1 Hotels deconstructs the traditional
approach to hospitality design." Adds Meyer
Davis co-founder Will Meyer: "The city has such
a vibrant, luxurious, and happy culture. In our
opinion, Miami and its visitors are changing.
They want luxury and sex appeal, but they also
want an escape."

Heading North

Escape can certainly be found at the Four
Seasons Hotel at the Surf Club when it opens
later this year south of Bal Harbour in one-time
Hollywood haunt, the 1930s-era Surf Club.
The second Four Seasons property in Miami,
it brings together an 80-room hotel and private
residences designed by New York-based Richard
Meier and Paris-based Desselle & Partners.
Also below the radar is Turnberry Isle in
Aventura, a historic 300-acre resort. Dallasbased ForrestPerkins overhauled more than 100
guestrooms and suites, enhancing them with
floor-to-ceiling mirrors, textural fabrics, and
chrome accents. The goal of the renovation was
"an upscale, fresh, neutral palette that soothes
the guest at the end of the day's journey," says
senior project manager Colletta Conner. hd
http://www.hospitalitydesign.com
Hospitality Design - March/April 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Hospitality Design - March/April 2015
