Hospitality Design - July 2010 - 50

perspectives
Congratulations!
HBA Singapore on your Best in Show Award for the Four Seasons Seychelles. Your spectacular designs are a true inspiration for the hospitality industry.

sketchbook

fashion sense
Armani, Bulgari, Versace. Now renowned Colombian-born fashion designer Silvia Tcherassi has taken her eclectic design sense to hotels, opening the rst Tcherassi Hotel + Spa in her home country in Cartagena de Indias. “I have been a privileged witness to the transformation of the city, from a best kept secret to the hottest spot worldwide,” she says, adding that she plans on opening other hotels throughout Latin America. Housed in a 250-year-old colonial mansion, Tcherassi translated concepts from her past collections throughout the seven unique rooms (each named after a different fabric used in her fashions), Italian restaurant and lounge, spa, four pools, and a roofdeck that boasts views of the historic city and nearby sea. Modern touches mingle with high ceilings and exposed brick, and more literal translations come in the form of bedspreads made from hundreds of Tcherassi clothing labels and runway-inspired hallways. The standout: a vertical garden with more than 3,000 local plants. “It transforms the hotel into an oasis in the middle of the Old City,” she says.

making of a star
Two of hospitality design’s very own, Casey Noble and Michael Moeller, are facing off this season on HGTV’s Design Star. “It’s a bunch of good looking, talented (well most of us) people running around like chickens with their head’s cut off designing their way out of a paper bag—well guratively speaking,” says BBGM alum Moeller, founder of his namesake New York rm. For Noble, co-founder of Los Angeles-based I Heart Design by Avenue and formerly of HBA, the show has taught her to design quickly. “I’m not a design-on-the- y kinda girl, but each challenge required so many design decisions to be made in a matter of minutes. I’ve always said that 90 percent of being a good designer is con dence, and this was a great opportunity to put that into practice.”

ROOF WITH A VIEW
The Kimberly Hotel is the newest entrant in the New York war of the rooftops with the recent opening of Upstairs. And to turn the hotel’s 31st oor into an urban oasis, the owner turned to an unlikely source: designer Farnaz Mansuri, who with her New York rm de-spec, had never done a bar before. With a design brief to connect the existing ground oor restaurant and the roof, while at the same time create a unique rooftop experience, Mansuri decided to design a space that would age gracefully, and capture the spirit of New York. She employed embossed bronze panels that are die cut oral and backlit; a wine cellar lobby that recalls the stone stripe pattern of Florence and the embossed metal walls of the in-view Chrysler building; layered theatrical lighting (carnival lights, street lamps) with the help of lighting designer Brian Orter; and created a living wall and trellis.

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“This is a project where I imagined the guests, at day and at night, would remember the legacy of New York, where artists, actors, business men, and tourists make their rounds in midtown,” she says, adding that she worked on the project with architect Frank Denner as well as the owner’s in-house designer and procurement team.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Hospitality Design - July 2010