Hospitality Design - January/February 2011 - 38

perspectives
be jeweled

sketchbook

room to crash
Part hostel, part boutique hotel, Crash Pad, set to debut later this year in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is “going to bring affordable accommodations to downtown while also creating a community hub for all of the adventurous travelers coming to explore the amazing outdoor recreation that [this city] has to offer,” says co-founder Max Poppel, who moved to Chattanooga with business partner Dan Rose ﬁve years ago to follow their passion for rock climbing.

Sicis, the Italian mosaic production company, has a new luxury mosaic venture: jewelry. The unique Sicis Jewelry brand includes colorful broaches and cuf inks with designs taken from nature: butter ies, ladybugs, lizards, owers, and leaves. All pieces are created with a mix of gold, semi and precious stones, and micro mosaic tesserae, which contrast each other and create a marriage between color and light. Sicis goldsmiths and mosaic masters were inspired by micro mosaic techniques from the 18th century, which they revived with this collection.

The Next Steps for Las Vegas

The duo brought in two local ﬁrms for the project—River Street Architecture and Haskel Sears Design—both of which infused a 20th century industrial aesthetic, inspired by the hostel’s location in the historic, working class neighborhood of Southside. For the interiors, it’s a “balance of historic and modern achieved through using reclaimed lumber crafted into rich, textured wood surfaces presented in familiar modern forms,” explains Haskel Sears Design’s principal Matt Sears. Recycled wood is transformed into multicolored slabs, lights will be made from curved laminated wood and translucent acrylic panels, and custom sleeping pods and bunk beds use both rough reclaimed timbers and rectilinear midcentury modern plywood designs. And outdoor space is key: “We’re lucky in that we have a full acre of land to play with. We’re putting the hostel on one side of the property and are really happy to leave the rest of it open with grass and trees,” Poppel says, adding that they have registered for LEED Gold certiﬁcation.

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Living Architecture, a non-pro t conceived by writer Alain de Botton, author of The Architecture of Happiness and The Art of Travel, invites contemporary architects like Pritzker Prize-winner Peter Zumthor to put a new spin on the idea of lodging at a royal English estate. The organization recently unveiled its rst two completed homes, available to rent for holidays by the general public. The Balancing Barn in Thorington, Suffolk, is a silvery, cantilevered structure out tted in blonde woods and designed by MVRDV of the Netherlands. The Shingle House in Dungeness, Kent, designed by Glasgow-based Nord Architecture, takes its cues from the simple shermen’s huts such nature reserves in the world, according to Bell. By the end of January, a third property, the Dune House, in Thorpeness Suffolk, designed by Jarmund/Vigsnaes Architects of Norway, joins the roster, and two others, one by London-based Hopkins Architects and the other by Swiss architect Zumthor, are due later in the year. The idea behind Living Architecture, which aims to introduce one new house a year, after the initial ve, is to “suggest that the place you sleep in can affect you as much as the museum you visit, perhaps more so,” says de Botton.

lining the beach, with an extensive use of interior beadboard. “Our design is all about the site and its context, from the landscape and fauna, to the materials and treatment,” says Nord’s Mark Bell. The building’s exterior is nished in the tarred black shingles native to the region—one of the biggest of

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Hospitality Design - January/February 2011
