Hospitality Design - November 2011 - 54

perspectives
LA looks

sketchbook

After a two-year renovation, Hotel Bel-Air, long a Los Angeles haunt of the rich and famous, has reopened bearing the glamorous mark of Champalimaud. The New York rm, which has worked with the Dorchester Collection for years, starting with the penthouse suites at the Dorchester Hotel in London, has not only given the Bel-Air’s guestrooms and suites a facelift, but also transformed La Prairie spa into a sumptuous getaway. (Rockwell Group handled the restaurant.) “Dealing with an iconic hotel, so full of history and legacy, always entails great responsibility because the expectation is enormous,” notes Bruno Viterbo, Champalimaud’s managing director. Undoubtedly, the spa was worth the wait. “The design for the spa is based on an intimate footprint that reinforces a quiet environment,” Viterbo continues. “It had to balance the urban LA lifestyle, and we worked to create a sanctuary, retreat-like space—very sophisticated, yet understated.” A powerful impression is rst established in the jewelry-inspired reception area with custom painted millwork, mirrored boutique, and cool white marble ooring. In the relaxation lounge, punctuated by two lavish, suspended gold leaf light xtures that provide dappled light throughout the space, guests grab a custom designed seat surrounded by detailed woodwork. They are then ushered into treatment rooms with bespoke embroidered silk wallpaper lining the walls and ceiling murals of blossoms above. The luxurious streak continues in the washrooms featuring high-tech showers and neutral-hued mosaic tiles.

ﬂoat on
The term “outdoor spa” acquires new meaning at Bota Bota. Moored in Montreal’s Old Port, this one-of-a-kind respite ﬁrst breathed life as a circa ’50s ferryboat before morphing into a ﬂoating art space for Expo 67, traveling around the province. Tasked with overhauling the vessel a third time around was Montreal- and Amsterdam-based Sid Lee Architecture, which despite a number of challenges— incorporating structures typical for solid ground, tapping naval architecture expertise to maintain stability, modifying the hull to expand carrying capacity— has created an unusual spa where skyline views are just as crucial to the aesthetic as the low-ceilinged, dimly lit, porthole-adorned treatment rooms. Photo by Bota Bota / Sid Lee “The main focus of our work was to create an intimate connection between the user, the experience, and the uniqueness of the surroundings,” shares Jean Pelland, project design architect and senior partner of Sid Lee Architecture. Guests check into a reception on the barge, a ship-bowed stairway overlooks the city, and portholes integrated onto pre-fab metal panels hold nautical allure. Engines were gutted to make way for spa locker rooms, and the once-cramped upper bridge is now home to saunas and a hammam. Bota Bota’s most innovative aspect, however, is undoubtedly its solution to heating: an open geothermal loop.

Photo by Hass & Hahn

majority rules
There was a time when suburbs did the trick of weeding out city folk, but today the majority of the world’s population is comprised of urban dwellers—many living amid challenging, unsanitary, cramped conditions. Proving that design has the power to transform social situations is Design With the Other 90%: Cities, a free exhibition on view at United Nations headquarters in New York. Organized by the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, the installation, on display through January 9th, underscores the harsh reality of how nearly one billion—and rising—city residents call slums and settlements home. Divided into six themes, Exchange, Reveal, Adapt, Include, Prosper, and Access, the exhibition puts forth forward-thinking solutions from designers, architects, and civic-minded organizations to problems ranging from food security and health to the marginalization of cultures.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Hospitality Design - November 2011