 |
Hotel Silken Puerta AméricaThe high-stakes, high-design hotel market in Madrid got at least a dozen new contenders - all in one building - when the $94 million Hotel Silken Puerta América opened two months ago.
While the facade is the work of the French architect Jean Nouvel, each of the hotel's 12 floors - from the elevator lobbies down to the bathrobes - has been conceived by powerhouse architects and design studios, among them Arata Isozaki, Norman Foster, Marc Newson, Ron Arad, Richard Gluckman, Javier Mariscal and Zaha Hadid.
With public spaces like the Black Tears restaurant designed by Christian Liaigre and the underground garage by Teresa Sapey, the Puerta América can bill itself as "12 floors with 19 stars."
With 308 standard rooms, 22 junior suites and 12 suites, the hotel is hardly "boutique," but the mix of design styles is as aesthetically engaging as it is disorienting.
The facade, covered with a rainbow of vinyl panels - which are, in fact, a clever system of window screens that modulate incoming light - gives a hint of the diversity inside.
When unfurled, the screens reveal phrases from Paul Éluard's poem "Freedom." If it sounds confusing, think of how it looks to drivers passing on the M30 freeway; the poem is written in about as many languages as the hotel had designers.
You might expect to see this type of no
more: www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/15/t... (793)
bookmark: 
26/9/2005 | Viewed 9,385 time(s)
|
|
