Frame’s popular hospitality design series, Night Fever, is about to embark on its sixth tour of the best places to eat, drink and sleep around the world. Towards publishing a global overview of prevailing trends in hospitality design, Night Fever 6 is open for submissions. We invite ateliers and studios around the world to share their stories about how they distil the essence of a venue and create a specific atmosphere to meet a client’s brief.
The previous edition, Night Fever 5, is a comprehensive study of outstanding interiors by the A-B-C of designers, from Alberto Caiola, Brinkworth, and Coordination Asia – all the way to Z for Zware Jongens. Today we look back at the five best uses of colour in Night Fever 5, and tomorrow, who knows – your work may be in Night Fever 6!
Bar Botanique
Studio Modijefsky
Photos Maarten Willemstein
A walk through the ever-developing east side of Amsterdam has gotten a little bit greener thanks to a lush design by Studio Modijefsky. Commissioned by the team behind popular nearby hangouts Bar Bukowski and Bar Basquait, the studio was presented with a corner site with structural features including high ceiling, double-height windows and a split-level floor plan.
Responding to its ample volume and light, the design team developed a concept to transform the space into a lush, plant filled, Art Deco era haven. Generous helpings of palms, philodendron, ferns and monestra decorate a vivid interior of mint green and apricot. Strategically-placed lamps allow light to shine through the foliage, casting an exotic motif on surfaces. As the sun goes down, the shadows become more defined – the foliage giving life to the space in more ways than one.
Completing the design, a custom typeface was developed and applied to menus and the bar’s identity, spelling out the venue’s name on the facade with letters arranged in each window with striking effect. The strong, rounded forms are reflected in the painted metalwork of the interior, with geometric forms creating bespoke mirror fixtures, hanging planters and arched storage racks rising over the bar.
Le Bar du Plaza Athénée
Jouin Manku
Photos Eric Laigne
In 2014, Paris-based studio Jouin Manku reinvented the bar of the city’s Hotel Plaza Athénée once again, after an initial renovation in 2001 made it a premiere high-life haunt. Coinciding with a more innovative and experimental cocktail menu, the redesigned interior departs somewhat from the traditional elegance of the hotel, taking a more avant-garde approach to the space while still incorporating elements of historic design vernaculars.
The intervention preserves the bar’s existing neoclassical boiserie – the rounded arches with florid reliefs, punctuated by engaged ionic columns. This shell now culminates in a new crown moulding, adopting the typology of the walls but in a glimmering silver to offset its antecedent’s warm matte finish. The most conspicuous and unconventional feature, however, is a dramatic ceiling installation consisting of a silky, deep blue fabric, draped capriciously to create a lush, hyper-baroque spectacle.
A futuristic bar counter, mirroring the form of the arches, is cast in a transparent resin. Gauzy finishes lend the countertop mass, tapering down into a clear stand that makes it appear to float. Behind, a singular chrome LED fixture illuminates the mixing station. With a scheme largely dependent on reflective surfaces, the contrast between the room’s surfaces fades as night falls, producing a dark and enigmatic atmosphere.
The Gallery at Sketch
India Mahdavi
Photos Rob Whitrow
The Gallery at London’s Sketch cultural institute first opened in 2002 as an artist-conceived restaurant to showcase the works of British artists.. Over a decade later, the owners of the Michelin-starred venue commissioned India Mahdavi for an update to showcase works of David Shrigley. Taking one look at Shrigley’s drawings and the interior – a ballroom in a converted eighteenth-century building – she apparently said, ‘The space shall be pink’.
The overwhelming presence of the lush, effulgent hue makes a humourous contrast to the abrasive, irreverent sketches on display. Copper finishes serve as the other principal element, gracing frames and supports for furniture, as well as lamps on each table and the surfaces of the bar, and culminating in a veneer over the panels of the dome window. Along with the existing crown moulding and a zig-zag marble floor from Martin Creed’s previous installation, these features exude a garish and excessive decadence, yet in which one cannot help but indulge.
At the same time, against this elegant material palette, the designer’s puffy chairs and geometric serving carts add a playful surrealism to the space. Coupled with vintage lamps mounted on the walls and interspersed throughout the room, they make the venue an uncanny hybrid between a traditional brasserie and a fantastical candy land.
Oddsson Ho(s)tel
Dodlur
Photos Ari Magg
Oddsson Ho(s)tel, located in Reykjavik is designed by local studio Dodlur with a concept combining high and low culture. Taking different design extremes and mixing them together – a simple but very powerful idea – gave the designers freedom to create a unique and daring hostel.
The brief was to inject a fresh feel into a well-known building downtown, a historic warehouse from the 1940s. The result is a vivid and breathtaking space combining industrial elements with cult design classics. The interior radiates freshness, playfulness and originality. Smartly combining minimalist and brutalist designs, the space is filled with Dodlur’s own eclectic aesthetic and custom pieces, standing next to a collection of rare design furniture from the likes of Pierre Jeanneret, Tomasso Barbi, Augusto Bozzi and Ettore Sottsass – a special collection that took 2 years to complete.
The custom-made pieces are inspired by the creativity that can be found in factories where leftover materials are used to create simple and raw yet beautiful furniture. This creativity with a twist extends to other spaces in the hostel where, for example, the team placed a luxurious hotel suite next to the bunk beds and installed a soundproofed karaoke room in the middle of a fine-dining restaurant.
Valencia Lounge Hostel
Masquespacio
Photos Luis Beltran
The Valencia Lounge Hostel combines contemporary graphic patterns, modern design and vintage elements in its energetic interior. Local studio Masquespacio’s design concept had with a two-fold objective: to retain historical local elements in the original 20th century building; and convert the hostel into a more modern space, evoking the cosiness of home.
Vintage cement tiles and ceilings decorated with plaster molds, sit side by side with contemporary furniture and fixtures and a bold colour palette. Ana Milena Hernández Palacios, creative director of Masquespacio, explains the firm’s design aim: ‘We wanted to recreate for guests the feeling of staying in a home, but also for them to be able to disconnect and dream.’ The rooms are designed to have different personalities: there’s a room for surfing fans, music aficionados and an ethnic-styled space.
No matter what the identity traits that are instilled, the one thing this interior is not, is unassuming. Vibrant, graphic patterns are seen everywhere in the hostel. These geometric wall and surface elements in bright pink, blue and yellow were realised by the Spanish creative consultancy specifically for this project, giving the hostel a unique – and fun – character. In addition, all lamps, tables and decorative fixtures were also exclusive items produced by the studio, with the exception of the chairs and armchairs.
Submit your hospitality designs to be published in the next edition of Night Fever, scheduled for release in February 2019! Find out more here. The deadline for publication submission is 31 July.
