Project approach The brief of the project was to create a brand and interior to fit the conversion of a 600 m2 former municipality building into a modern-day boutique hotel for the millennial traveler. The property, situated in the heart of Rotterdam, The Netherlands, accommodates 28 guest rooms, with most of them being unusually long as well as narrow, offering rather suboptimal floor plans for a hotel. The Invisible Party embraced these challenges without making sacrifices on aesthetics, quality and comfort and rethought the traditional guest room lay-out as well as usage of furniture, which resulted in a surprisingly distinctive guest experience. Strategic use of color “We wanted to create a glitch in time, where you disconnect to reconnect. Once you step inside the hotel you unplug from the city and enter a vibrant wonderland with a vivid and vigorous design aesthetic,” says Vivian van Schagen, creative director and founder of The Invisible Party. To make efficient use of the narrow and long space, guests enter the room through the bathroom. The Invisible Party turned this disadvantage into a design feature. Juxtaposed color schemes and materials separate bathroom and corridor from the guest room, making the bathroom appear grand and the entrance to the room an iconic element. The color and material scheme has an air of 90s nostalgia, inviting the digital generation to discover the destination and disconnect. Pastels (pistachio, lavender and pink) meet rust orange and pine green, terrazzo and neon detailing. Smart solutions For the guest rooms, sizes varying between 13 and 24m2, The Invisible Party created physical space savers that give a sense of roominess, even in the smallest room types. The guest rooms feature multi-purpose furniture pieces like the bed, the desk and the wardrobe. The Invisible Party designed the bed to be the main feature in the room, situated next to the window, where you not only go to sleep, but happily work on your laptop, watch a movie, store your luggage and lock away your valuables in a safe. As many travellers don’t always fully unpack, the rooms are stripped from traditional closets and replaced by retail inspired open wardrobes that use just a fraction of the space compared to traditional case goods. Promoting a sustainable lifestyle The Invisible Party included a wink and a hidden surprise here and there. Hints to the brand’s philosophy of unplugging from fast-paced lifestyles can be found throughout the interior – be it the black-and-white TV noise pattern that can be found on pillowcases and the terrazzo tiles on the ground floor, along with the custom designed light feature in the public area and the carefully placed artworks by artist Enrica Masi. The Invisible Party adopted a less is more approach for the interior build out, aiming to meet today’s sustainable design standards. The use of recycled and natural materials as well as choosing high quality and modular furniture was prioritised to ensure a longer lifecycle of the products.