Artichoke Night School No. 19: Stay a while

Held in Sydney, Artichoke Night School session 19 looked at the value of hotel design.

Artichoke Night School session nineteen, titled “Stay a while: The value of hotel design,” brought together designers and hotel management to discuss the role of quality design in the changing world of hotels within the Australian context. Hosted in Space’s Sydney showroom, the evening was attended by design professionals and students keen to hear the experiences of Juliette Arent and Sarah-Jane Pyke of interiors firm Arent & Pyke, Harlan Redgen of architecture firm Redgen Mathieson and Timo Bures, general manager of Sydney’s The Old Clare Hotel.

Arent and Pyke began the night discussing their work on the interiors of Alex Hotel in Perth, the pair’s first foray into the complex world of hotel design. Alex Hotel was a new build, the challenge being how to create a “hotel as home” for a clientele that was principally single travellers. Using a four-tier approach that tied in with the narrative of the hotel, they structured their design around “the personal, the escape, the craft and the legacy.” The close relationship between the “experience” and the “design” was demonstrated particularly well through the way in which the materiality and furnishings were used to recall familiar typologies of the home in each space. In relation to the experience, Arent and Pyke said that it had been “an adventure for all involved” but added “a successful one.”

Where Arent & Pyke and Alex Hotel showcased the merits of boutique hotels, Redgen discussed Redgen Mathieson’s work in relation to the nexus between commercial demands of hotel chain operators and achieving quality design outcomes. Redgen candidly commented that in the past “people had wanted their homes to look like hotels, while now, new hotels tend to be like home.” He saw this as a role reversal of the traditional design expectations between the two typologies. Redgen Mathieson’s third hotel project in Canberra, the Little National Hotel, was presented as an example of challenging the conventional notions of the value of design in hotels. Room size was sacrificed for increased luxury, which Redgen noted was a response to a “new demographic of hotel clients that are design conscious.” Small rooms are compensated for by high-quality design and well-equipped communal spaces. As seen in Alex Hotel, Redgen highlighted the trend “towards de-formalizing the hotel experience.”

The final speaker of the evening, Timo Bures, brought the perspective of the hotel manager. The Old Clare Hotel is located within old brewery offices at the Central Park redevelopment on Sydney’s Broadway. Bures discussed the work of Sydney firm Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, which was given “creative freedom to express what they thought was best.” While the designers where given a limited brief in terms of constraints, Bures was keen to point out that a common flaw in hotel design, especially from the commissioning aspect, was over- engineering of the hotel experience. He asked the audience to consider what the base need of a hotel is. “A bed” was his succinct answer. Using this as a case in point, he stated that “the things that don’t get noticed by the users, such as convenient power and data points, should be considered as good design.”

Following the presentations was an open Q & A session chaired by Artichoke editor Cassie Hansen, allowing the audience to pose their questions to the panel. From this discussion, it is clear that there is an ever-increasing number of independent hotel owners with independent ideas. This is an opportunity for the design profession as the field of what hotel design is, and could be, is opening up. The emergence of disruptive platforms such as Airbnb is a challenge to hotels to give people more experience for their money – which includes better design.

The Artichoke Night School series is presented by Artichoke magazine in partnership with Space. Night School session 19 was held at Space’s Sydney showroom.

Related topics

More discussion

See all
Bathing, ritual of healing and purification, is at risk of disappearing from our dwellings, through careless design. In praise of the bathtub

The humble bathtub is fast disappearing from our dwellings. Elizabeth Farrelly explores how the ritual of bathing is being erased through design.

The Greenary in Italy by Carlo Ratti Associati in collaboration with Italo Rota. The House of Green: Natural Homes and Biophilic Architecture

The House of Green presents the residential work of architectural practices that are treating the built and natural realms as one cohesive entity rather than …

Most read

Latest on site

LATEST PRODUCTS