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LIMES HOTEL BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA |
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ARCHITECTURE / INTERIOR DESIGN |
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For years, Alexander Lotersztain travelled the world, living out of hotel rooms and friends’ houses. These days, the designer likes to describe himself as a “semi-settled nomad,” having forsaken the itinerant lifestyle to make a semi-permanent home in Brisbane, Australia. Now, his enduring wanderlust must find expression through designs informed by the world-roving experiences of his past and the anti-accumulation attitude of his present. No where is this more true than in his concept for the Limes Hotel in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley, a nightlife hub just northeast of the city centre. Like Lotersztain’s own home, the Limes is filled only with essentials, chosen and arranged in such a way as to assure an atmosphere of welcoming cosiness. Though its modern aesthetic is intended to create a self-conscious design experience, its normally attendant air of exclusivity is noticeably absent; though Lotersztain wants to make guests feel special, he also wants them to feel comfortable leaping into beds and sofas as though they were their own. Given the designer’s experience with the transient lifestyle, after all, it is no wonder that the Limes was conceived as a home away from home – albeit one with a cosmopolitan design inspired by its creator’s globetrotting past.
Lotersztain’s design concept is comprehensive, extending all the way from the hotel coffee shop to the music and drinks list. The result is a unified thematic atmosphere, a hotel given a tangible “face” – from the grossly-oversized extension of the Limes logo on its façade to the sophisticated furniture designed by Lotersztain’s own studio, derlot. The pièce – or rather, pièces – de résistance, however, are the 21 deluxe rooms, each equipped with individually hand-painted feature walls created using a special mineral coating technique, Corian by DuPont kitchen benches and toilette vanities, Blackbutt timber bed heads, custom power coat aluminium door handles, splash-back and floating bedside tables, Luna Textiles curtains and bathroom wall tiles by Bisazza. The distinctive fixtures and furnishings were all chosen for their durability, high quality and ability to evoke a simultaneously modern and warm ambience in keeping with the Limes design theme. Thus each room features a derlot “lerod” barstool and lounger with New Zealand black sheep skin, “bolet” lights balcony, “stump” stool, and limited edition “twig” table exclusive to the Limes. Space is used efficiently in each room – as in Lotersztain’s own bedroom – with mundane items like rubbish bins and cables minimised or completely hidden. The result is a visually clear space that feels luxuriously large and can be efficiently serviced. In homage to the transformations and fluctuations of modern business and travelling, Lotersztain insisted that the entire hotel be wireless Internet enabled, assuring that laptop users can, like the designer himself, work from bed. At the same time, traditional Internet users are not forgotten: the staid hotel-room desk has been updated as a kitchenette bench that can be used as either Ethernet work station or casual eating area.
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