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CASA CAMPER BARCELONA, SPAIN |
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| ARCHITECTURE / INTERIOR DESIGN |
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| Ferran Amat |
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Young, fresh and quirky, Casa Camper is as easy to slip into as a pair of your favourite shoes. “The name camper means peasant in Catalan,” says Miguel Fluxá, Camper heir, head of business development and one of the minds behind the Mallorca-based shoe company’s first hotel diversification. “We still believe that everything we do should be connected to the land”. In a renovated 19th-century building tucked in a lively side street of Barcelona’s new trendy El Raval district, the 25-room hotel offers hip urban nomads a retreat from the city’s and neighbourhood’s bustle with a casually modernist and eco-friendly space that goes hand-in-hand with the firm’s basic philosophies.
El Raval’s mix of old corner shops and new restaurants, thousands of passers-by and Richared Meier’s MACBA contemporary art museum may not exactly be rural, but Casa Camper exudes a homey yet hip, active atmosphere that begins with the bicycles hanging on pulleys from the front foyer’s ceiling. These can be lowered and ridden freely around the city. Entering the hotel’s island-style lobby a luxurious marble and wood reception counter is decorated with pop art contrasts and an antique window display cabinet. The rear of the lobby, done in Camper’s signature blood-red and equipped with sleek silver tables and benches, looks like an upscale cafeteria and features a 24-hour buffet offering tentenpié (“snack” in Spanish). Here, guests can relax and reload on soups, sandwiches and juices while they gaze at Hannah Collins’ photographs of the rapidly changing neighbourhood’s distinctive buildings.
In the uncarpeted corridors upstairs, guests may think they are seeing double: each standard room is actually two spaces across the hall from each other. The quiet rooms to the back are compact bedrooms (dormitorio) in the same red as the lobby, while the front sitting rooms (salita de estar) in white offer either a getaway space or one from which to watch the colourful parade on the busy street below from the balcony. Nothing is overdone; everything has a purpose or visual appeal. The overall stylistic effect is modern, sparsely comfortable, and well, cool.
And many of the rooms’ most eye-catching details come from Vinçon, arguably Barcelona’s finest design shop. Vinçon’s owner, the renowned Spanish interior designer Fernando Amat, was responsible for the design of Camper’s very first Barcelona shoe store and also created the hotel’s look and feel. “We chose the name Casa Camper because the idea is that the guests use the hotel in the same way they would use their house,” explains Amat, who made sure that each room is as functional as it is funky. Bedrooms have extra-wide beds, cubby-holes for storage and pegs for hanging that cover an entire wall; the adjacent bathrooms are dominated by walk-in showers featuring oversized showerheads. A window above the wide sink in each room offers a view to a lush “vertical garden” of potted plants that completely cover the opposite courtyard wall. Across the hall, the living room area is equipped with a flat-screen TV, a foldout couch bed and a Mexican hammock for lazing around in. Travellers need only bring their laptops: wi-fi access is available in every room and also on the hotel’s roof terrace.
While T-shirted staff members are glad to bring you breakfast or a pillow from the pillow menu, service has an inspirational human touch that goes way beyond just being friendly personnel. Sprinkled throughout the hotel are splashy graphics by designers América Sánchez and Albert Planas and signs with the Camper motto “Walk, don’t run” or the motivational maxims “Express yourself” and “You are what you eat”— an eye-chart-like poster that reiterates the aphorisms graces the bathrooms. And the company’s ecological, healthful attitude is reflected not only in Casa Camper’s non-smoking policy, but also in a comprehensive recycling program, solar panels and a unique system that reuses hotel water (don’t worry… the first use is shower water, the second for the toilets). Camper authenticity is also obvious next door at the FoodBall restaurant, where guests can lounge on a set of stairs while they enjoy an array of fresh organic juices and delicate organic balls of free-range chicken and other fillings covered in a layer of brown rice.
Casa Camper believes that “the secret to true luxury lies in simplicity.” With its clean lines, laid-back ambience and little surprises like jelly flip-flops in each room, Camper has succeeded in capturing the functionality and fun of its groovy shoe line in a space that is welcoming, comforting and keeps things simple. |
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