Extreme design hotels

The most popular floor, according to Cabello, was designed by Zaha Hadid. The sinuous curves, smooth textures and soft recessed lighting in Hadid’s guest bedrooms suggest a voluptuous marriage of Antonio Gaudi and what might be called spaceship chic. Delight in bathrooms that are entirely orange, but don’t bother looking for the towel racks, because there aren’t any. The floors are so strikingly different that guests staying more than one night could easily undergo option paralysis, but this place is all about freedom. “We offer our guests the possibility to change rooms and floors, but they have to pay a surcharge of 60 euros [$87],” says Cabello.

The Puerta America is gutsy from within and without: Its rainbow exterior is inscribed with lines from Paul Eluard’s poem “Liberty”—translated 19 times. But some extreme design hotels make their statements more discreetly. One of the world’s best is in Brussels, where the almost secret Fashion Rooms are tucked discreetly into the outwardly conservative, five-star Royal Windsor Hotel. Each of the dozen rooms was created entirely by a Belgian designer, and they differ wildly. With its pink Schiaparelli perimeter carpet, pink velvet daybed and frosted mauve velvet curtains, one of the most sumptuous is the Nicolas Woit room. Says Woit, “my inspiration came from a 1930s boudoir and then evolved towards the atmosphere of the first forbidden nightclubs of the years of real glamour.”

In New York City, the Hotel on Rivington is a dazzling 21-story tower of tinted glass that rises in sharp—but welcome—contrast above the tangle of 19th-century red brick tenements. Sleekly appointed guest rooms bask in those rarest of Manhattan commodities: light, space and air. But an extreme design hotel need not be relegated to the hippest precincts of the urban jungle. Indeed, being out in the middle of a picturesque nowhere can bring out the animal in an architect’s wildest hotel fantasies.

In cities, “the outside architecture is somewhat less important than the inside architecture,” says Schrager, “but that’s probably not the case in resort areas and in places like Las Vegas where the exterior probably would be very important, as an opportunity to distinguish yourself.” Michel Bras, in France’s relatively desolate Aubrac region, the Hotel Basico in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, and the Anassa in Cyprus are all examples of extreme design at work in places most people wouldn’t expect it.

Michel Bras Extreme design hotels aren't always located in cities. Michel Bras, in the middle of France's Aubrac region, is a clear example. The sight of this unabashedly contemporary hotel and restaurant rising from the rocky meadows in what could be considered France's little Wyoming, is nothing less than jarring—but in an uplifting and somehow very French way.

Ultimately, extreme design hotels may not only be the manifestation of an architect’s imagination, but rather a sign of the times. “I think this is a sort of brands-on-steroids era,” says Schrager. “Luxury is available and accessible to lots of people, and I think the only way you can really distinguish yourself is by having something on a very individualized basis.” Design per se “was not really the gravitas behind [the Gramercy Park] or its ethos—there has to be some kind of idea behind it that captures that cultural wind.”

He turned to Schnabel to help tune into the zeitgeist, creating with his latest venture a look he likens “to the special effects in a movie.” Around the world, different artists and design visionaries are bringing their own daringly individual styles to the luxury hotel experience. Checking in was never so dramatic.

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