Propeller Island City Lodge, Berlin
The experience of staying in a hotel is all about predictability and consistency, you know exactly what you are going to get when you check in. Bed? Check. Bathroom? Check. Bath robe? Check. Furniture suspended from the ceiling in order to immerse guests in a ‘living work of art’? Ch…what?
This is just one of the mind-bending experiences awaiting anybody staying at Berlin’s Propeller Island City Lodge, an attempt to breathe some excitement and a sense of unpredictability into the life of the traveller. Each room adopts a wildly different aesthetic ranging from the relatively straightforward ‘Mirror Room’ (think Alvin Stardust’s dressing room) and the ‘Orange room’ (fairly self explanatory) to the aforementioned ‘Upside Down’ room and the more challenging ‘Four Beams’ – which, due to the bed being suspended in mid-air via a series of ropes, is not available to those guests of a ‘portly’ disposition.
The rooms are all designed by German artist Lars Stroschen, who started off converting two rooms in his house into strange designer guestrooms as a sideline to various art projects. The growing interest in these one-of-a-kind rooms led him to expand into a nearby disused hotel and generate the ideas for the 30 unique rooms that now comprise the City Lodge.
Now, you may be thinking ‘I’m tired, I have had a hard day, the last thing I want when I get back to my hotel is to have to climb a ladder and sleep in a metal cage suspended from the ceiling’, and you would have a point. These rooms have been designed with the priority on innovation and visual impact over comfort and practical use, some have shared bathrooms, the reception is only open for a few hours a day (to keep costs down) and there are instructions for the use of each specific room given to every guest. Obviously Propeller Island is not for everyone, and if waking up inside a psychedelic dreamscape is your idea of a nightmare then you will probably be best off sticking with the nearest Travelodge. The whole place reeks of ‘style over substance’, but when the style is this substantial you can justify the small sacrifices to have what will be a truly unique night’s sleep. Propeller Island manages to avoid coming across as an attempt to be wacky and ‘off-the-wall’ by virtue of the taste, imagination and humour on display throughout – one of the rooms is even designed as a replica of a padded cell. Oh, the irony.
The Commune by the Great Wall, Beijing
Opened in October 2002, this exclusive complex of 11 villas forms a private collection of living architecture, specially commissioned by a collection of prominent Asian architects. Developed by husband and wife team Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin at SOHO China, the pared-down crisp design creates simple lines that beautifully frame the surrounding mountain landscape and the Great Wall.
A total of 46 rooms are currently open and once the second phase of construction is completed, this number will grow to 265. Guests are provided with room service, private butler service, a Club House concierge and a dedicated meetings concierge. There is also a communal Club House offering a courtyard restaurant, lounge, swimming pool, gallery, private cinema and a library, attired in peacock feathers. A private path from the property also gives guests direct access to the Great Wall.
Offering not just a hotel stay, but an other-worldly ‘architectural experience’ has already garnered The Commune by the Great Wall international recognition. The project won a special prize at the 2002 Biennale di Venezia, establishing it as a showcase for contemporary Chinese and Asian architecture. Condé Nast Traveler named the hotel among the ‘100 Hot Hotels in the World’ in 2004 and Tatler Travel Guide ranked the hotel among the ‘10 best Boutique Hotels’ in 2005. As China becomes increasingly prominent on the world stage, the serene, stylish surroundings of The Commune seem to embody the country’s cultural aspirations and set out an agenda for the West to take notice of. Its clearly working as The Commune’s notoriety recently attracted well known cultural authority Jennifer ‘Jenny from the Block’ Lopez to throw a party at the hotel. If that’s not a barometer of cutting edge style and class then I don’t know what is.
